I think I'll pick up next time where I left off - the teaser. First, I need to set the scene of what it's like to be a gringo in the midst of Nicaraguan society.
Before I made it to Valpo, the chorale recorded "Horizons" by Peter-Louis Van Dijk on their As It Is In Heaven album. Some of the lyrics will serve to organize this post. I've never had the chance to sing it, but it has affected me powerfully in the ways it relates to the cultures I've come to know south of my home country. The song relates the story of the San nation in South Africa, and is based on a cave painting dating to the time the first "gringos" showed up on the scene.
Sleep, my springbok baby,
Sleep for me, my springbok child,
When morning comes I’ll go out hunting,
for you are hungry and thirsty.
Like most of the native peoples on the American Continent, the San were short on stature and steel compared to their new white counterparts. They were an exceptionally peaceful people, a trait used very effectively against them. Rather than fearing or repelling the white men, they sought to form friendships through gift-giving and continue their way of life. They admired their height, skin, and opulence as godlike.
When morning comes, they’ll come a-hunting,
for they are hungry and thirsty.
In Nicaragua, there's a plaque with a quote attributed to Niracao-Calli, a local chieftain:
"The Spaniards know about the flood, (and) who placed the stars, the sun, and the moon. (They know) where the soul was. (They know) how Jesus, being man, is God, and his mother a virgin giving birth, and why so few men wanted so much gold."
Unlike Costa Rica, Nicaragua had three valuable traits: a large population, vast natural resources, and a transit route across the American continent. All three were taken by force when the Spanish used slaves to transport gold, timber, and other goods between the Pacific coast and Lake Nicaragua, where they could be exported up the San Juan and away to Spain. They pillaged the country, leaving a trail that leads today to Nicaragua's status as the poorest country in Central America and the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
They will come across the waters:
Mighty saviours in their sailing ships,
And they will show us new and far horizons.
But hey, I'm not Spanish. My ancestors didn't "colonize"anyone - they just took tracts of "unused" land and "cultivated" it through the Homestead Act. I'll ignore the direct influence their tax dollars later had for now, except to say that I've been pretty disgusted with my own U.S. History education after learning about William Walker, the Banana Wars, and several other unsavory aspects of our collective past. You see, it really depends on your perspective. I can view the fact that I'm sitting here typing on a MacBook Pro (which represents more money than the median annual salary in Nicaragua) as the result of exploitation or as the result of hard work - both are correct. Either way, some of us have what some of us don't, and for anyone my age or younger the odds that we had much to do with which it is are pretty slim. History happened one way and not another. Trying to understand why is certainly valuable, but almost only insofar as it inspires action in the present. I say the present because the future doesn't really exist, at least not yet. I feel that sting every time someone asks me here whether I'll be coming back to Central America - I'm not opposed to the idea, but I'd be lying if I said I were planning to do so. The present enables the future, but focusing only on the future cripples the present. If God is a verb, it's in the present tense.
And they came, came across the waters:
Gods in galleons, bearing bows of steel,
Then they killed us on the far horizon.
So where does that leave us? Should I feel guilty? No. Guilt inspires pain, not healing, and blaming ourselves for something we didn't do (though we may have benefited from it) is a logical absurdity. Instead, I think we should simply focus outside ourselves. The economic disparity that allowed me to fall in love with reading at the same age where this child was teaching himself origami in order to help his family exists, but it doesn't make either of us the better person. I think the thing I learned most on this trip is that the people we worked with didn't want pity, at least not primarily. They wanted to be heard. They wanted to be loved. Sometimes that meant a gift of alleviation, but sometimes it meant a conversation. In this boy's case, it meant both.
I promise I'll fill in some of the details on our encounter next time, but I really needed to get that out. I feel better now, and I hope it inspires you and I both to look for a chance to love our neighbor. Today.
Hopefully it doesn't come as a shock or disappointment to any of you that I am still alive. It's been a while, but my hiatus wasn't without good reason. I've been traveling almost nonstop for the last three weeks and I look forward to unpacking the lessons learned with you over the next few posts. Buckle up.
For the second and longest leg of my three-week road trip, I interpreted for a group of 23 nursing, pre-med, and pre-dental students from Valparaiso University, my alma mater. It was some of the most rewarding and refreshing work I have ever done. I knew a few of them before they came, but by the end of the trip I think I had formed or deepened a friendship with nearly all of them. We worked (and occasionally played) very hard and had a blast doing it. This picture was taken on what was one of our only days off when we all went ziplining. I think the big takeaway from this trip came from my friend Katie Dayman. Her comments during our final debrief time at the last hotel made me realize that as a result of 23 students' decisions to give up laying on a beach or spending time with their family or doing whatever else college kids do on spring break (I wouldn't really know - I was always on tour), the lives of people they had never met before this month have been changed in real and lasting ways. I personally experienced a case where a patient had been living with a chronic but entirely treatable condition for over a year due to no reason other than her extreme poverty. I've seen poverty before, even worked within it as an educator and constructor, but this was somehow different. We were helping people directly, personally. We listened, asked, looked, touched. Plenty more to unpack, but it was truly a mountaintop experience - the fact that I was doing it as a job just seems absurd looking back.
Mar 17 - Mar 20: Nicaraguan Lutherans
After the students left on Friday morning (or was it Saturday?), a few of us from my church in Costa Rica stayed in Managua, caught a 5:00 A.M. bus to a tiny little village close to the Honduran border, then caught an hourlong or so covered pickup ride to a church quite literally in the middle of nowhere for a congress or conference between a bunch of Nicaraguan congregations and our own. It was a time for the pastors to catch each other up on developments around the country, but also to clarify and unify their message around a few specific theological topics. It was very interesting to me, but sadly I don't have any good pictures. My camera died about halfway through the Valpo trip. I was able to participate a bit, but I mostly just played the fly on the wall and tried to learn as much as possible about these people. It's a very small world sometimes, especially as a Lutheran. On the way back to Costa Rica, Heidi and I stopped for about a day and a half in Managua and Granada where I met a few very special little boys in a market. I'll leave that as your teaser for this post.
Throughout it all, I discovered it manifesting itself in new and different ways. I saw it happen between my grandparents in a completely different light. I saw complete strangers caring deeply and passionately for each other, if only for a moment or two. I saw the ecstatic reunion of "annual" friendships and felt the pure joy of cultivating my own - whether with people I'd known for six months or six minutes. It was a beautiful experience, and one that I know I will take with me my whole life because that's exactly what it was and is - life. Lived to the fullest. Some would call it eudaimonia. I call it love.
