The water's warm!
Hiking up Volcan Mombacho -- the clouds were really thick, but they opened up for us at the top just long enough to catch a breathtaking view of Granada and Lake Nicaragua
Marketplace in Granada
Sunset at San Juan del Sur -- we couldn't get Jordan out of the water all day
"Looking" for baby turtles trying to make their way to the ocean
I found my turtle!
Michael's Jan Term class in front of Laguna de Apoyo
The beauty of the mountains around Matagalpa (we spent a few days on a coffee plantation/farm called Selva Negra) inspired the girls to paint
Devyn has learned to sleep -- and even snore! -- on the bus, just like the locals. This picture was taken on the way back from Costa Rica, where we had to stay for two days in order to renew our Nicaraguan visas. Two twelve-hour travel days with long lines mixed in!
Hi all!
It has been a while since I have written. The silence is not due to the fact that there is little to say; in fact, the issue is quite the opposite. There is so much I could say that it is difficult to select what is most blogable. I struggle with how to convey all that we experience here in this country. So, in an attempt to ease into it, so to speak, I will first tell you about what we have been doing for the past month.
For all of December and January, the girls have been out of school for their second “summer” vacation. (Of course, they do not call it that here. The school year runs from February to the end of November.)
During this time, we were fortunate to have many family members come to visit. In addition to showing them our home in Estelí, we traveled around the country to some of the more “touristy” areas. It was great to share our experiences with family and it was especially great for the girls to see grandparents who dote on them like no one else does. The pictures (above) help to capture some of the adventures we experienced during our “vacation time”.
All of our language abilities have improved. The girls are speaking in complete sen
tences and communicating quite capably with friends, teachers and neighbors. As their mother, this thrills me to pieces! It was a great feeling to be able to let the girls walk around the town with my mom and sister (who don’t speak Spanish), knowing the girls were fully capable of managing whatever language skills were necessary as they shopped, ordered food, etc, without me. In fact, Devyn later recounted that at one point in their amblings they needed to order something from a market vendor. My mom picked up Devyn, who is perhaps only 3.5 feet tall, and placed her at the level of the ordering counter so she could tell the woman (in Spanish) on the other side what they wanted to order. Devyn, in turn, translated for my mom how much money she needed to give the woman. Devyn is 5!
January was also an interesting month because Michael was co-teaching (with Margaret Dick) a travel class (“Nicaragua and El Salvador: Religion and Politics in Conflict”) for St. Mary’s College of California, and thus was away from the girls and me for the month. The trip (15 days in Nicaragua and 10 days in El Salvador) was intense, and he felt that the class was quite successful. I believe there are 15 more “conscientized” (a la Paulo Freie) college students in the world.
So, with Michael busy elsewhere, the girls and I held down the fort and had a few adventures of our own. We traveled to the southern Pacific Coast—to San Juan del Sur—and then later in the month, to the mountains of Matagalpa. I enjoyed the extra challenge of “flying solo” in a foreign land, and the girls seemed to realize that they only had one parent for the month; if they “used” me all up (with too much crazy misbehaving), they would have NO backup. I’m happy to say that they rose to the behavioral challenge. In other words, they went to bed when I asked, and kept the whining to a minimum.
The musings in my head continue. Some people might call them rants. I’ll let you decide. It would be difficult for me to explain fully all the things our experiences here in Nicaragua have inspired me to think about, so I will just try to briefly mention a few—in hopes that some day when we return (and if you are interested in conversing more about any of these topics, say over coffee or a glass of wine), we can use the following as a jumping off point. So here goes . . .
More on poverty:
As I’ve noted before, this is not the first time I have experienced abject poverty. Yet this is probably the longest time I have had to digest it. Thus, I have come to this conclusion: It seems to me that the poor have no problem identifying who they are. They know they are poor. They know the world that moves about them does not, for the most part, include them. The process of buying, selling, and living—beyond just sustaining life—is not something they have the opportunity to participate in. The rich, on the other hand, always seem to be denying that they are, indeed, RICH. Ok, I am confessing. I have been one of the “rich” who has been in denial. In the States, it is easy for me to analyze our finances, budget for our expenses, drive a used car, live in a high crime neighborhood, etc., and thus conclude that I am not among the “rich”. But I must now face the fact that this is just not true. The reality is staggering: 1.6 billion people in the world live on less than $1.00 per day. I have observed many of these people as I have had the privilege to travel to poverty-stricken parts of the world (a major indication that I am rich!) and now, due to our prolonged stay here in Nicaragua, I now know some of them personally. This profound realization—that less than half of our possessions and income would rank us among the richest people in the world—alters my perspective about money and “needs” entirely. It changes my feelings about giving money away, how much space I need to occupy, and even how I feel about being robbed. (Our car was stolen from the driveway back home in January, providing us a fairly concrete opportunity to reflect on the actual value of our possessions. Conclusion: How lucky we are to have a car to lose! [The undamaged car was subsequently recovered by some of Richmond’s finest.]).
I suppose a full explanation of the changes that have taken place in our perspectives would be overly lengthy for this forum. In short, I am happy with the changes, even if they don’t make my life any less conflicted.
Question: “Mom, why won’t you buy us apples in Nicaragua?”
My quick answer to the girls when they ask me this question is, “For the same reason I won’t buy pineapples or bananas in the United States.” Nevertheless, I realize that this is not really an answer to their question. The longer answer that I give them, which usually causes them to lose interest before I am finished, is: “I don’t buy apples here because I don’t want to support an industry that wastefully uses up both our human and environmental resources.”
In order to have apples in Nicaragua (replete with “Grown in Washington” [USA] stickers on them), they have to be imported. Such importation requires significant energy, both human and environmental. At a time when thousands of people have died and others continue to suffer in order to maintain our reliance on oil, I do not want to support, even in a minor way, unnecessary usage of this dwindling resource. Not to mention my concerns regarding what the apple pickers may or may not have been paid for their labors.
But that is not the only reason I won’t buy apples. I won’t buy apples because in my opinion they represent humans’ tendency toward greed. (A little ironic if you think about the significance of the apple in the story of Adam and Eve.)
We are in the tropics, and due to this highly conducive climate for growing just about everything, we are privy to an amazing myriad of delectable fruits and vegetables. Just about everything—EXCEPT apples. Thus they are imported, using up valuable resources in the process, just so we can have something we really don’t need. Moreover, the quality of the apples Nicaragua imports pales in comparison to the fruits and veggies that do grow here, sometimes just yards away from one’s door.
This dynamic seems to me a classic example of humans’ persistent desire to want what we don’t have and to want even MORE in the presence of plenty. I am not picking on my new Nicaraguan neighbors here. I could rant in the same way about any number of foods that are sold in the United States. I also don’t mean to convey I am above wanting what I cannot have. I, too, gravitate toward selfishness and greed. Still, “the apples” here in Nicaragua force my eyes to open. They challenge me to see all the other areas in my life where I can choose to support or not to support industries, governments, establishments, doctrines, etc., that continue to cater to my tendency toward greed AND take advantage of our planet and its people. So, I won’t buy apples here in Nicaragua, or bananas in the United States (unless they are fair trade), for that matter. Not because I think my boycott is really going to make a difference to the system at large, but because of the difference it makes in ME: because “the apples” force me to grapple with even larger issues of the world and how I live in it.
Ok. So do you think I am musing or ranting? Maybe both. There are many more topics swimming around in my head, but I should probably pace myself. ;-) It is sort of interesting how this blog writing is working out for me. I will think about something over and over again, and not really know how to best articulate it, and then comes a day when I am compelled to write it out. I have never been much of a writer (though I have always kept a personal journal), so sharing these thoughts with the masses gives me a feeling of solidarity; yet, at the same time, I have a sense of fear and trepidation about how the words might fall on their readers. I hope that as you read this you hear my desire to possess a humble voice. These are the things I think about, struggle with, and share with you in a spirit of hope, as together we strive to live our lives with integrity.
chao,
-Kelli
