I'm pretty happy with how this blog has gone. I promised myself I’d update it at least twice all summer, and until now I’ve managed to do it every week. So what I’m really trying to say is, I don’t feel that bad that I missed my posting last week.
That first week was fun but frustrating. I had a blast the whole time on route, seeing my vols settled in during their second week: we made bread at the awesome women’s bakery that uses profits to pay for the owners to continue their education, finally figured out the [literally eight!] different kinds of bananas that grow here, and introduced one community to volleyball. But by the time I got back home, I realized that it had also been an incredibly stressful and aggravating week as well. Some vols weren’t talking to community members at all; others seemed set on thinking of each day as an epic struggle that had to be overcome, making it impossible to enjoy any of the fantastic opportunities they were being offered; hardware store quotes that were supposed to have happened a week ago never appeared. I drowned my sorrows in 40-cent “Eskimo” ice cream bars and homemade tamales.
I came back to a well-earned nap, and a Regional Director. The lovely Kate McGuire (the permanent AMIGOS staff member who spends all year maintaining all of the relationships AMIGOS works so hard to forge during the summer) paid us a visit for a few days. She’s a wise, highly sexual, calming, inspiring women who’s high on life, has really really long hair, and possesses an unparalleled ability to capture every single AMIGOS moment on her camera to use in publicity. We had to leave a day early on route this week, so it was a rushed shortened weekend at the end of a long week, but talking about AMIGOS with Kate (and showing her my communities!) was a refreshing way to turn around and head out on route more excited than ever before.
And so I left for route with Kate and our APD Mary Ann in tow, with the honor of having chosen two of my communities as the two that Kate would see while in Matagalpa. On the way, I got to meet the national director of CARE—the most motherly warm creature on this planet—while Kate met with her, and she even got us a car and driver to get to community when our other plans fell through.
I love my communities, think they’re gorgeous, spend plenty of time reminding myself to be extremely grateful for the chance to spend more than half my week with the rolling hills and loving families that live there…but I still felt great feeding off of the excitement of Kate and Mary Ann, who spend most of their AMIGOS time doing administrative work and were glowing with joy to finally get back into community. It was also just fun to be the expert on the communities, especially in one that is always super excited to see me and where I feel like the most loved human being to ever set foot in Nicaragua, save perhaps Augusto Sandino himself.
In community with Kate
I got another special visit from Alberto Reyes, the poster child of Latin American youth involvement in AMIGOS. Traditionally, and somewhat lamentably, AMIGOS has been an organization that provides the opportunity for American teenagers who can afford the program to travel to Latin America and do all that AMIGOS does. I’m extremely proud and grateful to have had the chance to be one such American, and I know that AMIGOS has also always done a good job promoting “youth leadership” with the young people living in the AMIGOS communities…but the organization has only just started making a much stronger push to provide the same opportunities to teenagers from Latin America. It always seemed like a great idea to me, but having one of my vols come from Boaco, Nicaragua, and talking a lot this week with Alberto (who is the first ever Latin American member of project staff, after being a youth counterpart in his community in the Dominican Republic and then a vol in the DR and Ecuador) has made me a true believer. These youth—often ones that have already proven themselves as absolute superstars working with AMIGOS in their own communities—offer such a refreshingly new perspective to AMIGOS, they make us rethink how we do everything that we are used to doing only with Americans, and they come into the experience with such a heightened appreciation for what an amazing opportunity AMIGOS is and all that they stand to gain from it. Love it.
I learned how to make cajeta candies, watched each of my communities begin work on their construction projects, and witnessed how much more patient I’ve learned to be by talking out challenges and misunderstandings with my vols. I lectured the super-friendly and even-more-super-womanizing bus driver who drives the route back to Matagalpa about women’s rights after he proposed that I take his fiancé back to the United States with me in exchange for one of my chela vols. I began missing home—Arlington and New Haven—a little more when I got sick again this weekend, but a few heavy doses of Cipro later I’m feeling resolved to get back out on route with all the enthusiasm and wisdom that I’ve got left in me for these last few weeks. And I feel better about being able to balance devoting my entire being to dealing with other people’s problems, and taking care of myself too, after these last two weeks.
I’ll leave you this week with a thought about loving life. Latin America does seem to have a certain flair for loving to live, an attitude that’s definitely affected me over the past few years. …A few host families ran out of food this week, last year’s harvest not quite lasting until this year’s. They’re still feeding the vols more than they can eat, though. And however depressing or overwhelming poverty can sometimes seem, I do notice in these communities a pervading sense of gratitude for what they do have, of that experience of life being a little more uncertain and a little more dangerous and a little more painful making it possible to appreciate much more deeply all the times when things are certain, when they are safe, when they feel good. In the words of one mother of fourteen, the hardest part of raising such a big family was never being able to give her kids all they wanted; the best part was seeing them all start their own families, live their full lives.
Con cariño,
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