Today would be the hardest part of our trip: saying goodby to our Nica families for real. I had already said goodbye and expressed my gratitude to my host dad last night because he normally leaves for work before Jenifer and I had to get going in the morning, but he actually got to work later this morning and before he left, welcomed me back anytime. It was a real development, him almost saying four whole sentences to me! (He just doesn't talk much in general, and his manner of speaking was harder for me to understand... so that was extra effort and extra sweet of him).
We got all the kids ready to go, and Meredith and Don Martin picked us up at 7:30am in the truck to transport our luggage, and we went to go pick up Paul and host mama Jessica, just as we all rode Nica-style to our host homes the first time we met them. From Don Martin's, Jenifer took the boys to Gotitas, so I had to say goodbye to my monitos. They had tested my patience greatly in those two weeks, but I think we got to the point where we would give each other sass more like siblings than as if they were paying no mind to this random stranger in their home. The older one, Diddier wasn't in the mood to really tell me goodbye, but the middle one, Diederich, gave me kisses and hugs. Adios, monitos.
The necessary jumping picture while waiting for the bus.
Maria Mercedes also wanted a picture with me. She is shy, but talented, smart, and athletic. I wish her all the best.
Today would be a day of reflection on our time here in Nicaragua as our hours left here seemed to be disappearing faster by the second. En route to Chacra Seca, we saw some of the adorable one-story homes with porches, garages, and flush toilets and Meredith even pointed out a neighborhood where they usually place delegates. Even the nicest houses were only one story. Perhaps the wealthiest of the wealthy lived in mansions... And there certainly are those with considerable wealth in this country too. But in explaining our trip to people that did not experience it with us, all of us had to remain conscious that these neighborhoods we drove through were the more typical Nicaraguan experience. Certainly many Nicas continue to live in poverty and struggle with unemployment or underemployment, but we in the U.S. may be too quick to picture this poorest Central American nation as if all lived in the conditions of the families we stayed with. And even though we stayed in very humble homes, they always had enough and always had such a willing spirit to share what they had with us.
Even though we had all been thinking and processing and reflecting during the entirety of the trip, we came to the Casa de Paz, the House of Peace, to reflect as a group. It was hard to find the actual place where we would walk a labyrinth, and I think we basically did a labyrinth on the bus just trying to find the place, but our driver Jose came through again.
We first met Jeannette, who has been the administrator here for nine years. La Casa de Paz was founded in 2000 by a monja, a nun, who returned to New York a few years later where her sisters are based. This area started to develop because of her and her work especially with sister-city organizations with the U.S. The idea was for people to just be able to sit in the rocking chair and talk with her, walk the laberinto, and just be here, and La Casa also leads spiritual retreats to other departments (Nicaragua's version of states). Donors help bring houses, water, clean sanitation, electricity, etc. for those in this community that do not have many resources, and the cycle of serving others continues.
She then talked about the importance of the labyrinth and how it works (the entrance to el laberinto here pictured, and if you already know all this, feel free to skip ahead). It is a meditación de nuestra vida (a meditation of our life), lo bueno (the good), lo malo (the bad), y lo futuro (and the future). The entrance is the purgatory path and processing, and then the end is called the path of illumination where you resolve to be better once you cross the threshold. The actual exit is called unidad - unity, or brotherhood and sisterhood as Jeanette added. While walking through it, we would do so watch-less, so as to not be concerned with time frames but to just let the Spirit move you and work through you. After removing our time-keeping devices, we read some prayers to prepare our hearts to walk.
One by one, we entered the labyrinth, thinking, praying, reflecting, softly singing. Many of us lay in the sun in the center circle until we could commit ourselves to healing. I cannot speak for the rest of our crew, but I think I went through a good deal of emotions in that processing. I just thought about those that I came to love in such a short amount of time here, how this experience has changed my perspective in a lot of ways, and how I love and pray for those back home as well. When we returned to our chairs on the deck at our own pace, we were given paper and pens to write about our reflections and then turn them over to La Casa if we chose to. I actually chose to keep mine because it was one of those times where the words just flowed, and I had to get them down and remember them exactly like they came out in that moment.
And indeed as I look at that crinkled and worn sheet as I type this, the first phrase of reflection I wrote was "Letting my thoughts and prayers flow, that our whole group may just be open in heart and spirit so they may connect with nature, connect with God, come to peace. Hearts open to whatever emotion may come, joy, tears, confidence, overflowing of love." I will not share more of the specifics of my writings from that moment because they are deeply personal, but one of my trains of thought was what I wanted to write in a goodbye letter to my host family. I hoped they would continue to show their boys patience and love as they had shown to me, and that they would recognize the intelligence, the helpful spirit, and the potential in their boys, and I wanted them to know how thankful and amazed I was every day by how hard they worked and how they filled me every day with the few resources they had.
When we had all finished writing, we moved into group reflection. We talked about how our awareness of our privilege increased, how open Nicaraguans were to us despite our history of political injustice, how powerful our family stays were especially compared to the traditional mission trip, and how open we all were to living like them and making do in poverty with what we had. For me especially, with International Relations and political science, I had delved into issues of poverty and development in my studies, and it was so key to actually live it. The improvization with few resources, the strength of the women even in traditional gender roles and stereotypes of machismo, and making connections between communities here and in our own country. Beyond better understanding how to serve those in poverty around the world, I think we from suburbia can so quickly forget that poverty exists if not five minutes away, maybe fifteen. There are plenty of communities that do not have the same opportunities and resources all of us on our trip have had, especially in terms of education. All of those opportunities we would want for our Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, we can work for in our own communities too, whether it may be helping out with after school sports programs to keep kids off the streets or tutoring or just understanding how inequality in our own education system results in inequality in opportunities for many of our own citizens to-be.
We focused on what nourished us while we were here, and we could use some of these trains of thought for our reflections as a part of Pastor Don's sermon on Sunday, the day after we returned home to Minnesota. And as we were bouncing all of our thoughts off of each other, Meredith added her own powerful reflection. She said she had been worried about the more difficult conditions for this delegation, as PML had never placed a delegation in that community before, and she was thankful for how open we were. I could definitely see how this delegation could have been trying, as some things did not exactly come together as planned, but she was so on top of everything and handled it all with knowledge and grace. She provided a solid mix of history lessons and sass to keep us entertained, but always experiencing the delegation with us, and I am grateful for that.
I do not really know how we went from such deep trains of thought to returning to logistics and normalcy, but we moved through the Casa space where signs of peace were displayed all around, and we all wrote our own personal message of peace with our name on a small, white strip of paper.
We then hung them by their attached strings on this peace tree. Almost every branch was taken, but there's always room for more peace, right?
Looking up to the ceiling to take everything in, I noticed the giant gold star said what - JOY! So of course I had to call our own Joy over to photograph her with her own shining sign.
We stumbled back into the sunlight, got a little snack at the nearby pulpería (Nothing like soda in a plastic bag with a straw! But we learned the vendors keep the bottles for recycling, so that is why there is so much plastic trash on the street but no broken bottles...). Our microbus arrived at Don Martin's at about 12:15, and away with our families we went for the last time. Jenifer came for me with Diederich, who even though he gave me his despedida, his farewell, earlier, finished school at 12 so he could come home with us. Maria Mercedes had Jenifer's babe, Diegmar, in her arms, and another surprise when we got home - Douglas was at the gate! He had said as much of a flowery goodbye and I was going to get from him in the morning, but he showed up again and sweetly fell asleep in the rocking chair while hanging out with the baby.
Jenifer made chicken (and threw the bones to Princesa), rice, beans, and maduros. I told her that "Desgraciadamente, mi estomago no me permitiría comer mucho," unfortunately my stomach would not let me eat much today even though I loved her food. It made me really sad actually that I was still not feeling well and couldn't enjoy all of her delicious food during my last meal with her.
We chatted about airports and airplane experiences, and I discovered I did not quite have the vocab to explain the security process with x-rays and metal detectors! She still wished to be able to come visit someday, hopefully someday soon. Her friend Keilee also came over to hang out for a bit, and I tried to discreetly run off to go finish my thank-you notes to the niños and to my padres. Jenifer in fact had a surprise for me too - a set of turquoise and silver jewelry! I put the bracelet on right then, and I promised I would wear the matching earrings and necklace another day. We only had a few minutes before we had to head back to the group, but I gave them cinco bonbones de coco (5 coconut suckers from the stash I had won with my/Dad's/Francisco's piñata), and Diederich of course grabbed one right away, and when he finished it, he tried to steal his mom's too - what a little sneaker! I tried to convince him to at least share though and that there was one for everybody... I also left with my host mom the rest of my champú and crema (shampoo and hair cream) for her curls, and finally the notes. She folded them and saved them, and I explained I do better in writing especially because I was going to cry - and she was already getting teary.
We walked one last paseo with Jessica and Paul, and almost everybody from our delegation was late to Don Martin's. Jenifer was teary the whole time, and I had little Maria José from another family hanging onto me too. I got a picture with a few of the girls for the last time too, and finally we had all arrived.
In those last few minutes, I helped Joy translate her family's note to her so she could thank them too. We were all supposed to have arrived at 2:45 having said our long drawn-out goodbyes with our families already so that we could leave like ripping off a band-aid, but it perhaps did not happen as planned. We loaded the bus with everything that would come back with us from this beautiful country and then popped off for huge group pictures in front of our beloved microbus. I still need to get those pictures from whoever's camera phone they were taken on unfortunately, but they were great!
Ay, goodbyes. Paul's mama Jessica and I got all teary too as I thanked her for being an auntie to me, and she called me a sobrina (niece) to Meredith, followed by huge hugs and kisses for my host mama. She could not say much because we were both crying, but I wanted my last words to her to be of encouragement for her, her family, and her career path too. My doors are always open to her, and we vowed to stay in contact through email and pictures. As we boarded our microbus, a line of moms and kids had formed leading up to its doors so we could thank and hug all of them on our way. And so much waving from the bus!
We all debriefed on the way to Managua, all of us handling differently the emotions and reflections about leaving our Nica families, perhaps to never to see them again but having forever been changed by our time with them. It also felt good to rest, especially as I was for whatever reason still having a fun time with traveler's digestive issues. We returned to the place where we began our delegation: Centro Kairos. This time we had two female houses with the three girls in one and then Laurie, Jennifer, Meredith, and I in the other. I was thankful for a little spell of free time to lie down until Meredith came in and said gently, "Umm everyone's waiting on you for dinner..." Whoops!
Dinner was nice, with a little veggie soup, hibiscus tea, and a treat of Eskimo ice cream! I only had a teeny spoonful because I had to see how food settled with me, and then as we departed from the dinner table, all of us delegates snuck around taking turns making sure Meredith and Francisco were occupied in conversation so we could all write notes on thank-you signs we made for them.
In anticipation of our final delegation reflection, Jennifer and Laurie and I talked about how our group coalesced, how everyone was so open to the experience, and how amazing the group dynamic came together especially because we all did not really know each other. Nobody came into this experience cliquey, and the whole group was so well-rounded! It's actually pretty amazing how smoothly we all bonded. Amazing.
We were to reconvene at 8:30. Our crew wanted to start by thanking Meredith and Francisco individually, which we did by going around the circle and saying an affirmation for each of them, to be followed by presenting them with the poster we had signed for them. After a round for Francisco and a round for Meredith, we then bestowed upon Jose the humble yellow frisbee he had thrown with our group on the beach in León, this time with all of our signatures on it. He was also one of us.
Then Meredith went around the circle and did affirmations for each of us individually, thanking me for my intense note-taking - I wanted to remember everything, every historical fact, every important or unimportant conversation topic with my host mom, every different smell, every cultural or political reference, every moment of surprise, etc. She did an affirmation for my dad as well as it was too bad he had to go back to work after the first week. Meredith said she was glad to have my papa and was so appreciative of how sincere he was in trying to make the most of his experience, especially with the language piece, saying how hard he tried to speak Spanish even though probably 95% of it was English. She also added that she had this preconception that he would be all serious because he's an accountant, but she learned he is so sweet and just like a big kid, loving to play sports with the youngsters and still learn from everyone around him. It was really nice that she thought to commemorate the presence of my dad's spirit here even though he couldn't be with us on this last night.
We moved on to the final part of our reflection: remembrance. We were to take a piece of blue string and a piece of white string, and we again went around the circle, this time saying what we would think of from our Nica experience every time we looked at that string, as we tied it on the wrist of our choosing. When my turn came, my answer was so clear to me. "My host mom," I said as I tied the knot around my left wrist.
At that moment, though, I had to then run off, not with a case of uncontrollable emotions, but uncontrollable stomach unwellness. I wanted to be a part of those group activities - and it was our final night together! Attempting to not get too graphic here, I had been feeling quite miserably ill even while enjoying these mindful discussions, but after I said my piece I took off in the direction of our room, but I did not quite make it. I at least got to the bushes away from any houses to throw up, and I felt so much better after that. Guess I still could not quite keep food down. As soon as I stood up, I heard a voice call out to me from the nearest house asking if I was okay (funny thing is I really do not remember if this was in English or Spanish, nor do I remember what language I answered in...), which was really sweet of them. I did indeed feel okay at that point, so I went back to the group but they had just finished and were dispersing. So unfortunately I am not capable of recounting what happened for the last bit of our last group talk, and my apologies again for the less-than-pleasant tale.
If I had to get sick, I was so fortunate to have a couple of great moms in the group, and Laurie, being a medical professional, was also a great resource for advice and for pepto-bismol. Thank goodness for a relaxing rest of the evening, hanging out with the ladies, packing, showers, and an early bedtime.
¡Hasta mañana!
No comments:
Post a Comment