Káterin: An Angela´s Ashes Attempt

Everyone from the States, particularly those with Irish ancestry, should read Angela´s Ashes.

Now then. I have started making frenemies (somedays she hugs me, somedays she doesn´t want to talk to me and sticks her nose up in my direction) with a very expressive, very smart ten-year-old who always comes to the library alone, first to do homework in a hurry, then to read stories. Though I shouldn´t say I have favourites, she´s one of them, because she´s one of the only Nicaraguan kids I know who reads for fun.
I also know a little bit about her family, home and reality. I recently finished reading Angela´s Ashes and have composed this little blurb about her life, through her eyes, in the manner of Frank McCourt´s memoirs.

Me llamo Káterin. I am ten years old. I have brown eyes, short, straight brown hair, and pig lips, dice mamá. I think I am prettier than some of my friends but I can´t ever get all the dirt off my face and arms and my shirts are all too small so my stomach shows and I think if I were clean and had clothes that fit I would be prettier.

I live across el cause (the channel) from the library. There used to be water but now it´s full of trash, so mama laughs that even though we don´t have a water river, we have a trash river. My house is made of tin and cardboard. When I pass the adobe houses with two floors on the way to school I wonder if the kids in them get their own rooms and have toilets and kitchens.

I go to school most days. Some days the teacher has a mandato to do or she´s sick so she doesn´t come and I go home. Some days papá is at the house and says I need to stay home to watch Miguelito and when I say I have to go to school he hits me and I already have too many marks on my body so I listen to him and stay home. But I go back to school when he leaves and he can´t do anything about it because he is barely ever home anyway.

My favourite place to go, other than the beach where we only go on Easter and it´s always full of people and the sun almost melts my skin so sometimes I don´t like the beach, is the library. It is colourful and full of pictures of kids from around the world and books I want to read someday.

I like reading most when I am not hungry or worried about Miguelito and when my head doesn´t hurt, because then I am not distracted and can read forever, at least until the library closes. I also like going to the library because they listen to me no matter what I am saying. I sometimes laugh because Heather says all the time that she doesn´t understand me, and then I say, ¨So why are you listening?¨ And then she laughs too. Clara, the one who always wears pretty skirts, touches my hair like mamá used to. And Eliezer and Damaris are always arguing and it makes me laugh. I like to laugh.

My favourite thing about the library is that they have a cabinet that Heather, the new librarian, says has 2,000 stories inside. When she opens the door to show me I feel like my mamá just put a big tray of dulces on my bed and I can eat all I want. Except books are better than dulces because they don´t disappear and you can stay reading a book longer than it takes to eat a dulce. And a dulce goes inside you, but you go inside a book. What I mean is, when I read I like to imagine the castles and green and smells of bread around me. They make the dust and heat go away.

It´s late and I´ve been at the library for two hours. Mamá will be mad but I don´t care because I can always come back tomorrow and the cabinet will always be there.

5 months!

Happy spring. In Nica, and perhaps wherever you find yourself, it is a time of renewal and of change. A few days ago, the first rain of invierno (winter) fell, signaling the start of the rainy season, although it’s currently 95 degrees without a cloud of mercy in sight.Además, I’m five months, or almost one-fourth, of my way through life as a Nica JV. WHAT. Incredulity aside, I would like to share the movements of my soul based on that observation. I feel that I am settled in…I no longer double-take when piling on to a crowded bus, or hand-washing clothes, or getting diarrhea. I feel comfortable in community and inaugurated into my library position. Though I still feel the pangs when a co-worker or Nicaraguan friend shares some of her poverty, telling me of her murdered cousin or pregnant 16-old-daughter, these moments too have passed into a zone of acceptance.The question is, what next? Because it’s wonderful that I’m currently comfortable, but I am also sensing that I am ready for more. A few minutes ago, I was reading Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed in a rocking chair, contemplating popular education and solidarity, when an ice cream vendor passed our barred windows, ringing bells to announce his business. He wore a torn baseball cap from LA, had bug-eyes and was soaked in sweat. He strained against the weight of his ice cream as he pushed it up our dirt alley beneath the sun.I was struck by the world of difference between us. Here I am, comfortable as a JV in Nicaragua, and there are the Nicaraguans, the workers, the hungry, the oppressed, with whom I am forming relationships. Do they feel comfortable with the situations in which they find themselves? My co-worker Yelba goes home to an abusive husband and a load of her children’s laundry every night, and comes to work the next day having shrugged it off. She has accepted it. Is that fair? Where do I fit in?And so, about to start the second quarter of my Nicaragua time, I am ready to dive deeper into relationships, to make more of an effort to be uncomfortable…because I have grown through my initial discomfort, and I am ready for more.I challenge you to read and reflect on Dom Helder Camara and the following poem Pry Me off Dead Center. They very much touch my heart in its current state.Thank you for reading and thinking about what you have read. No go out and set the world on fire. You know what to do.

New Photos on Flickr, Plus Three-Week Word Vomit

Hello everyone! Firstly, since a picture´s worth a thousand words, you should check out my new Flickr photos. I´ve included my worksite, retreat with the community in the mountainous north, and a pilgrimage to El Salvador for the Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Oscar Romero. Will have to caption them next time, since uploading the videos (of dancing with Casa Romero, and singing ¨Wild Rover¨ with a Northern Irishman on flute and Thomas on guitar) took up all of my internet time. La Garnacha was beautiful, a farming community in the cooler north where you can see Honduras and the two highest volcanoes in Nicaragua. We sat around candles deep into the night. We brought guitars out to a field underneath the stars and sang Bob Dylan songs. We took a sunrise hike to a nearby hill. We ate cheese made in the house next to our cabin. El Salvador was peaceful. Interesting, since all my Nicaraguan co-workers told me to be careful in such a gang-infested city. But there is strength in numbers, and the Casa de la Solidaridad community took care of us, and there´s nothing quite like marching through a dangerous area of downtown, surrounded by 10,000 Salvadorans, Central Americans, and gringos in the name of peace. Some pictures on flickr. Work is right. Right for me. I am growing to love children, their energy in spite of hunger and abuse, though they require much patience. We are preparing a Book day celebration. I´ve had fun dancing lately. A Rio-imitation Carnival passed through town, and three friends and I joined the crowd to see the parading dance troupes, decked-out in scanty glitter with trombones (yes dad! great brass!) and Caribbean drums bringing up the rear. That´s all for now. I am happy, healthy, challenged. Gracias a Dios. Peace friends, H

Pasen Buenas Noches

I stepped differently into bed that night. Because though the sheets were just as crisp and inviting as always, I couldn’t shake the image of that seventeen-year-old, skirt splayed wide on a corner post, waiting for a customer to pass her territory on the abandoned industrial highway that curves north to Mexico.

I remember her lazer blue eye shadow, bulging black leggings, and the way her manicured hands turned the condoms over and over again, like curses, or Christmas presents.

And I remember the moment we said goodbye. Pasen buenas noches, she whispered. Have a good night. Igual, I ventured. Same to you. But as we left her alone in the dark to the trade that feeds her family, I wondered whether she ever could.

We visited more than twenty prostitutes that Thursday between 9 and 10pm. They all recognized the Casa Samaritana truck and left their benches or potential clients to come over to our window. Sometimes they inquired about our health or the next workshop the Casa would be offering. Self-esteem, good parenting and meditation are all common at Casa Samaritana, the Jesuit-founded prostitution support center down the alley from our Managua home. Other times, they took their weekly condom ration and retreated, eyes down, with a quick gracias.

The first two were in their 50s and emaciated with missing front teeth and makeup that caked decidedly lesioned skin. But they greeted us caras nuevas (new faces) like old friends. I could sense no shame. They joked with Nacho the driver and Fr. Arnoldo, the project’s founder, about family scandals and the price of frijoles, looking at us cheles (gringos) for laughs every once in a while. I felt quite powerfully that the universe between us shrank and we were equal under heaven, a truth I’ve always heard sung on the wind, but never fully understood.

But it was a struggle to feel this truth cut into my heart, because my naivete and their oppression continued to surface. We couldn’t even leave the truck, due to the dangers of the highway. My guilt asked me why. Why are these women cold and exposed and alone, even when in bed with paying strangers, while I observe them under the microscope of privilege? Why must I sit stupidly in front of a computer screen, feeling as mute as powerless as they must? Aren’t we all entitled to pasar buenas noches?

I cannot answer these questions; they will rightfully continue to break my heart. But with the help of my community I had answered one question by the end of the night, perhaps the most important question of all. What was I doing there?

I was there to do no more or less than be with them. I was there to feel that we are the same, that beneath my clean sweats and their old sequins we are all beautiful, loved, dignified, remembered. The Managua Jvs have resolved to join Casa Samaritana at least one night a month, but I hope I find it in me to go more often. Because a piece of my heart won’t have a good night until that fleeting moment when they wish me one again.

For the Women of Nicaragua

“You know how the Jews were slaves in Egypt? I feel like them.”

My co-worker Yelba is a middle-aged mother with innocent brown eyes and a tired face. She recently exposed some of her deepest hurt to me.

I considered saving this post and its theme for Mother’s Day or International Woman’s Day or something, but decided the best way to comprehend and overcome suffering and strength is to share them.

We were in the library before a meeting, praying over a passage in the Bible about peace and freedom, when Yelba told us that her mother-in-law had chewed her out the night before for being a bad mother. The suegra had stood defensively behind her son, chastising Yelba for allowing the children to run freely in the street and develop horrible habits like swearing and neglecting their studies.

My own common sense and experience kicked in. Yelba’s three children are the best-behaved children and most avid readers I’ve met in this country. What’s more, I know that Yelba reads to them every night and rushes home during meal breaks to cook for them.

Then Yelba dug deeper. She told us of her husband. He is an angry, catatonic and abusive macho who sits in front of the television all day waiting for Yelba to get back from work so he can be served meals. Sometimes he beats his children with his belt without giving them a reason for it. Yelba confessed that all her family and friends have wanted her to leave him for years. “But I stay with him because I know what it’s like to grow up without knowing your father, and I don’t want that for my children. I am a slave to him because I love them.”

Perhaps her logic is flawed, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is her love for her children and her commitment to a life she compares to hell, for their sake.

Her story is one of many. I wrote about my campo mother, Cándida, who feeds the drunk and abusive father-of-her-children lunch and dinner everyday without a complaint. Then there are the almost 500 women who come to the Project where I work in hopes of obtaining small loans to build their businesses--making tortillas, mending hammocks, selling fritanga (street food).

The truth is that my life in Nicaragua has been full of powerful women. There are six female JVs in the country and three males (who are wonderful, to be real). I work with 15 women and 3 men. We’ve met three US groups of students in Nica for the semester, and 80% of them were women. My boss is a woman, my favorite neighbor is a woman, and the people who come to me when I’m confused on a new bus route are caring old women.

I have always been a feminist, according to my own definition. But in the macho culture this country has revealed, I must resist sexism, because I fnd myself asking, what do men do here, exactly?

The answer is too often that they work all day and go off on their own to spend their earnings, or if they can’t find work, drink all day, returning “home” for meals and nada más.

And what do the women do? Bread-winning, raising children, cleaning, socializing, holding together broken but intimate families, welcoming strangers, starting businesses, organizing communities, all the time dealing with the difficulties that “their men” dish out.

In other words, life isn’t fair for them. To the point that they call themselves slaves. I hadn’t heard it put so pointedly before Yelba began to cry.

And so I compose this post for the silent heroines I know in Nicaragua, in the hopes that spreading the word of their silent strength somehow sends them more.