My favorite readers (Part one)

Just a quick photo post with some cute stories of my favorite library frequenters. I will first say that showing up to a community library in Nicaragua for fun is an INCREDIBLE feat. That is, showing interest in reading, or even just leaving your house and street during ¨free¨time as a kid, is a miracle. That´s why these two deserve center stage for a few moments.

The young lady in this photo is Brenda. She can´t afford breakfast or lunch, so she comes to get a free meal at the project every morning. She´s eight years old and one year ago read like a pre-schooler. But after a year of coming to the library and asking to read a story to me after eating, she´s reading at a first grade level, and advancing fast. More importantly, her confidence and positivity have visibly improved. What I love about Brenda most are her deep dimples, which barely show in this shy photograph, and the toothy open smile she greets me with.

Stay tuned for future favorite reader posts...

Think Twice

Happy Holidays. To the Christians, Merry Christmas.

Today I found myself walking home from the bus in a drizzle and passed an open sewer. One of many that I´ve passed multiple times. Twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and thirty feet deep, there is room enough that a large car, let alone a small human, could easily plunge into it. Which has almost happened to me during rainy season, when torrential downpours turn streets into rivers you can´t see your feet through.

It´s hard to describe the choking odor of gathered garbage, but I´ve encountered it plenty of times in Nicaragua, and this was one of those times. Thousands of styrofoam plates, chip bags, straws, chicken bones, and soiled toilet paper floated threateningly to sea. Very slowly. Like they were enjoying themselves with sneers on their greasy faces.

Managua is a big city that thrives on consumption, but it isn´t like major US cities, which hide the scars of wasteful living behind investment. That is, the reason we middle-to-upper-class Estadounidenses can afford to live the way we do, with televisions, and cars (I will never forget the embarrassing moment when I told my best friend here that my family owns three cars), and plastic and microwaves, is that we have money to avoid suffering the effects of them. The majority of Nicaraguans can´t afford to do that. And since, through JVC, I´m trying to live more in tune with the majority of Nicaraguans, heck, the majority of humanity, I stood my ground outside that sewer and let it choke me for a minute. I thought twice. I recalled that the past three days I had purchased three delicious kalala frescos (passion fruit juice) in a plastic bag with a plastic straw. Three bags and three straws in three days. How much will I contribute to that plastic river in a week? In a year? How much do people who live like me contribute in a year? I shuddered at the thought. But was glad for it, the second thought.

December is the craziest month in JVC Nicaragua world. 2nd years leave with tears and gratitude, newbies arrive with energy and anxiety, families fly in with dumbstruck faces and suitcases packed with cookies, peanut butter, and new underwear, and Heather goes to stay with the JVs in Belize for a week (!!). I left the JV house today after a delicious banana-oatmeal smoothie, flying through my to-do list of people to visit, dishes to bake, emails to send, questions to ask. I was carrying 400 cordobas--about $17--with me to pay for a light bill.

Then I passed a young man rummaging through a trash river on its way to another sewer, looking for something to sell to a recycling stand so he could buy breakfastlunch. I doubt he´ll get dinner. Slow down, H, I told myself, and think twice.

That´s what I hope to do this Christmas.

Daily Life

Being a JV is thrilling. Soul-shaking. Fulfilling. Challenging. Insane.

And sometimes boring. That´s right. Too bad life can´t always be a roller coaster...no, I don´t mean that.

What I mean is, it strikes me that I have grown bored of my daily routine in Nicaragua, when six months ago I was still reeling at the idea of having moved here, and all the while the people who read this blog have absolutely no idea what that routine entails. And so I offer my daily schedule, realizing how superfluous that sounds.

Pre-work

I wake up reluctantly around 5:50, usually go for a run or crazy dance for a half hour, and then it´s a banana-milk-peanut smoothie with Thomas and Sean while Tobin does yoga in her room. Thomas and I both work at Proyecto Generando Vida in Barrio El Recreo, so it´s usually an unspoken race to leave for the bus first, around 7:20.

Mornings at the Library

After walking to the project from the bus stop and greeting co-workers, a lengthy feat in a country full of such chatty, friendly people, it´s about 8:00. Then Damaris, Clara, Eliezer and I get to work. Damaris is a mid-30s Nicaraguan señora with beautiful sad eyes, a round face and figure, and a very difficult home life. She is incredibly strong and loving. Clara is a spitfire Guatemalan possible-nun-in-training, who likes joke-complaining to God and talking about beautiful men. She´s a riot. Eliezer is possibly my best friend in Nicaragua, a 19-year-old accounting student who´s always smiling despite his awareness of the oppression around him. He inspires me and makes me laugh.

Upon opening, we always sweep, mop, and dust everything for the first thirty minutes (though this has always seemed silly to me), because either dust or mud takes over the library overnight. Then we help the earliest ¨usuarios¨ to find their textbooks and ¨hacer investigaciones¨ while housekeeping—organizing puzzles, indexing literature, searching for good children´s stories in our collection.

Between 10 and 11:30, children who come to the project for a free breakfast every day usually run by the library to borrow a game, playdough, or, in rare cases, a book. I like to sit outside the library reading a story in a funny voice to get them interested. These are poor kids with bloated bellies and an interesting smell. But they´re beautiful and resilient. When they peace out for afternoon classes, we take off for lunch.

Lunch

When my three co-workers leave, I close the door, turn off the light, turn on the precious air conditioning, and sit in front of it for ten minutes. I don´t do anything; it´s a necessary break for a reality around me that can be pretty taxing. I then meet Thomas for lunch at a local family´s home.

Though they´re poor, they´re probably one of the wealthier families in El Recreo. Doña Sobeyda, a sixty-something, busy and chill señora, makes us rice, beans, tortilla, chicken for Thomas and steamed vegetables for me. Four generations live in that house, eight people sleep there, and it´s always full of lunch-buyers, friends, cousins, kids. I usually bring a story to read to Melitza y ElsaMaría, two adopted nieces who come for lunch, showers, and playing.

I´m at the point of relationship with this family where Kenia, Sobeyda´s 30-year-old daughter, can make fun of my hair, or Melitza y Elsa can climb all over me.

I then escape from the girls and head to the hermana´s house. PGV is run by the Congregation of the Sisters of Zion, based in Costa Rica. Four sisters live at this house, and they give me everything I need as a weak-stomached, learning gringa—sunscreen, underwear, chocolate, listening hearts and ears, and, quite conveniently, internet access. I´m usually able to check email at their house, and then Manuela, a smiley Guatemalan novice, lets me nap in her bed.

Insane Afternoons at the library

I return to the library no later than 1:50 to prepare for the usual onslaught of post-morning-classes users. Some days as many as one hundred arrive within a three-hour period to borrow text books and copy passages to use for homework. It´s always a challenge to promote the library as a place of quiet study, in a neighbourhood where firecracker noises and reggaeton music are perfectly normal and capable of passing through the windows in broad daylight. It´s even more of a challenge to get kids to think for themselves when they´ve grown up in a broken education system that stresses absorbing information and spitting it back out.

Once, for instance, a sixth grader came in looking for what animals the colonizers brought to Nicaragua (the answer ended up being pigs, chickens, horses). When I asked her who colonized Nicaragua and when, she admitted not knowing what the word ¨colonize¨ meant. Then I recommend she look it up in a dictionary, but she didn´t know how to use one.

The small victories keep me animated amidst these realities. I know one seven-year-old in first grade who simply decided to arrive every day to read with me, and now, a year later, reads at her age level and has surpassed her classmates. And I know an eight-year-old boy who defies cultural norms and borrows stories every day to read at home while his parents watch soap operas.

Dinner and the Aftermath

As much as I love the project where I work, I admit I´m usually relieved to walk to the bus station with Thomas and head home. We stop and talk to familiar faces along the way. I love that we´re perfectly safe in a dangerous barrio because of these people.

When I get home, there´s usually something to be done before dinner—making it, which is my job once a week, or handwashing clothes, or preparing the month´s budget, or making some calls to plan a dance outing. Nevertheless, there´s usually a few minutes of relaxation time, where I catch up with my community mates or play guitar. I really cherish these minutes. Personal time is such a privilege, people! Parents know that well!

We sit down and pray over rice, beans, watermelon, pineapple, tomatoes, squash, soy meat, etc. Sometimes we talk about haircuts, apples and spinach (HOW WE MISS THEM), memories from the States, or silly things we do that make Nicaraguans roll their eyes. Other times we talk about poverty, oppression, faith and doubt. But mealtime is such bonding. No wonder Jesus dug dinners with disciples.

Once a week we have spirituality and community night, where we pray, play, and reflect together. Other nights we have friends over. Other nights I don´t want anything to do with any of this and I close my door and bury my nose in a book or my fingers in a guitar. And that´s okay sometimes.

But I´m being honest when I say I always go to bed grateful and looking forward to the next day´s challenges...and smoothies.

The Solidarity of Six Million

I´m about to be vulnerable to all you readers (what else is new?). A few weeks ago I was staying at the Ciudad Sandino house, and my incredible commate Tony and I decided to watch The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a Shoa movie (Shoa is better known as the Holocaust, although this term is less politically correct). It was the first movie I´ve seen in a while, and it´s quite...powerful. So Tony and I, afterwards, spent about twenty minutes crying and processing. The end result for me was this somewhat depressing, somewhat empowering poem, which I hope you can read and not take at face value. And challenge me on it as you see fit please!

The Solidarity of Six Million

I am heavy.
I walk beneath the weight of six million incinerated Jews
Gasping and clawing in mortified confusion
Canaled into concrete rooms like cattle
By their own kind.

Beyond the memory,
I carry the burden that this happens every day,
Every day,
While we scribble, dine, avoid, ignore.
There´s work to be done.
Because they may have been crushed, but they aren´t gone.

They are alive in their ebony brothers in Somalia,
Their Muslim sisters in Xiajiang, their café cousins in América.
Those whom our decisions and indecisions oppress, forget.
Even today.

Yes, they are alive. They hear me.
They live forever waiting for somone to lift the latch on the steal door,
to let them out, to scream NO or WHY,
or at least, to stand with them, the crackle of the fire of oneness
surrounding us all.

And if those concrete rooms, those ashes, seem too far away,
I turn to face Nicaraguan children, addicts, veterans who saved my life in that war,
and now waste away, forgotten, just like the six million.

Oh, how I labor to find the fresh air of freedom.
But my people cannot breathe.
They live, trudge, die in concrete rooms and behind steal doors, even today.
Even today.

But for them, the six million are not a weight.
They are a force,
to fill them with strength and anger,
an ENOUGH that echoes to electrity their feet and hearts
from the Earth and sky.

I year for that force. I yearn to be full of the strength of six million.
I yearn to detach from the vacuum of opulence around me and live truth,
live connection.
And so I pray to those faces in history, in heaven,
that they flow through me,
That they fill me with the fire that burned them
So I, led by their living legacy,
March behind the hungry, old, hopeless, poor,
the People,
the smiling souls of six million alive in billions more,
who, together, will open steal doors,
No,
Will move mountains.

My JVC Mission Statement

I thought it would be valuable to you all, and shameless of me, to post my mission statement. We wrote these during a 5-day retreat where we processed the past year and prepared to welcome in the new one. It describes what I hope to be the purpose of my life, which, granted, is a work in progress. Enjoy?

My Mission Statement

I, Heather-Hache Mae-Maya Colbert-Moline, have been given life.

This life is loved by those who have given it to me.

This life is deep. It is illuminated by questions, perseverance, courage, strength, fire.

This life is harmonious, awash with music, expression, and a dance of joy.

And I have been given a Quest.

This Quest is unique to the poetry and compassion of me. It has surfaced in books, chapels, volcanoes, journals, cliffs, mosques, faces, hearts, oceans and hugs.

This Quest is simple and eternal. It leads to God. But because I don’t know what that means, I say to Truth. To a Truth beyond—beyond words, logic, individuals, religions—and within—within hearts, beings, beauty, struggle.

I accept this Quest because I yearn for this Truth, this Knowledge of Love.

And I accept this Quest because everywhere I turn, I find the miracles I need to complete it.

I find solidarity. The tender steel bond between Questers, a bond that calls those who have been given life to give it up, give it back.

I find dialogue. An awareness of the wisdom and energy we awaken in each other, led by those who seem to have been given the least.

I find intimacy. Trust, honesty, challenge, wrapped in glances, kisses, embraces, tears.

I find the Earth, her selflessness, her call to simplicity and radicality.

I find vision, the ability to see through heaven’s eyes, to give thanks, to wait, to leave myself and fly.

When I grow weary of this life, of my humanity, I will unwrap these miracles. And I will listen to the yearning within me, to the chant and rhythm I hear on the other side of green mountains, where I will look back—and forward?—in gratitude at the Truth my searching has slowly, gloriously revealed.