I looked out the window of the bus ride, over the newly green countryside and saw a young energetic cow sucking thoroughly on low hanging utters of a thin, weak mother. There was a bleak expression in the cow’s face, not that I had ever know cows to show emotion, but she seemed distracted, distant, thinking about other things. The young calf switched from utter to utter searching for nourishment as if trying on new shoes, and then with my next breath, the bus zoomed by and that image became a memory of the past.
With one blink, six months in
Since December, I have slowly cracked open the dusty closet of the world’s secrets, and with each new day the door swings open a little wider letting out new whispers. Now I know that it is way too heavy to close, I just pray there is only one closet and not an attic hidden away for me to discover later. I think back to how I saw that mother and calf struggling, and I just sat as I bystander passing by. That is very much how I see reality unfold in front of me. Mother’s and fathers struggling themselves, but also fighting to rise up their young.
I was reminded of a recent library visit I made bringing books to the community. If I haven’t explained this before, I set aside a morning once or twice a week to go out to the community and bring books to the people of the neighborhood who don’t come to the library for a variety of reasons (i.e. have young children, need to stay in the house- in a dangerous neighbor like El Recreo you can’t leave the house alone, aren’t aware the library exists, don’t have any interest in the services the library offers, etc.). On this particular morning, I set off alone carrying a white plastic basket, that reminded me of a smaller version of a beach bag my family had owned at some point in my past, filled with stories I had just hand picked based on different reading levels and the morals or values contained in each.
Along with my basket, I apprehensively approached a house hidden in the corner of the neighborhood. None of the houses are located on formal plots of land, so it is easy for them to be hidden and forgotten, but for whatever reason I had in my mind for several days that I wanted to make a visit in this particular house. When I arrived to the gate at the front of the house, I poked it open with one finger, as if I was opening that worldly secret closet a little more, and shouted “Buenas!” After slight hesitation, a round, slow walking woman around my age approached the gate to swing it even more open and warmly welcome me to her house to read stories to her children. I thanked her for her immediate openness and promised I wouldn’t stay long, just enough time to read a few stories and then I would be on my way. Once a few minutes passed, I realized how naïve that thought was and stayed for the next hour.
Three young children crept out of the small, simple, one room house not much bigger than my bedroom growing up. The initial encounter of entering a house when you’re a stranger is always slightly uncomfortable, but especially in this case because when I spoke, I received no response from the children. “Hi! How are you?” Silence. “Do you like to read stories? I sure hope so because I happen to have some right here!” Stares. “Should we sit down? How about you choose on of these stories for us to read?” No real movement, just a few blinking eyes lashes.
The mother, who seemed to only move at one steady, slow pace, walked to get some of the plastic patio chairs, that are a staple in ever Nicaraguan household, and helped encourage the children to decide on a story. So we sat together and read one story, and then another, with still little communication from the children. I then passed out stories to each of the children, ranging in age from three to eight, and encouraged them to read a little on their own or if they couldn’t read to study the pictures and imagine the story.
In the meantime, I began to talk with the slightly overweight mother and was reminded of the weak, thin mother cow trying to nurse her young but having nothing to give. As Yahira shared, I heard an all too familiar story. On our first day as acquaintances (although I am not sure that word exists here, so I will say friends), I heard her story. She brought to my attention her current economic situation: Sometimes she didn’t have enough money to feed her kids breakfast and dinner. They didn’t have shoes to go to school, so they hadn’t been in months. Her current employment was washing a neighbor’s clothes, but she had recently been sick and the only time of day when there is running water in the neighborhood is between three and five in the morning, so she hadn’t worked in awhile. Raising the children on her own was a challenge.
The tables had turned and I now felt like one of those children just staring with nothing to say. Of course I said the common, banal responses “Oh wow.” “I can’t imagine.” “Ohm.” One thing I knew I couldn’t say but kept wanted to come off my lips was “I understand.” So instead I repeated “I’m sorry” over and over as if with each time opportunity or hope or food would magically spring up in front of us.
As I got up to leave, and Yahira walked me back to the front gate, we walked past the “house” of her mother. We poked our heads in just to say hello. Her mother moved at the same pace and had a very similar face and figure to Yahira plus a few wrinkles, and she sat with the same desperate looked in her aged eyes as she cared for the four children of her other daughter. At that moment, I wanted to swoop up the entire family, grandma and all, take them to place where the world was beautiful, kind and just, and tell them that they have to start caring for themselves otherwise there children and grandchildren will find themselves in similar situations. Had they seen the young cows trying to get nourishment from the weak, empty mother? I left and knew that I would come back, and in the meantime I would pray.
I can’t help but feel extremely grateful for all the stories that people share with me. I say grateful for two reasons: One, in that I am blessed for their openness, honesty, and willing vulnerability to difficult subjects, and secondly, I am thankful for the fact that their story is not my own… The more I discover about the world, I see new traces of places where I have been…
1 comment:
I wish the rest of the world could see what we have seen. But something tells me you have seen and heard more than I have, since you have spent about five more months in Central America than I have. But I have had those blank stares from the kids before, probably because I was one of the first visitors in a long time, if ever! But the opennes of the adults, and welcoming attitudes, always seems to amaze me! They are a people who know what gratitude is!
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