Dear friends,
I sincerely want to apologize for the lack of communication with you all on my part these last few months. I’ve been pretty good about making up excuses to not go to the internet café, and I received a wonderful visit with my family in May that gave me so much love and energy that I’m still glowing with joy from the time we spent together and the opportunity I had to share with them a little bit of my life here.
My return in December is sneaking up on me. In six months I will pack my bags and try to express in good-bye hugs how important all these people have been to me these past two years. But finding myself in this downhill six month stretch has really got me thinking. In many ways I feel like I am on my last lap, the last leg of the race, I see the finish line so close in the distance and know that I am at my peak in terms of relationships I have spent so much time building or my time as a librarian that I have so open heartedly poured myself into. Honest conversations with coworkers or library users come so naturally; I’ve seen women carry children for 9 months, give birth and am now watching the children grow and take first steps; and I can actually eat a mango without dripping the juice all over my clothes.
But the absolutely haunting feeling that permeates within me and throughout my days is the fear that when I pack my bags and get on that plane in December, I will say goodbye to a hurting country that I watched get worse everyday over the time I spent there. Some weeks are worse than others, and I see the changes at a very micro level through the lives of coworkers and friends in the neighborhood where I work, which is one of the poorest and most marginalized in Managua, but it seems that the economic situation is rapidly getting worse leaving so many people without options and little hope.
Inflation for the year of 2007 was a steep 17% and by the time this year is over they are anticipating an outrageous 28% based on the assumption of oil prices continuing to rise. What that means at a most basic level (the one that I personally witness) is that people are hungry. Of course I am from the small, blessed percentage of people in Managua that don’t have to worry about where we will get our next meal, but the search for food is a struggle taking place around every corner, even in the middle class barrio where I live. Tortillas are smaller; prices of beans and rice have reached new highs; and cooking oil (a staple to any typical dish) has double in price in just the short time I have been here.
My hope for this email however is not to bore you with statistics and numbers because I don’t know if that is the best way to describe the reality of the situation, but I want to share with you some of the ways that I have seen the effects of the global food crisis taking place in the poorer parts of the world, and how increasing gas prices greatly affect a large population of people that will never be lucky enough to drive a car. I share these stories with you in confidence knowing that they are others’ stories and not my own, but with the hope that they will allow us to think a little deeper about the complexity of the world in which we live.
Hungry Hunters: Around 4:45pm this past Friday afternoon, I was hurriedly cleaning the mop in the outside wash basin thinking about the upcoming weekend when I heard what sounded like rocks whizzing past me and bouncing on the metal roof tops and falling to the ground. I fearfully looked around and saw no one nor heard any footsteps. All the kids had left for the day and I knew that just 2 coworkers and I were the only ones left in the project. I promptly blew off the incident and returned to the library to quickly mop the floor and leave for the day, but it wasn’t until I was on my way out the gate several minutes later that I could explain what had happened. I spotted two young boys armed with sling shots. Of course my immediate reaction was one of anger thinking that they where trying to harm me earlier as I washed the mop, so I stormed over to where they were and asked what they were doing shooting rocks in the direction of people. Clearly I was thinking worse case scenario: sling shots can be a violent weapon in the hands of young boys. As soon as I began to speak, they quickly lowered the sling shots and earnestly apologized. They had assumed everyone was gone for the day and wouldn’t harm anyone. I still however didn’t understand what they were doing and kept asking questions about why they wanted to be at the project when it was closed, again thinking the worst that they were up to no good, but once more upon my questioning they apologized saying that they didn’t mean any harm because they were just trying to kill some pigeons to eat because they were hungry. My heart sunk I felt awful looking into their sad, desperate eyes and had no food or anything to offer them. Feeling almost nauseous, I apologized and told them to take care of themselves and walked away. How quick had I assumed they were causing trouble and honestly never would have guessed they we just searching for dinner.
- A friend from the library, a young mother who had just returned to school to finish her last two years of high school told me on Friday that she was dropping out of school. The two of us are the same age but are in very different situations. She has two young daughters both of which have no father figure for any type of support. On Friday, her one day off, she came to visit me at the library but when I asked her which book to pull of the shelf to lend her, she sadly lowered her head and told me that she wasn’t going to continue studying because she had just gotten a job on the janitorial staff of a college in Managua. I was trying to give her hope suggesting she switch her studies from the night to the weekends, or at least try and finish this semester which is almost over. But her only reply was that her kids have to eat. “The reality is that we have to eat,” she told me. That quieted me quickly because I knew it was the truth.
- A 12 year old girl who comes to the library often told me how she wants to come see my house. I proposed we would find a date for her to come visit my house and meet me roommates on the agreement that she would first take me to her house to meet her family, especially her mother, so the next day she met me at 5pm after I finished work to take me to her house. When we arrived, I was never actually invited inside, but I was immediately given coffee and a piece of sweet bread. The visit was brief; they only had one chair which they gave to me. Her mom, brother, and sister just awkwardly stood around me. All of a sudden it made so much more sense why she came to the library everyday, they didn’t even have a table or chairs to sit on. I left very thankful for the visit, and in a few weeks during her vacation from school she is going to come spend a day with me.
- The past few weeks I have been working alone at the library during the mornings. My coworker had to switch jobs to help out another program in the project. The transition to working alone has naturally been a lonely one; I don’t think I ever realized how much I relied on her for advice and companionship let alone the fact that this switch has greatly increased my work load. I greatly missed her presence last week when a very terrible, completely unfortunate accident occurred in the library. A very frequent library user, ten year old Odalis, came to the library to do her homework. I don’t know much about her family situation, but I can tell that they are struggling. Their mother works all day long at the sweatshop factories, so the three children get passed around between busy family members and neighbors. On this particular day Odalis brought along her three year old sister, Madeline, a truly beautiful girl with a very hard life. I always have to repeatedly tell Madeline to put on her sandals and not walk around barefoot, and this day was no exception, but the consequences this day we much greater because Odalis was leaning back on the bench she was sitting at and caused it to tip over and come crashing down onto Madeline’s barefoot. I didn’t even hear the bench fall, but I did hear the painful scream and cry she released and saw the blood and wound on her foot. I snapped into to panic mode which for me in that situation was to hold her and clean her foot off (she is almost always walking around in the dirt without shoes on). Cleaning her foot to stop the bleeding was no simple task. It was impossible to put pressure on the cut because the bone in her toe had shattered so placing pressure was too painful. I sent one of the kids to get one of my coworkers for help and sent Odalis home to get her grandma to come take her to the hospital. Really all I could do was hold her and listen to her cry. Her cry was so disturbing: in between gasps of breath she shouted syllables of my name. “Ma--rrrr---ia--!” I continued waiting but her grandmother never came, meanwhile her foot kept bleeding. I eventually handed Madeline over to one of my older coworkers while I went and looked for more gauze. When I came back, I saw a young boy no older than 12 years old walking away with her in the direction of her grandmothers house. I feared that she would be abandoned with no one to care for her and it was obvious to me she needed medical attention. As I continued with my day, I couldn’t get her cries out of my head, so I went back with Margaret during our lunch break to check in on her. Her grandmother seemed relieved to see us; it seemed that no one had so much as touched her since she left the project. She sat alone in the chair crying in pain with blood still dripping from her foot. We encouraged them to take her to the hospital, and when her 16 year old aunt got home from school the two went alone to the hospital.
- One of the main leaders of a political party in Nicaragua is on a hunger strike. She has been fasting for 12 days and says she will continue to do so until the government puts her party back on the ticket for the upcoming mayor elections. Fasting as a form of protest seems powerful and ironic in a country where many are hungry.
- One of the main “ventas” or small corner stores run out the front of house was robbed last week. What was stolen: a hundred pound bag of rice and a hundred pound bag of bean that had just been distributed by the government to this family to sell at a very subsidized price to the people in the neighborhood. I can’t imagine the effort put into breaking into a house and then lifting the heavy bags over a tall cement wall. Must have been hungry.
I appreciate you allowing me to share my thoughts and stories, may they fill our hearts as we pray others stomachs are filled. I hope that we can continue to remember how blessed we are and keep all those suffering in our prayers. Thanks again.
Peace,
Mary
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