january thoughts

dear friends and lovers,
hello and good evening. since my last update little has happened. i still sit here relaxing most mornings. reading a bit, having some oatmeal and coffee for breakfast. monday i will be the first volunteer to start doing something related to my work site, which will be english teacher training with the other english teachers in the padre fabretto program. i'm a little unclear on the history, but what i've picked up more or less is that padre fabretto was an italian priest, part of an order called the salecians (i don't know how to spell it) and he came to nicaragua. he had all these plans and wanted to stay here and work with the people when his order decided it was too dangerous and asked him to come home. instead he left his order to stay with the nicaraguan people. he started a program where he had 20 boys or so that had been homeless or in gangs live and work on a farm. he would wake them up at the crack of dawn, gave them classes and worked them. after their several years of school he basically released them into the world and said, there you have an education, now do something with it. controversial, but now the program consists of multiple schools in nicaragua that do mostly supplemental class work. so in reality, i will be teaching english classes to students that may already have taken some english or english isn't offered at the school they go to and in the afternoon they come to my class for it. i'm quite nervous about my first day in front of a many small nicaraguans, but god help me i hope i do okay.

this past week josh and mary went for their stays in el viejo... a small village where there is no electricity, dirt floors, bucket showers... a classic stay in the country. they thoroughly enjoyed their time there, especially their stay on the beach which was reportedly uninhabited except by the pigs that were swimming in the ocean, the occasional turkey that passed by and the dogs that roamed freely. they bought some fish from a local, mary learned to prepare them by gutting them and taking the scales off. as much as they enjoyed the experience of fresh fire fried fish, apparently the local love for fish eyes wasn't enough to convince mary or josh to eat them... they say they taste like squid eggs. seeing as that i've never had either, i won't pass any judgement on that. while they were gone it was just margie, adri, and me in the house. we had a good old dance party one night, just the 3 of us, the next night a puerto rican man named pedro came to stay with us. he is a friend of ramon, a former nicaraguan jesuit volunteer, and pedro's flight was leaving from managua, so he stayed in our house. it was fun, we played guitar and sang. margie and i spent most of our days sitting and reading, but one day the fumigator came by to take care of small mosquito issue we've been having. its a little better, i think, since he came, but its hard to say. the mosquitos don't number off or anything like that and they generally hide from light which makes it harder to tell.

the house is starting to feel like home as we do our chores and take care of each other. so far we are still in the, what do they call it, honeymoon phase or something like that... so we are all getting along pretty well. yet i hear from others that issues start coming up more and more as we try to live in community and our different ideas about what that means start conflicting... we'll see. issues that will come up soon... how we buy food, do we give food or drink or even money to people that ask us? hard issues, since most nicaraguans give a little here a little there to people that come and ask, but as part of our jv program, we really aren't supposed to give out money, although food is a different issue. some feel we shouldn't give out anything, sometimes i just don't know. i mean, all of the food i'm eating has come through begging... not door to door, but with letters and requests and generous donors. are we being like the biblical character that is given a great gift by having his debt erased only to turn around and demand a much smaller debt from an even poorer man? "give to everyone who asks you for something, and when someone takes what is yours, do not ask for it back" lk, 6.30. damn jesus. really? but doesn't that mean anyone that wants to can just take advantage of us, and take everything we have? maybe that is one more of those things jesus said that we just have to ignore. he was so disconnected from reality anyway.

ownership and possession and freedom are big words and bigger concepts that are bouncing around me head a lot. i guess that is a privilege i have, to sit around and think about big concepts while others work 12 hour days to eat. god help us all. i heard bush is sending more troops to iraq. news is so impersonal and we are so removed from it. maybe its better that way. in the tao of pooh, winnie the pooh bear teaches that news isn't what is really important or even happening in our lives anyway, but that we should be present and aware of our surroundings. in that case, a fan slowly swivels back and forth while margie marches around the house with her ipod singing to only her as she fights back the ever growing dust. annie dillard says the earth is constantly burying and unburying itself--but not without a fight from us! but i have sat still typing this for a while now, and think enough dust has collected, both on my body and in my thoughts. i leave you with love and a quote from a friend, breathe yr alive.

james