staring

i missed my bus this morning. i couldn't stop staring. a bad habit, i know, but i think averting ones eyes is also a bad habit. i was standing there, waiting for the 105 to come along after one passed me on my walk to the bus stop when a man of 20 years crossed the street towards me holding the hand of a boy of 5 years. they were both wearing chinelas, cheap rubber sandals, and here as much as anywhere in the world one can tell more about a man by his shoes than almost anything else. i was supposed to be watching for my bus, but instead i was watching the man of 20 and the boy of 5. i wondered if the man was his father, in which case i was a little impressed that he was caring for him, or maybe the man was his brother and they took care of each other, but more likely they were street companions--begging together, brought together by common circumstance. the boy of 5 flipped me off. smiled. then cursed and flipped me off again. the man of 20 had not noticed me or had chosen to ignore me. either way, i stood watching still. then the man helped the boy up onto a yellow bus that had pulled up and left him there. maybe the two didn't even know each other and crossed the street holding hands just because. or the man was going to wait at this bustop while the boy begged on the bus and would come back on another... a yellow bus... the boy of five... yellow bus... 8:15... damn. the 105. the boy of 5 just got on my bus and they drove away together. missed my bus. another will come soon. maybe in 8 min. but it will not have the boy of 5 on it, and the man of 20 has already re-crossed the street.

a sunday

sundays can seem so beautiful to me. today is. i have finished 3 books today, each i was quite close to the end, and they were each interesting in their own direction. although, i am still inebriated with reading theology and spiritual books. a theology of liberation, by gutierrez was the first i finished. this is a book that everyone who loves reading overly complicated theology should delve into, but anyone else should just avoid, because it is a little on the dry side. if words like eclesiology and eschatology don't excite you, look elsewhere. the second book was the first book written by leo tolstoy after his radical conversion to the heart of christianity. he titled it, what i believe. it is just that, a summary of tolstoy's beliefs in regard to how we are meant to live, how the gospel and life of jesus enlighten that quesiton and how most people are totally in the dark, especially the religious, when it comes to that question. this is a wonderful little book that i plan on following up with his second book, the kingdom of god is within you. tolstoy was famous for books such as war and peace, but after discovering the true message of the gospel, he transformed his life towards non-resistance, simplicity, and love for others and died with a great following of people fascinated with his life. the third book i finished i began a little under a year ago and had to put it down for a time. it is called the tao of pooh. written to be an introduction to taoist thought and way of being through the familiar character winnie the pooh it is a fun read that reminds me to slow down, do nothing, look deeply, appreciate the birds and trees... essentially everything good in life. which is why i'm in such a good mood and why i will be leaving the internet now--to go love some living. keep on.
james

a house

every day, on my way to work, i ride in small moto-taxi. these european contraptions were designed to hold upwards of 3 people and the driver. i think i have been on one that had 11 people, plus the driver--mind you, some of the people were children, but there were still full grown men hanging off the sides. somewhere during the first 10 minutes of this ride we pass a house under construction on the right side of the road. it is the largest house i have seen in nicaragua. it is around 3 times the size of my parent's house in the states. a mansion. it is slow moving, still concrete, and hasn't changed much in the last 4 months. but there are men there every day working on something. that house encapsulates much of what is wrong with the world. although, i am making some assumptions. i assume the house isn't going to be a hospital, or a commune, or a convent, or exist in some other way to serve the community. given that i am right, and the house is being built as a family's home, this house is just too much to believe. not 10 minutes from the house one could visit people who live in houses smaller than your average american bedroom and here someone has the audacity to build a house some 40 times that size. not to say that the american houses that are so big are any better, but i usually assume that if people see the extreme poverty, maybe they will understand their participation in it and work to a more just society. in reality though, many people think that money and construction, in a word, development, is what the 3rd world needs. but thats not it at all. it wasn't the lack of development that sent many places in the world plummeting into desperate poverty, but rather the development in other parts that required slave labor and stolen wealth and the continued sustaining of this wealth using war, unjust work, and globalization. what has disappeared--and that which is truly killing the people of the world, body and soul--are the communities. people have no sense of 'community' in the sense it would be used to refer to the apostles in the acts where they shared everything in common. or 'community' in the sense i would use it to refer to a small town of 40 families here in nicaragua where all the families have contributed money to send one boy, just one, to cuba to go medical school in hopes that he comes back to serve the community. no, these communities are rarities. rather we think that the problems of the world will be addressed through development and we build giant mansions and we applaud ourselves for giving work to the 20 men that temporarily will be able to feed their families because they are building another wealthy man's home. these men will do all the work and will have no access to the products. and so every day i see this house and see the destruction of communities. people who strive for their own well being and have forgotten what it means to be truly blessed--filled with joy. blessed are the poor... or as gustavo guiterrez says (i paraphrase), in spite of the laws of nature, we must move our center of gravity outside of us so that all of our selves, spirit, heart, mind, body, is drawn to others.

james

visits

i have started visiting some of the families of my students. i'm doing this to get to know their realities a little better and to feel less like someone that comes to school and then leaves without ever being a part of the community that i work in. i live over an hour from where i work, so this is a problem.
the first family i visited was of my 11 and 13 year old students, leimon and ana marie... they are cousins. leimon's house was about the size of my bedroom growing up. dirt floors. chickens and pigs running around. leimon is the oldest of 5 kids and as far as i could tell there was no father around, but who knows. it was very good for me to see this. i want to know better where all of my students are coming from, because some of them are much better off financially than others living in larger brick houses having cars and other amenities. one of my bosses was telling me that the school program that i work with was started this year to serve more of the former, the students and people living in worse conditions, but have gotten a lot more people from urban areas. this is creating interesting class conflicts. as i was riding on the bus on the way home from school, two girls were sitting in a seat, and normally students squish to make room for a third. i encouraged them to scoot over and they made room for me. instead i invited one of my students to sit, he kindly refused, and then another, and then i asked another to sit and the girl, one of the better off students, said to me... "no teacher, not with him. i won't sit with him." she put her nose in the air, literally, and refused to share her seat.
i think what bothered me most was that as the people here in nicaragua have certain "developments" and increased economic opportunities (though not many), those that benefit from them become less community oriented and more individual wealth oriented... as much as it can be called wealth. so the influx of american "opportunity" is destroying nicaragua in a much deeper way dividing people into more class divisions with a growing "middle class." its just kind of depressing sometimes.
2 days later i visited another student with a house 4 times the size of leimon's. but still many many people living in it--one room, dirt floor, 3 beds which are in the kitchen/living room/dining room. it is good to see though. i can better see my own wealth living in managua in a nice clean house and understand how separate and distant my experience of life in nicaragua still is from my student's experience. this bridge may never be crossed. but it doesn't mean we can't keep trying, and if nothing else, swimming is always an option.

james

dear friends and lovers,

i have realized that updating weekly is a problem for me and that they are usually long and rambly about stuff i do and other boring things. so i'm going to try to transition to updating more than once a week and with smaller more focused entries dealing with thoughts and issues. i make this commitment based on my belief that when something is apparently faltering, instead of cutting off energy to it, redouble the energy commited. and so we begin.

holy saturday. i watched judas burn. in the local park, every year, there is a 3 hour easter vigil mass and at the end they hange a large effigy, human sized paper and plastic doll, in the image of judas from a tree, stuffed with small firecrackers, and light him on fire. i'm not sure why. maybe as if, somehow by burning the "betrayer" we no longer associate ourselves with him... a source of purification for easter. it just felt all wrong to me. exploding and burning what looked like a man and was said to be judas, a good friend of jesus, even if, like almost all of us, he betrayed jesus for a little money... but how often do all of us support and prosper from economic and social structures as we allow and encourage the suffering and death of so many people. maybe the burning of judas is a symbol for the nicaraguan people to cast off the ways in which they still benefit from injustice, to recommit themselves to the people and community around them, and not to bags of silver. i hope so. but as we walked away, watching his head still drip flaming drops of plastic, it wondered... what does this really teach the children running around, fascinated by a hung, burning man?

james

this'll be quick...

but this past weekend was a little crazy, so i had to share. this has less to do with me overall and more with a period of time. margaret and i worked around our work schedules, i came in to work early a few days to give tests to students and all that jazz just to take off this past friday... friday morning at 4:40 my alarm went off... out the door by 5:15 and we were headed to the del sol bus station to go to el salvador. it was the romero march. 27 years since the death of the monseñor and his memory is just as strong in the people. we crossed the border into honduras without a hitch except that the movie showing was "the holiday" but one of us was happy with that. as we crossed a nice little river margaret took a picture out the window. that would be ironic later. you see, that river was the one that separates honduras from el salvador so we had to stop to get our documents checked out... there was a problem with mine and i was taken to the office. it turns out that we were illegal, margaret too, but for whatever reason the border lady didn't notice hers right away. we had both passed the 90 days we had on our tourist visas and had yet to get our residency in nicaragua... all we had was our temporary residencies in nicaragua, which is not recognized nor valid for anything in the rest of central america. we were given two choices after being told there was nobody we could call to remedy the situation, not the embassy not the president, nobody. we could turn back to nicaragua from that town without any issues at all or we could pay the fine for passing our 90 days, 75 DOLLARS each, continue on until we reached mexico or belize paying whatever other fines, and return to central america to receive another 90 day stamp and we had to do all that in less than 5 days. we had a day and a half left on our trip before having to be back for work... so we stayed in el amatillo, the border town, on the honduras side. the lady that told us we couldn't enter el salvador was the same that offered to walk us to a hotel. her name was lucy. she explained that the two safe ones were 15 dollars more or less... a little expensive for us and when we asked about anything cheaper, lucy offered her room. a govt. provided room with a few beds in it--she stays there 8 days and some other people stay the next 8 and they switch off. we jumped on the opportunity... we spent the day eating honduran food, drinking chilean "frontera" wine down by the river and enjoying ourselves in a town where apparently not many americans ever get out to stay a while. we were like the circus as little kids stared with gaping mouths. that evening we sat on the bridge enjoying a rainbow, a sunset, a nice rain and then took lucy out for dinner. she told us all about honduras, including the politics and the word for cool... cheque, and we slept in her room. the next morning we caught a bus back to nicaragua to our disappointment and many others... but we will try to go back next year. another adventure will be in store. god bless.
james

dear friends and lovers,

a long overdue update, although i'm starting to have my doubts on how many people read this. yet, for those of you faithful to your high levels of curiosity, i'm back. the long time inbetween was only partially my fault. the other part was that the jump drive that i was using and had a blog update saved on was stolen at my school. so i will start more or less from there and give you the last few weeks more or less.
thursday afternoon a while ago. i had been writing a blog update tracking how i felt at about 12:30 each day after teaching my more difficult classes in order to share with you my feelings and perspectives. to summarize, more tiredness than anything usually. i sleep enough but teaching in the setting that i am in can be exhausting... i will address the small changes i am making currently later. anyway, thursday afternoon, i had some students sweeping and mopping my classroom, then some 6 students came into my room to look at what was written on a desk, which reminded me that i was going to find the student that wrote those things to have him wash it. i went to go find him, leaving the students alone in my room. i came back and a couple of girls were still there, and i through them all out to have my student scrub desks and soon noticed that my jump drive had disappeared. this was disappointing, not so much because i cared that it was gone so much as that i knew other people would care and that i have students willing to steal things. i told another teacher, julio, and he informed me that he had had his jump drive taken also. when i asked our director, don vincente, what we should do, he wanted to have a meeting with the various students on monday. when i asked why not friday he told me, "no school tommorow!" how nobody had managed to let me know this interesting tidbit escapes me, but it is not new. there are some "communication issues" with the padre fabreto staff. anyway, that was really good news, and i got friday off. the jump drive never turned up after talking with various students... none of them saw anything. i have since become convinced that the jump drive evolved to a higher state of intelligence and made a concious decision to leave. so i'm not mad, just bittersweet that it decided to seek out a better life for itself.
with my newfound 3 day weekend i had a splendid time. friday i visited josh in his school. he also teaches english and it was very nice to spend some time with him in his work. we all work very similar hours and thus don't get to see each other in action. it was really cool to watch him teach a lesson that i had taught before and to see the differences and be able to appreciate the things he did better or different. i spent the rest of the day reading under a star fruit tree and then watching batman begins. it was a good day to myself and refreshing. that saturday i walked to the laguna de apollo (apollo lake) with mary. the two of us had quite a day that started out with getting on a bus for grenada and having mary point out that the 20 something girls in front of us were cracking open some cans of beer. oh yes. 8:30 am. at that point i thought that we should drop whatever plans we had and just go wherever they were going... i firmly believe that if someone starts drinking at that hour its probably going to be fun to spend the day with them (as long as you aren't responsible for them). yet we ultimately got to grenada and walked off in a different direction, headed towards the cemetary. from the graveyard its about a 4 1/2 mile walk to the lake and mary and i began the trek. we went through a small community where people greeted us as we went. i got the feeling that not many gringos, some but not many, walk through the area. busses go right to all of the hotels, hostels, and resort places but thats all on one side of the lake, and we were going to the side that was mostly uninhabited. we passed many small houses, made of 2x4's thrown up together with women washing laundry in the yards and children running around. people went by us on bicycles (a dirt road) and with cows pulling carts that they rode on. a little over an hour later as the population thinned we approached the lip of the several thousand year old volcano, long inactive, and filled with blue blue water. it is apparently 250 meters deep (more or less) in the center because it is the old core of a volcano just filled with water. there are no fish so the water is clear. super clear. amazingly clear and gorgeous. mary and i jumped in as soon as got there. it drops off quickly. you can basically dive off the edge into the water because of the quick drop. this, however, makes it tiring to swim a lot for those of us that are weak swimmers (me). the solution? we made a raft. using branches we found and vines we tied them together and floated out into the lake. i then entered into the most relaxing, tranquil, centered moment i've had in a long time. laying just right my ears would immerse under the water and my face would stay above and it was like (this sounds wierd) a womb moment. just feeling safe and warm and wet and content. mary was laying about 2 feet from me on the other side of the raft and i imagine she was having an amazing moment also. we both remarked how perfect the place is. we saw no people for 4 hours. only cows and horses and birds and trees and water water water. the walk back was also nice and peaceful and as we got closer we hitched a ride with a man with 6 large pigs in the back of his truck... we stood on the back but not inside it. we rode back to managua feeling fully refreshed.
this past week of school started after that fantastic weekend and i was looking forward to a positive week. it went downhill. some classes are good. most are rough. i think the students just really don't like have hour and half long classes. that last 30 min. they start getting really antsy and don't want to stay there. those are the hardest 30 min. of my day, every day. i'm trying to get creative but its hard. my mom sent me a highschool classroom management book and i'm trying to slowly implement some of the recommendations... i've started a "you are wasting my time so i will waste your time" system. if they are consistently misbehaving or their cell phone rings or they show up late etc. they have to come back during recess to stay for a while in silence. i'm coupling this with a rewards system for students that behave well and get good grades. i'm trying to do this as sort of a rewards/punishment system. both of these things i hate as that i would rather the motivation come from within instead of the classic stick and carrot system. sadly however, some students don't want english classes their bad behavior coupled with mandatory english classes has been creating an environment where learning becomes near impossible for the handful that do want to learn english. i hope things get better. i just truly dislike myself in an authority position. i get impatient and this past friday i even got angry. my most difficult group of students, group D, i have every friday. they want to go home, its the weekend, they do not like being in my class. the normal stuff happened: students curse at each other, hit each other, yell, throw stuff... but this time it was happening at much higher rate. i felt myself falling apart. i was hitting that point where i just stood there, wondering. looking at them. eventually at 10 min. til the end of their class i said "that's it!" i put their homework on their desks and threw them out of class. i had to regroup before the next group of students. even so it was a hard next hour. i was beat. broken. i had to talk to their teacher and some other teachers. i was reassured by the fact that even the computer teacher has been having problems with the same students, the same group. all of the kids like computers, so if the students are misbehaving there, its bigger than just my class. this is nice to know that there are other teachers working on these things and not just me. the other teachers were also very supportive. today i had group D again, and their teacher came to the class. they behaved much better, but it still worries me that come friday... well, we'll see. pray for me. i think the real issue is that i'm teaching in a second chance school... so many of the students have dropped out before, been kicked out, or failed out. who knows how many have learning disabilities etc. etc. and i'm just thrown in. i have high hopes for this week though as i continue making adjustments to keep them interested and explain things slower.
my favorite times, though, are all of those spent with my community. community living is all i hoped for and more, and for this i love the weekend because its all community, uninterrupted by work :). this past weekend some fellow fabretto english teachers from other nicaraguan cities were in managua in a hotel because one had been sick for a while and needed blood work. they had some of us over to swim and hang out and it was lovely. there is nothing like swimming for free in someone else's hotel pool. and yesterday was sunday. a good day. i cleaned the house. i planned this weeks classes. i welcomed some slu undergrads (jen lay and jess trout) to nicaragua where they are visiting for their spring break while studying in el salvador. josh, mary, and matt got back from a rewarding trek up a volcano and they told us all about that adventure... (check their blogs later for updates on that) and currently the electricity is out while i type on josh's laptop. i am well. work is my biggest stress and leaves me feeling emptiest. community is my biggest blessing and leaves me feeling filled with spirit. so my days fluxuate. thankyou to all who have prayed and continue praying for me. i can't wait to hear about your own lives, struggles, growths. you are all blessed. seek peace.

james