Today marks the one month anniversary of my arrival in Nicaragua, and it's hard to believe that it's only been a month. I have done a two week homestay, two weeks of Spanish classes, shadowed last year's PDs for a week and a half, and started teaching classes with my fellow PDs. Somewhere in between all of that, I've met a lot of people, tried to remember the names of the 40 kids in my kids English class, ate a whole lot of rice and beans, adjusted to living with 8 other people, and started forming some amazing friendships with the communities we work with. It has definitely been a busy month, but an amazing one as well.
I could tell you story after story of the things I've seen and experienced in the last month. Some of it is just hilariously funny, and other parts are heartbreaking. At orientation in Miami, we were told that this year we'd experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and that's definitely already proving true. I was talking to a friend from home last night and telling her about La Chureca and some of my other experiences here, and she asked me if I felt like I was making a difference here yet. That question isn't as simple as it may sound, but I think it's a very important question to be conscious of throughout my year here.
It's difficult to answer the question because I think people have very different views of what it means to make a difference as a year-long volunteer in a developing country. You can look at the situation a few different ways, and come up with a very different answer for each viewpoint. I'll give you mine; obviously, feel free to disagree/challenge me on it as a comment/e-mail/whatever - I'd be happy to discuss it more.
So here's the thing - you learn quickly when you go places like Chureca that the situation is way beyond anything which we can hope to "fix". The problems in Chureca are way larger and more complicated than kids under the age of five who need food, milk, and vitamins every month, and mothers who need chances to learn more about how to take care of their kids. What we do in Chureca barely scratches the surface, and yet I do truly believe that we're impacting families in more ways than just giving them food. Lots of short-term groups come through Chureca, and most arrive in a big bus with a lot of cameras out the window. One that we saw the other day had policemen escorting them, and they walked around the neighborhood and took a ton of pictures of people, houses, and trash piles. The people who live in Chureca are exploited, more or less. I can't imagine what it's like to have people constantly taking pictures of your life as if it's a museum exhibit. Manna has a strict policy about cameras, or lack thereof in Chureca - we want to see Chureca and its inhabitants eye-to-eye, not through a lens. By forming relationships with people and learning more about their every day life, I believe we are helping to restore dignity to people who, often by no fault of their own, happen to live in a trash dump.
The other two communities we work with, Cedro Galan and Chiquilistagua (who I still owe you an intro blog post to - it'll happen in the next week, I promise!), are much less poor that Chureca. It's funny how standards change - they are both still pretty poor communties, but not in comparison to Chureca. In Cedro and Chiqui our focus is different - we don't focus on feeding, and instead focus on education and advancement opportunities. Personally, I'm teaching a kids English class, an adult English class, a computer class, working on literacy and math with a few kids, and helping out with a couple other things. I think our most important work in Cedro Galan is also in our relationships. It is definitely useful for the community members to learn English, for the sake of future employment opportunities, and our other programs offer useful services as well. That said, if the middle school boys only learn one thing from our English class, I hope it's how to treat each other and women with respect instead of treating them how they see many of their fathers treat them. I think encouraging people to strive for more and recognize the opportunities which exist for them is just as important as whether my English classes learned professions or past tense today. It's less measurable, for sure - I can't give a quiz to figure out what the community members have gained - but that doesn't mean it's less important.
So, am I making a difference here yet? I truly believe I am, but I think it's being made in small moments - in a conversation with a 14 year old kid about what's really going on in their lives (yep...I'm obviously still a youth minister at heart :-)), taking the time to learn people's names and get to know them, and in truly walking with the people that I have been given the privilege to serve.
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