Poverdays

Maybe you would rather here about how I celebrated Easter, or how Nicaragua celebrates Easter... but so much has happened since. Maybe soon I will try to recall the New Life.

What a week it has been. I thank God that it´s Friday because I wonder how much more saddness I can bear. At least on the weekends, I try to escape it a bit. Relax with the community. Eat whatever we decide to make in the house. Tuna. Love it. But I know I´m just hiding until Monday. Because while love is all around, so is poverty.

Just some things that have been on my mind this week:

Grety: My favorite and closest co-worker, has spent the days since Saturday wondering when or if her daughter will come home. Despite the conditions here, Grety has raised her 3 children (19, 16, 14) beautifully, but on Saturday the oldest, Eveling, left with a man; a man more than 10 years older than her, who barely works and is uneducated, and who´s child she is carrying. No notice, nothing. Eveling called Grety on Monday to say hi, but that she can´t say where is is or what she´s doing. Crying, Grety tells me ¨I only want to know where my daughter is. Is she eating? Where is she sleeping? Is she okay?¨ Grety knows this is not like Eveling and wonders how badly the man is threatening Eveling. Silvio tells me that it´s terribly sad how this happens all the time. The young girls meet an older man, they get pregnant, and then the man leaves. The girl is then left with the child and her life follows in suit. The girls hardly realize the problem. They can´t contnue school. They can´t work. And for their lives they might remain in the house raising their kids and selling fruit. Though her daughter hasn´t returned, all that Grety wants to know now is that Eveling will continue going to classes on Saturdays. Today Grety said to me, ¨But God is marvelous, Margaret. He gives me the strength to continue.¨

Monday plagued the week with the Virginia Tech shootings. Really sick people out there. My heart ached for these families and I tried each day to read what the papers in Nicaragua had to say about it. I felt really down about this specific situation, until yesterday, when the NBC photos of the guy appeared on the front page... But what I read in in Section B was just as horrifying, if not more... 190 died in a car bomb in Iraq. And a dear friend reminded me that 30,000 people died of starvation yesterday. 30,000 more will die today. For all of these, we should have a world vigil every night.

I´m reading about Kathy Kelly, the social activist from Chicago. Fascinating. Milan Rai said that Kathy has lived her life by one of the hardest questions posed by the Berrigan brothers: ¨Are peacemakers prepared to take the same risks in making peace that the soliders are prepared to take in making war?¨ I wonder if I am. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Monday morning some of us in the project when down to the most destitute area of the barrio to invite more children to come to the comedor (lunch program). This was an outrageous experience. I had not yet seen poverty quite like this. We went to this one house, where the family greeted us as if we were each Jesus, incarnate, again. I don´t think I am any sort of Savior... far from it. But they looked at us with these eyes as if their prayers have been answered. 9 children in this one home. I can´t call it a house. It´s a space. Dirt. With some tin. Starving. Really. The kids all look 3 years younger than they actually are. So skinny. Glassy eyes and pale faces. 3 of them had pink eye. Have had the infections for 3 months. We talked for awhile with them. And they served us cold water with ice that one of them ran out to buy. They have come to the comedor everyday since Monday, and the children get to play and eat. Basic necessities? Yes. Human rights. ¨The house is so boring!¨ the 8 year old girl told me. She never gets to leave. They want a chance to play and a chance to live. One of the boys, age 4, doesn´t talk. ¨When God wants, he will talk¨ says the Grandmother. The grandmother is responsible for him and his 2 older siblings because his mom, her daughter, abandoned them when he was born. The grandmother can barely care for herself. Three times now she has said to me, ¨Your life in the States is pretty beautiful, right!?¨... Yes... I sigh... not having a clue how to respond, the second and third time. I don´t think she´s talking about the landscapes.

Another space... dirt floor, tin walls and roof. One man watching 5 kids, under 10. They can´t go to school because they have to go with him to the market to work each day. They work in the market. And even if they did go to school, they would still have to go to the market these days, because the public school teachers are on strike and thousands of Nicaraguan children have been out of school for over 3 weeks. Thousands. James and Josh joke in the house, ¨Why won´t our teachers go on strike?!¨ as they are faced with tremendous challenges teaching English in the Nicaraguan school system. James expressed yesterday, ¨We spend hours in meetings about how to discipline the students, while the 150 students are left playing outside hitting each other!... So eventually I got up and left the meeting and said ¨My class was supposed to start 15 minutes ago¨¨

I would love to write more about our Tuesday visits to the women in the banks, how ill they all are, and how sad it is that they probably will not get better anytime soon, if they do. All kinds of rashes, infections, parasites, strokes, diabetes, gang violence. Instead I´ll simply ask for your prayers. For these women in the banks, for the children, for the machismo men of Latin America... and for the poor of the world. For people who suffer from preventable illness, death, war, and poverty. I say preventable because I believe it is. Our brothers and sisters are not meant to live in such starvation. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.

Love and dream of you daily!
Margaret