Sing to make your journey light...

And the spirit said, "Crash!"

2010-04-21T21:54:00.000-07:00

Ties gag me. Always have. You'd think, at 24, I would have learned to buy the correct size dress shirt, so that when I button the top button and put on a necktie, I could avoid gradually slipping into a coma of claustrophobic asphyxiation. But since I only go clothes shopping about once a year, on December 25th, under the Christmas tree, (and my mom thinks I'm skinner than I actually am) I opt to avoid buttoning my top button as often as humanly possible. In fact, if I could wear sweatpants and a t-shirt every day of my life, I would be a most happy fella, thank you very much.

But there's something about this place that requires a necktie. I moved to New York City just a few months ago, with big dreams of bright lights and Broadway openings. I knew it was going to take a little time and patience to book my first acting gig, (two or three months, maybe), so I looked for a job to pay the rent in the meantime. After a series of rejected restaurant applications, I finally stumbled upon a rather unusual, and seemingly glamorous job as a personal assistant and chauffeur to both celebrities and corporate clients.

When I took the job, I didn't consider how much time I'd be spending with my top button buttoned. Between auditions and work, I spend at least 90% of my week trying to look fancier than I feel. And with such a limited supply of oxygen to my brain, I get easily confused and disoriented, and sometimes think this buttoned-up version of myself is the real me.

One Sunday morning several weeks ago, I slipped into a pew at Trinity Church down on Wall Street, wearing one of my favorite neck-tourniquets. I had been church-shopping for months, never quite finding a parish with the right blend of respect for ancient traditions and progressive thinking that I try to hold in balance in my own life. (I usually test the waters during the Lord's Prayer, praying, "Our Mother, who art in heaven..." and see how the people around me respond.)

At first glance, Trinity is a pretty buttoned-up place. Lots of neckties, patent leather, and frilly hats. I was glad I had dressed the part that day. When the service started, the organ crescendo-ed, the choir filed in, with incense swirling, and the music washed over me.

The choir was divine. No one bristled at my version of the Lord's Prayer. And the sermon was focused on social and economic justice. Huh.

But my necktie was choking me. I was trying so hard to look put-together and professional, like I belonged in a centuries-old church where presidents and Rockefellers had once attended. As the organ crested over top the climactic final hymn, I sang half-heartedly, wondering if I could ever find a niche for myself in this mass of polished parishioners.

As the organ got louder and my tie got tighter, a crash right behind me shattered my self-concerned daydream. Spinning around, I saw a man I hadn't noticed when I entered: He was probably in his later fifties, stout, bald, and grinning so widely his eyes pinched shut. The crash had been his imitation of a pair of cymbals. He held his arms high and wide over his head, letting their "sound" resonate throughout the church, as a bit of spittle fell from his lips. Every four bars or so, or whenever it was musically appropriate, he crashed his imaginary cymbals, wind rushing through his lips, unabashedly contributing in his own simple way to the beauty of the music.

His joy was infectious: I unbuttoned my top button, took my first full, deep breath in hours, and sang the alto line (my favorite in old hymnals) a little louder than I should have. For the first time, I thought, "Maybe there is a place here for a guy like me."

The next day, as I sat in a fancy car outside a fancy restaurant, waiting on a fancy client to finish his fancy champagne, I couldn't stop thinking about the cymbal guy. In the midst of all those poised and proper church-goers, this man was true to himself, unashamed, and uninhibited. His spirit said, "Crash!" and he crashed.

It is so rare to see someone be true to their spirit in public. So often we fixate on what the world expects of us, enslaving ourselves to the neckties, or bank account balances, or job titles that we think give us value. At what age do we suddenly become so self-aware, and begin trying to mutate into something "acceptable" to the culture at large?

We certainly aren't born thinking this way. When I'm not driving, I babysit two four-year-old boys, from two different families. The hours I spend with Silas and William are the few in which I don't try to look any fancier than I really am.

Silas and I live in a fantastical world. When we're together, he becomes Super Kitty, I become Cornelius the Dinosaur, and as a duo we fight off all kinds of terrible and frightening monsters---Wollypogs and Amarats, and the like. Strumming a ukulele, we improvise protective incantations, and then evaporate the most wretched creatures with Super Kitty's pungent "Booty Burps." Trust me, they're powerful.

William's fantasy world is full of trains, boats, and big machines. On our walks to the park, he becomes a "Bacela Train," often stopping right in the middle of a crosswalk to invite new passengers aboard. I'm his faithful conductor, "punching the tickets" of any travelers, be they imaginary, or kindly strangers willing to play along.

Silas, William, and the Cymbal Guy couldn't care less what the world expects of them. Their worlds aren't make-believe: Silas is his Truest Self when he is Super Kitty, William was born to be a train, and when the guy at church crashes his cymbals, it's as if his whole soul is leaping for joy.

Each of us has a truest self---an essence, if you will, that probably has nothing to do with what the world expects of us. Suffocating under the pressure of our neckties, we stumble along in jobs that don't satisfy us, in relationships that inhibit us, and in church pews that intimidate us, all in the name of becoming "acceptable" to the world.

Unlike my role-models, Silas, William, and the Cymbal Guy, I lost touch with my truest self a while ago---long before I moved to New York. I don't know exactly who he is anymore, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to spend his life catering to every whim of the rich and famous. And he certainly never wears a necktie.

I catch glimpses of him every now and then. Usually after I've had a beer or two. He dances on the subway platform when "White Boys" from HAIR comes on his iPod. He hugs strangers on the street who look like they need it. And once a week, he teaches a class for teens who love to sing and dance.

I'm finding him again, slowly but surely. And I know that I can only live my fullest life if I earnestly seek him.

After my first encounter with the Cymbal Guy at Trinity, I kept attending services there. This Easter, the church was filled to overflowing, with over a thousand people cramming the aisles. As the congregation stood to join the brass choir and timpani in Handel's Halleluiah chorus, a bald, smiling head poked out above the top row of the choir. He looked so out of place in his tweed, too-tight suitcoat, amongst all the robes and flowers. As his head bobbed in time with the music, he looked like a lost chick looking for his mother hen.

But he wasn't lost; he was counting. As we approached the final chorus, the conductor gave a grand gesture, and with a flash of light, two REAL cymbals flew up over his head, and came together in the most rapturous flourish I have ever heard.

He held the cymbals over the whole congregation, as triumphant as any image of the Risen Christ, beaming his beatic blessing on us all. The cymbals chrashed thrice more, in perfect synchronicity with the escalating joy of everyone present, culminating in a tearful ovation as the Cymbal Guy, as his truest self, took a solo bow.

- Posted on the go, from my iPod!

Roam-sick

2010-01-23T22:45:00.000-08:00

Saturday, January 23, 2010

They all said it would happen at some point. And I guess they were right.

For no particular reason, I found it damn near impossible to peel myself out of bed this morning. My eyelids were so heavy. The morning sun was too strong. The covers were pinning me down. I was trapped in my own inexplicable heaviness; too anxious about what the day would bring on the other side of the blankets to push them off.

There was no good reason for my state of mind. I hadn't partied the night before. No one had wronged me. I haven't even gained weight! In fact, I had every reason to be optimistic about certain new possibilities wiggling their way into my life.

It was my complaining bladder than forced me out of bed eventually. Like a newborn wailing to guarantee that first instinctual intake of air, my body took over, saving me from the smothering amniotic blankets.

I went through the motions of my Saturday morning routine. Coffee and NPR with a side of oatmeal. Shower, alternately ice cold and scalding hot without warning. Brush teeth. Jeans and a sweater. Make bed. Grab lesson plan. Out the door.

About to walk out of the building, I stopped short at the mailboxes, finding a pink slip of paper sitting inside. A package awaited at the post office.

Everyone loves a package, especially an unexpected one. Sunshine and speculation carried me the extra mile out of my way to the post office.

The package, which took the perplexed employees about 10 minutes to locate, was from my Aunt Gobie. She was thanking me for the time we spent together when she was in the hospital earlier this month. In the box was a beautiful sweater that hadn't fit my uncle, two bags of rice and beans mix, and six Reese's peanut butter hearts. And the sweetest card, with a neatly folded, crisp bill, which I knew was only a representative mite of what she wished she could give.

And so it began.

My heart ached. I'm sure that outcome was the very last thing Gobie had in mind when she put the package together. But I missed her. I missed Uncle Brad. I missed a hundred people at once; some scattered across the globe, and others in this very city.

It didn't help to hear the excitement in her voice when I called to thank her. The thoughtfulness with which she had assembled the simplest items ("Don't vegetarians eat a lot of rice and beans?") killed me. I sat on a bench at 46th and 6th while we talked, under the bland towers of midtown. The streets were emptier than they should have been, and all I wanted was to fill them with the faces of people I loved.

After talking with Gobie and Brad, I had to go teach my weekly Musical Theatre Workshop. I volunteer with a group called Artists Striving to End Poverty, and every Saturday, a few of us teach a class for the International Rescue Committee. I have about 15 high-schoolers in my class who love to sing and dance, even if they can't speak English well enough to really understand what they're singing.

Walking into the building, already dripping in my own melancholy, I was greeted by a group of student leaders trying to come up with ideas of how they could help in Haiti. Several of them wanted to go there immediately.

To put this in perspective, all of the students in my class are either refugees or political asylees: They all come from parts of the world rife with unrest. I have students from The Sudan, Guinea, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, and the list goes on. They know far more than their fair share of grief, and yet they wanted to go help out their Haitian brothers and sisters. I was speechless.

Throughout the rest of the day, I couldn't stop thinking about the collective sacrificing spirit of my students. Every week, I learn more of their personal stories (courage and fortitude are inadequate words by a long shot). Though the faces are different, these students remind me so much of the young people that I taught when I lived in Nicaragua. My soul got heavier as I ran through the names and faces of those students, wondering how they are doing. Some are still in prison. Others, the more transient ones, disappeared long ago, and I will likely never have contact with them again.

When I get an a mood like this, I can really start spiraling fast. Walking down the street after class, I started projecting faces of people I haven't heard from in ages onto strangers' bodies as they passed. It didn't take much: If I saw a curly head of hair, I was suddenly convinced that it was my dear friend Natali, the holistic healer and best barista in all of Nicaragua. A blonde jogger wearing a camelback zipped by, and I was sure it was my cousin Rachel, whose birthday was today, and with whom I had shared some of the most spectacular weeks of my life on the bike trip this summer. Walking by a cafe, I almost tripped over myself, convinced that I saw TK and Judy dining inside---an couple who had adopted our motley crew of cross country cyclists out in Colorado.

At first, I was somewhat aware that my mind was playing tricks on me. But after a while, my brain got out of the equation, and just let my heart wallow in its own puddle of self-pitying nostalgia. For several minutes, I associated every stranger's face with someone I loved.

Some people might call it homesickness, what I was experiencing all day. But that word doesn't fit right for me. The people I love are not all concentrated in the same little town, where I can hop on a bus home from the big city and see them all at once. I have made and loved many "homes" in the past few years, most of which have only lasted a few weeks or months at a time. For four months this year, I made my home in a new place every night, as I made my way across the continent by bicycle. And in each "home," there are people and places that I learned to love, fast and furiously, and then learned to leave, just as quickly.

And so a better word for my particular brand of melancholy today would be, "Roam-sick." I don't know what brought it on, but it hit me hard today, and I was rubbing it all over myself like a one-year-old playing in his own poo. I wanted to reek of roamsickness, so everyone would know just how blue I was. At one point, I'm almost too embarrassed to admit, the following thought ran through my head:

"It's like I feel all of the sadness of all the people missing in my life concentrated in a single point in the center of my chest. If I feel this way, how must God feel to have the weight of the entire world concentrated in God's chest?"

Okay Hamlet, calm yourself.

Again, it was my bladder that saved me from myself. Suddenly, I had to pee so badly that I ran through the first open door I saw, which was the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, just off Times Square. Once my bladder was empty, I realized that I had stumbled into a dress rehearsal of a Madrigal ensemble that would be performing in the church that evening.

The haunting chords of the ancient instruments and pure voices stilled my self-pitying heart. Something stopped me dead in my tracks, and plopped me down in the third pew from the back, just a few rows behind a homeless man curled up and snoring on the bench.

I sat for about an hour, not thinking of much. Sometimes, when you start to spiral into self-pity, not thinking of much is the best you can do. At least it puts on the brakes long enough to help you change directions.

As the ensemble played, I felt a growing need to pray, but I was still a little to smeared with roamsick-tastic baby poo to come up with the right words.

I remembered something my college chaplain used to say: "When you don't have the words, remember: Prayer is Breathing. Breathing is Prayer."

And so I just breathed. I breathed in openness, and I breathed out roamsickness. I breathed my prayer over and over, deeper and fuller, to the sounds of harpsichord and the theorbo, the lirone, the tiorbino and the arpa tripla.

And after several minutes, I mustered a smile. They had all told me this would happen. All of my friends who had moved to New York before me said that at some point in the first year, you hit a wall, when not much makes sense, and you don't really know why you're here, and you really just want to go home...or go roam, as the case may be.

Sometimes, when I pull myself out of one of these self-destructive wallowings, I can go too far in the other direction. I get mad at myself for wasting so much energy on a stupid problem. "How adolecent, to mope around like a child because you've had too many wonderful adventures and met too many wonderful people, and you miss them. How many people in this world would kill to have seen what you've seen? There are too many real problems in this world for you to spend energy on that! Look at HAITI!"

But this time, I was a little gentler with myself. I went to my favorite Chinese restaurant and got some Chow Fun. (Mostly, I ordered it because of the name.) And then I had a donut. A delicious, chocolated drenched, pink sprinkled donut.

And now, sitting in my bed with my geriatric laptop and a cup of tea, this morning's blankets don't feel nearly as heavy.

On the road again...

2010-01-11T14:28:00.001-08:00

I'm on my way back to New York, after quite a long visit home to DC. Originally, I only planned to spend a few days at my parents' around the holidays. But we make plans, and God laughs.

Traditionally, my mom's sister Lori and her husband Brad always spend Christmas at our house. Lori is practically a second mother to me, having lived with our family through the first decade of my life. In fact, her nickname, "Gobie", originates from the early 80s, when my older sister struggled to pronounce Lori's name.

The day before New Year's Eve, Aunt Gobie got seriously sick. Her stomach cramped so fiercely, we found her banging the wall with her fist and mumbling incoherently in the bathroom. We debated back and forth about whether her condition warranted an ER visit, but were too afraid of how high those medical bills might be.

Gobie and Brad both work more than 40 hours a week, and work hard. Brad is a master of concrete pouring, and Gobie a dental assistant. Both work for small companies that are unable to provide health coverage to their employees, and yet they can't really afford private insurance on their own.

And so, crippled with pain, but with nowhere to turn, Gobie went to bed to try and sleep it off.

The next day, we had no choice but to rush her to the ER. She was bleeding internally, and extremely weak. Hours later, the doctors explained that a blood clot had formed near Gobie's colon, depriving about 40cm of her large intestines of oxygen and nearly killing that tissue.

She was lucky to be alive.

The care we received at Washington Hospital Center was outstanding. We imagined that spending New Year's Eve in the ER would be hell---with all the drunks and party-going-accidents streaming in. But they put us in a private room with a real door that blocked out the madness outside, even knowing that Gobie was uninsured.

The teams of doctors that treated her over the next nine days were unparalleled in their attention to detail and concern for the wellbeing of the entire family. We found out that our doctors were each nationally recognized leaders in their respective fields, and yet took the time to explain every minute detail until Gobie understood completely.

I went back to New York for two days to take care of some work responsibilities, but came back as soon as I could to keep Gobie company and interpret hospital lingo as best as I could.

When she was finally released, we were so very grateful for the care she had received and the speed of her recovery. And yet, I couldn't help but be a little angry.

I was angry that we had waited to take her to the hospital because we didn't have insurance. How pathetic, that in the wealthiest nation on earth people make medical decisions based on financial concerns, and not their actual medical needs!

How unfair, that a couple of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, blue-blooded Americans, should have to suffer the overwhelming stress of being one serious illness away from financial ruin.

During the last several days that Gobie was in the hospital, we plowed through the process of setting up a payment plan, and began to apply for insurance. The dollars and cents of it would be overwhelming to even the most financially successful among us.

A year ago, I was so optimistic about the promises of healthcare reform. The campaign rhetoric tugged on my heartstrings in a way that often evoked tears. And now, as the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes more apparent, it is hard to not be discouraged. Even if the current bill passes, I fear that we are too far gone to ever realistically live in a country where people need not worry about their health care coverage. The current bill is far too short-sighted in scope: It is the victim of partisan bickering and the fear of electoral reprimand.

And yet, to do nothing would be succumbing to despair. I don't expect my government to take care of my heath care needs, but I can't stop hoping that government action might bring some equity tothe playing field. We shall see.

For now, I am so grateful that Gobie was healthy enough to leave the hospital and drive me to the bus stop this afternoon. Hugging her ever more tightly, I realize that our family is one of the blessed ones. Every day, there are thousands of other stories like ours, and not all of them end positively.

As I head back to New York, I can't stop wondering what I can do to improve the situation. I've written and called my representatives in congress. What else can I do?

- Posted on the go, from my iPod!

Happy thanksgiving!

2009-11-28T06:36:00.000-08:00

Home for the holidays...a wonderful place to be! I just dropped Stephanie off at the bus station for her return trip to Philadelphia. I miss her already. She fits into our family like a twin lost at birth.

I was so happy to have her here, especially since this week marked the one-year anniversary of my departure from Nicaragua. I've been feeling pretty nostalgic, both for Nicaragua and the bike trip. It was great to have someone here who was with me during both of those life-altering experiences.

I realize how much I miss blogging the bike trip, so I've resolved to write more about my life. Who knows if you'll still find it interesting? It's a bit cliche, these stories of a young artist trying to make it in the big city, but maybe you'll read anyway.

I've got to run get ready for the Maryland football game. One if the things I miss most about home is going to the games with Dad to see his band play. I haven't been at all this season, so I'm pretty excited. Go Terps!

Big love,
Kendal

- Posted on the go, from my iPod!

Started to feel at home today...

2009-09-26T00:04:00.001-07:00

A week into this adventure called living in New York, I've just started to feel like someday I might belong here. I figured out a way to make money (driving a pedicab around the city), found a place to sublet for the first month (friends of friends of friends, one of whom happens to have grown up near my parents' hometown in central Illinois), and got connected to volunteer projects with two different activist groups.

And then there was Richard Williams. After spending the whole day running cross-borough errands and chasing down old friends on either side of this big little island, I was sitting in the subway station waiting for the uptown 1 train at 14th street. I was holding a big stack of vinyl records I had just purchased at a flea market—old Original Broadway Cast albums—and was happy to find a place to rest my tired legs, sitting on one of the wooden benches by the turnstiles.

A second or two after I sat down, an elderly black man approached, with a recently-purchased six pack of Oreo Cookies tucked under one arm of his navy suit coat, and a can of Coca-cola under the other. He was holding a nearly-overflowing handful of coins in one hand, and awkwardly using both hands to try and stuff the coins into his pants pocket.

He settled into the last wooden seat on the row to my left, leaving two empty seats between us. Having successfully arranged his coins and Coke and cookies, he turned over to me and said, “What kind of tunes you got in your hands, son?”

“Old Broadway show tunes,” I replied, a little uneasy about being approached by this unkempt stranger.

“No opera, huh? Only show tunes?”

“Yep,” I replied. “Not many people use these LPs anymore. Not many people even have a record player anymore.”

“Well I do. I have Opera Saturdays,” he smiled wide—his face a well-loved guitar, missing the A, G, and B strings.

“Only Saturdays?”

“Only Saturdays! Laaaaaaaaaa!” he sang in his best soprano. “The neighbors always hear me singing along on the weekends. But Sundays are for Country Western and Rock.”

The conversation paused for a moment, and a sharply dressed brunette sat in one of the two seats between us, unaware that this guy and I were mid-conversation.

“Who's your favorite Country guy?” I asked, leaning out to speak around the curvy businesswoman.

“Excuse me?” she murmured, confused.

“Johnny Cash, no doubt,” the old man shot back, not missing a beat. The brunette went back to her book.

“Cash takes cool to a whole new level, doesn't he?”

“There's one more guy I can't think of, that I really really like. It's on the tip of my tongue...”

As he fought to remember, the train pulled into the station, and he leapt off the bench without a backward glance. I chased after him.

When I took a seat next to him on the train, he slowly turned to look at me and jumped, almost surprised to see me there. He took off his mesh baseball cap, wiped his wizened brow, and mopped a few beads of sweat off his beard. Half the scruffy hairs on his face were black, and the other half, snow white.

He brought an Oreo to his lips, and, lacking incisors, broke the cookie in half and stuck it in the back of his mouth.

I wanted to know more about this man, but was strangely intimidated by him. His soul was too old for me to understand. I felt the same kind of awe that I knew from my time living in Nicaragua, working with orphaned street kids; the kind of awe born from being in the presence of wisdom earned through tribulation.

I searched for a way to continue the conversation: “Do you ever go up to Lincoln Center to hear the live broadcast of the opera out on the plaza?”

“Lawd, yes!” he hollered, his voice spanning about two octaves in as many words, and causing our half of the car to look up. “I go up there all the time.”

“Well I haven't been yet, but I hear it's lovely. I just moved to the city a week ago.”

“Where'd you move from?” he asked.

“Born and raised in Washington, D.C.” I said, proudly.

With a fist clenched around his remaining Oreos, he socked me in the shoulder and said, “Brother, I spent my childhood in D.C., too! Northeast, on M St.”

“Well how about that!”

“Yeah, I've still got a brother down there, who sells real estate. Let me tell you, things is changin' down there. They didn't even have paved sidewalks when I was growing up down there. Only dirt roads everywhere. And prices ain't what they used to be. Things are startin' to get more expensive down there than they are up here! My brother pays over 50 grand a year just on property tax alone. He was tryin' to unload one of his commercial properties down there, and had a Korean fella come offer him $50 million, CASH MONEY, on the spot. But he knew something ain't right when a guy wants to pay you CASH MONEY like that. So he didn't do it. After that, market fell through. He's looking to buy more property now, cause the IRS is takin' everything he's got. Gotta get more property to help bring down the taxes. Plus, he's buying a new Benz every two years, for about $250,000 a piece. It's crazy, man. Crazy.”

“Well things aren't much better up here!” I said. “I'm looking at apartments the size of a closet that cost $1500 a month!”

“Yeah, I got me a one-room about like that. All I need, is that one room.”

We came to the 34th St. station, where I should have hopped off the local 1 train and waited for the express (2 or 3) to take me uptown. But something kept me in my seat.

“So was your whole family from D.C., too?”

“Nah, nah. My parents were teachers down in South Carolina. That's where I was born. My parents had about 450 acres of land they farmed, and they taught in the schools in the 40s and 50s. Built our house out of trees they chopped down on the land. They were too eager to get the house up, and didn't let the wood dry. Built the whole thing out of green wood. By the time it was done drying out, the house was tilted and twisted so bad, you had to cut the doors and windows off at an angle to get 'em to close. Dad left the house to my baby brother, and he wanted to tear the thing down and build fresh. I told him, 'Damn, you must be outta yo' FOOL HEAD, boy! Our mommy and daddy went through hell getting that house built, workin' on two-, maybe three-hundred dollars a month.'

“So me and my brother hired an engineer to come down there and save the house. And let me TELL you, he picked that house straight up in the air, put it on stilts, and left it there for about two weeks. It got all straightened out...they put a new foundation in, and set it back down. Now it's the prettiest damn house you ever did see.

“The state tried to build a penitentiary on our land...wanted to buy it from us. But that's good land...prime real estate. We're right on the highway to Myrtle Beach. So they went and built it right across the street from our house, anyway.”

I did a quick historic time line check in my head, and then asked, “So the schools your parents taught in...Those must have still been segregated schools, right?”

“Of course they were! Son you wouldn't believe what things was like back then. Hate everywhere. And let me tell you just how bad we had it: Our chief of police was also the head of the KKK! They used to march up and down the streets all the time, scaring people.”

I told him about a house I had passed in Kentucky that was flying the KKK flag off the front porch. “I can't believe that hate like that still exists in this country.”

“Are you kiddin' me? In some places down south, you got BLACK people who's in the KKK!”

I was skeptical. “That doesn't make any sense!”

“Some people just got a lot a hate built up inside...even for their own race. Your race has people that hate their own race, too!”

“I guess anything is possible,” I conceded. “But still, I think those folks need therapy.”

“Nah, nah, nah. You know what it really is? It's because they don't have GOD'S LOVE in their lives. They ain't got Jesus Christ to show 'em love.”

I paused before responding. “Well, lots of people call it by lots of different names, but you're right: It all comes down to having love in your life.”

“You cain't LIVE without that! You cain't just live for yourself. You gotta be givin' something back to someone. If you is just livin' for you, you ain't gonna be getting nothin' outta life. And most people are just livin' for themselves these days.”

I agreed with his philosophy of giving back, but told him I was more optimistic about people on the whole. I told him about my bike trip (“You did WHAT? From WHERE to WHERE? Oh, LAWD!”), and most importantly, how many people we met who were there to look out for us in our time of need. “People are willing to help others more often than not,” I argued. “But they need to be given an opportunity to do so. You have to put out the kind of positive energy that shows people opportunities to reflect that positive energy back to you.”

“Maybe so. Maybe so,” he repeated. “So what are you gonna do for a job up here in this city?”

I hesitated. I never know how to answer this kind of question. “Well, I'm a musician and a teacher of sorts.”

“REALLY!?!” He liked that. “What kind of instruments do you play?”

“I play piano, I sing, and I'm learning to play the banjo.”

He socked me in the arm again, kind of hard this time. “Chuck Berry plays the banjo,” he grinned, flashing his toothless smile with uninhibited joy. “I like the banjo. It's a good instrument. It makes you happy to hear it.”

By that time, we were just one stop away from where I had to get off. I seriously considered staying right where I was, and chatting with my new friend until he got off the train, and then riding back. But it was getting late, and I still had lots of work to do before falling asleep.

I dug around in my messenger bag, and pulled out one of the business cards I just recently had printed for theatre work. It has my contact info on one side, and a full-color, glossy print of my head shot on the other. “Here's my info,” I said.

“Well aren't you fancy, Mr. Sparks!” he teased.

I laughed back, “Well, at the moment I'm in the business of selling myself as a professional artist, so I have to look the part, right?”

I realized I had passed the whole train ride without knowing his name. I asked him.

“Richard Williams,” he glowed. The way his named rolled out of his mouth, I felt like he was giving me his most valued possession. He said it with such joy, it was as if he was offering me the last bite of his ice cream sundae.

“Richard Williams,” I repeated, receiving the gift he had given me. “Be in touch, will you?”

Transitions...

2008-09-19T15:23:00.000-07:00

I write to you now from Matagalpa, the closest thing I have to a “home base” here in Nicaragua. I'm sitting in my favorite little corner of the city, Artesanos, sipping Chamomile tea, and enjoying the cool mountain breezes that gently sweep through this open air café.

Leaving Bluefields was a tremendously emotional transition for me. Working with a well-established organization like Acción Médica allowed me to hit the ground running with my projects in a way that I hadn't been able to in previous volunteer situations. I became so emotionally invested, especially in the prison project, that I had a very hard time leaving behind that which was only getting started.

On my last day at the prison, I brought each of the young men a hard-bound journal, inscribed with a personal message of encouragement from me, a copy of William Ernest Henly's INVICTUS (translated, of course), and a long list of ideas to get them started writing (Write about your happiest memory...Write about what you want your life to look like when you leave prison...etc.). We sat around in a circle at the end of our meeting, with José Ramón strumming away on my guitar, asking over and over, “Can't we just sing one more song?” They got me pretty choked up when they told me how much it meant to them to have someone come visit them every week, and take a real interest in their lives.

Through tears, one of the teens handed me his handkerchief and said, “Take this, to remember me.” I was really touched, and then taken off guard when he followed up by saying, “Can I keep your ring to remember YOU?” Now, it isn't a fancy ring, but it was a gift from my mom, and therefore pretty sentimental to me. While searching for a response, I stuck my hand in my pocket to find my own handkerchief to nervously wipe my brow. Right before I wiped, the obvious response came to me: “Here, buddy. Take my handkerchief to remember me!” One sweaty red handkerchief traded for a sweaty purple handkerchief. I don't think that was exactly how he hoped the exchange would pan out, but it's the thought that counts, right?

Leaving the theatre group was emotional in an entirely different way. It was no small thing, taking on the challenge of forming group of teenagers with no theatrical experience into a performance-ready theatre troupe in less than 5 weeks. Together, we learned basic theatre skills, wrote a one act play, rehearsed and polished it, and performed it for an audience of over 130 people on my last night in Bluefields. The credit for such a success goes to the willingness of the teens to try new things, their natural talent for storytelling, and their commitment to excellence in the final product. In the end, they were a smash success with the audience, and left the stage beaming with pride in their accomplishment.

The sub-plot to the theatre story was the relationship between my co-teacher Jenny and I. You’ll recall from a previous blog entry, that in a frustrated moment several weeks back, I accidentally called Jenny a jackass, when I meant to call her stubborn. (We were playing a warm-up game, and Jenny kept disagreeing with the group about when she was “out,” and I got frustrated after the third or fourth disagreement. I got the words for “donkey” and “stubborn” confused...Damn second language!) Though I apologized up and down for my error, I can now pinpoint that as the moment that our different ideas about how the group should work began to clash visibly.

Our clashes were rooted in cultural difference. Nicaraguan society is much more hierarchical than our culture in the US. For example, in an office in the US, you are much more likely to see the boss and all of her employees sitting around one table, sharing ideas equally, and addressing each other by first name. In Nicaragua, on the other hand, people are much more likely to sit and listen to the boss, only responding when he calls on them, and they probably refer to him by his title, like “Doctor.”

This cultural difference found it's way into our theatre classroom quite quickly. Everything I've ever learned about theatre is all about group participation and individual empowerment. It's stifling to be in an environment with a dictator for a director. So when I stepped into the classroom as a teacher for the first time, I did everything I could to make it an egalitarian place. “This is YOUR theatre group,” I would tell them. “What do you want this group to look like? What are your expectations? What are your desired outcomes?” I usually answered their questions by asking questions. Whenever I was asked, “How should we do this?”, I tried to respond with, “What are your options? Which do you like better? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each?” I'm sure that I wasn't 100% consistent in this approach, but I did the best that I could to create that kind of empowering environment.

It wasn't easy to teach that way, in a culture that is so inherently hierarchical. I was working against the cultural sensibility that the teacher knows best and everyone should wait around and see what he has to say before making a move. I think my teaching style was most unsettling to Jenny, my co-teacher, who was so used to being in front of a classroom and being fully in control of the class' progression. I'm sure it was equally unnerving for her to have a foreigner come in and start up a class in a subject in which she had no experience or training, and then be expected to take over the class once the foreigner left.

I failed to recognize or understand Jenny's uncertainties until too late. Being a short-term volunteer, and very conscious of my place within the office hierarchy, I felt uncomfortable openly addressing the differences between our approaches, fearing that Jenny might view any such conversation as an attack on her personal teaching style. This was foolish of me. I should have sat down with Jenny at the beginning, explained my approach, and said, “This is just my way of doing things. Feel free to change it when I leave, but maybe for the next few weeks you could be my partner in this, and maybe we can learn something from each other.” Maybe that would have helped. Maybe not. You know what they say about hindsight...

One of the prime examples of our different approaches came late one Wednesday afternoon, as we were preparing for that evening's HIV support group meeting. Our site director, Jeannette, came into the office and suggested that we put together a short little skit about the stigmas that persons living with HIV have to face, and then present it to the group that evening. One of the group members was there at the time---a very outgoing young woman, who is the only member of the group who is publicly open about her HIV status---and I suggested that maybe she (let's call her Rosario for the moment) should be the star of the skit. Jenny's mouth dropped and her head started shaking, like I had said something terribly offensive.

“No, Kendal. You don't understand. She can't be part of the skit.”

“Why not, Jenny?” I said. “She's a member of the group.”

“Yes, but how can she visualize the stigmatization of HIV positive persons if she's in the skit?”

“Well Jenny, don't you think that, as a person living with HIV, Rosario understands those stigmas far better than you or I ever could?”

“The thing is,” said Jenny, “we have to SHOW THEM what that stigma is, and Rosario can't benefit from our presentation if she has to be in it.”

It's all about different cultural ideas. I know this. I kept telling myself this. But it still frustrated me.

We had a similar problem when we started writing our one act play. The story was about a young girl who contracted HIV from a one-night-stand, and then had to tell her family and friends her status, and ask for their support.

We made a habit of moving the roles around every day, so that each person could have a chance to act each part. It also helped us be more flexible if one or more of the actors didn't make it to practice. Instead of two friends, there could just be one. And instead of having a mother, father, and siblings, we could get by with the young girl only having a mother for the day.

The downside (or maybe the upside?) of having so many people cycling in and out of the different roles, is that everyone formed very strong opinions about how each role should be played. When you create an egalitarian learning environment, people tend to feel comfortable offering their opinions freely---be they positive or negative. I challenged people to keep their criticisms constructive, to varying degrees of success. I had the hardest time communicating this to Jenny. She was prone to vehemently tell students when she thought they weren't doing the parts “right,” and would jump in to show the students just how it “should” be done.

It got to the point that the students thought that Jenny was the only one who could play the main character “correctly,” and so when we presented a preview of our progress to the office staff a few weeks in, the teens insisted that Jenny take the lead role. I had told the students that this was their theatre group, after all, so I

decided to sit back and see how it panned out.

Jenny was great. She has a real flair for the dramatic, and could be a really sensational professional actress. The first presentation was well received, but Jeanette pointed out that she would have liked to have seen one of the teens take the lead, instead of Jenny. This comment was a God-send, saving me from having to single Jenny out on my own. After the presentation, we sat around and debriefed for a few minutes. I sat there in silence as the teens discussed and agreed that they could learn a lot from Jenny, but that it would be better if she didn't play the main parts anymore. Everything seemed to be working out.

Over the next few weeks, we expanded the story to a full one act length---about one full hour. The roles got a little more complex, the story became more interesting, and we set a date for our first public performance. There was an uneasy peace between Jenny, the students, and I. If Jenny was upset about being asked to play a more supportive role, she certainly didn't show it directly. But she stopped participating in rehearsals almost entirely. I continued to invite her to participate, asking her opinion, but got limited response. I didn't get worked up about it...in fact, I was honestly glad to have a little space to do things my way for a little while, without coming into conflicts over teaching style.

Over those next few weeks, our biggest challenge was learning not to laugh during serious scenes. We were quite the giggly group, and theatre should be fun, so I was stuck finding a balance between keeping discipline and maintaining a positive work environment. One afternoon, we just couldn't get ourselves to stop laughing, so I had everyone lay on the floor on their bellies, and I turned out the lights (a trick I learned from a dear friend who teaches drama). In the dark, I talked about how it was our responsibility to honor the struggles and the lives of those people who live with HIV. I told them that there would be HIV positive people in the audience on the night of our performance, and that out of respect for them, we had to be as truthful as possible to the real-life experience of contracting the virus. I finished by saying that we also had a responsibility to those who work with HIV positive people, like Jenny, who have lost friends to the virus, and who have helped people cope through some of the darkest hours of their lives.

That chat was a turning point. From then on, whenever we got giggly, I just had to say, “Remember who we are honoring,” and things settled down.

In the week before the big performance, I was impressed to see how much ownership the students took in the process. Though I thought that they were ready to perform, they were still pretty nervous, and they asked if we could rehearse every day, instead of just twice that week. They brought in their own warm-ups and theatre games that they had found on the Internet. Jenny's son became ill, and so she was unable to meet with us for most of the week. For this reason, and because she hadn't been participating much in rehearsals anyway, we didn't give her a role in the final performance. (I should mention that I played only a directorial role the whole time...I never acted in any of the scenes.)

The other challenge in the final week was that one of the actors dropped out of the group, due to a family crisis. He had been playing the father of the girl with HIV, and so we turned over his lines and responsibilities to the young lady who had been playing the mother, turning her relatively small role into a much larger one. She rose to the challenge, but struggled with some of the complexities of the role. In the play, when the young girl tells her family that she has contracted HIV, the parents kick her out of the house, because they don't understand the virus or how it is transmitted. The girl's friends take her in, and together they seek the support of a community health promoter (from our organization) to help her gain the support of her family, and reconcile the relationship. In then end, the girl moves back in with her now-supportive family, and all is well.

The challenge of playing the parents in this situation, is how to kick your own kid out of the house at a time of great need, and then later have the audience feel good about the fact that the girl is moving back in. Basically, the parents can't be mean about it, but have to justify throwing her out by revealing their fears about the virus. The main idea was, “Honey, we love you, but we can't have you living here and risk you infecting the rest of the family.” This approach gave the health promoter the opportunity to explain how the virus is transmitted, and help the parents feel comfortable inviting the girl back home.

When the young lady playing the mother had to take over the responsibilities of the father as well, I recruited Jenny's help in working through the details of this role with her. Towards the end of the week, the young actress was finally comfortable in her role—or at least she told me that she was. Things were going smoothly.

That is, until we got to the day of the performance. What had started out as simply a presentation by the theatre group, had suddenly morphed into a full-fledged community activity for the whole organization, complete with a thirty-minute spiritual devotional, a PowerPoint presentation on HIV, testimonials by people living with the virus, and a candle-lighting ceremony. Somehow, I missed the memo on this, until I was handed a schedule the morning of the performance. I was also told that we were going to need to cut the length of the play in half, since there were so many other activities planned, and people might get bored. Oh, and by the way, we think the teens should sing a song after they perform the play.

Another example of cultural difference. I'm used to having my ducks in a row for a presentation, long before the day of. I like to know what's happening...and my worst nightmare is standing in front of an audience without knowing what's coming next. So you can imagine that these last-minute changes threw me into an inner tailspin. I think I did a good job of not showing my frustration, especially over the fact that the activity had been planned around our play, and now we were being asked to cut it in half to make room for 30 minutes of hymn singing. I smiled and said, “No problem,” without any real plans to change anything, knowing that the teens would probably rush through the play on account of their nerves, anyway.

That morning, we ran through the play once, polishing up the final details. I couldn't have been more proud. I thought to myself, “If they do half as well this afternoon, they'll have so much to be proud of.” We agreed to meet at the auditorium (the multi-purpose room of the local convent) at 1:30pm, cleaned up, and ready to go.

I didn't really expect them to be on time. After all, we are in Nicaragua. But actually, most of them showed up early, eager to see the stage, and walk through the motions a couple of times before the audience came at 3:00pm. I called up my boss, Jeanette, and asked her if we could move the furniture around in the room, especially the big podium sitting in the middle of the stage. We had most of the actors there, and so after moving the podium, we walked through the show, step by step.

It was 2:45 before Jenny showed up. I was relieved that I hadn't assigned her any responsibilities, because she was over an hour late, and hadn't had the opportunity to walk through the staging with us. We were about three-quarters of a way through our walk-through when she walked in, right onto the stage, and said, “You can't move that podium like that, because we need it there for the testimonials and presentations.”

You might imagine that, fifteen minutes before the audience arrived, such a comment wasn't really appreciated, especially from someone who had arrived over an hour late. I admit, my tone was inappropriately sharp when I replied, “Jenny, we'll move it back in place before and after the play. Now if you don't mind, we need to keep working.”

I saw out of the corner of my eye that my tone had offended her. I knew better, but didn't take the time to rectify the situation, feeling the pressure of the audience I imagined to be pressing on the doors from the outside. “I'll apologize later,” I thought.

The activity started 45 minutes late, as is pretty standard in this country. The teens and I gathered in the back of the room as our turn came around, just after the 30 minutes of hymns and 40 minutes of PowerPoint presentations. I simply told them that I was proud of them, and then listened as each one of them offered encouragement to the others. It was really something to see just how far they'd come in four weeks, and I bowed my head in quiet pride as one of the teens asked if he could pray for the performance. They were ready. We were all ready.

When the time came, I went to the back of the room to run the “light board,” (a.k.a. the light switch by the door), flicking off the lights so that the actors could get into their places. When the lights came back on, the murmuring crowd feel silent, and my jaw dropped.

Jenny was sitting on the stage, in the chair usually occupied by the role of the mother. Jeannette leaned over to me and said, “I didn't know that Jenny was going to be in the play.”

I replied, “Neither did I.”

The next forty-five minutes are still painful to remember, even three weeks after the fact. Jenny took over the role of the mother, sidelining the girl who had been rehearsing the role, making her into a mute “sister” that sat wordless at her mother's side. The girl who had been rehearsing the real role of the sister was even more confused, and kept looking at her boyfriend in the audience, shrugging and giggling nervously. When it came time for the main character to tell her mother that she had contracted HIV, the girl couldn't even get the words out, because Jenny kept cracking joke after joke, making all the actors laugh on stage, and keeping the audience at a dull roar. The most crucial moment of the scene went something like this:

“Mom, I have to tell you something.”

“Well, spit it out. I'm freaking tired and I don't have time to listen to your pathetic complaining.”

“The thing is, well, um...Mom...”

“Hurry up! Rub my feet while you're at it. I've had a long day.”

“Mom, it isn't easy to tell you.”

“What? Are you pregnant? I told you had to stop hanging out with those horrible friends of yours! This is just AWFUL! I can't believe my own daughter...”

(Lots of audience laughter and giggling actors.)

“No mom, I'm not pregnant. I have HIV.”

“WHAT? GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! You disgust me! Don't come near my daughters. You are such a slut for getting that disease. I can't believe you! Don't touch me! Get out of here!”

(Uproarious laughter from actors and audience alike.)

And so it went, on and on, with Jenny sacrificing the script that we had written to get cheap and easy laughs from the audience. It's hard to describe how I felt as I helplessly flicked the light switch on and off in the back of the room. Betrayed, would be a good start. Hijacked. Blindsided. Confused. Crushed. Pissed as hell.

By the time it was all over, Jenny was on her knees, center stage, beating her breast and clutching her daughter's knees, begging forgiveness for the fool she had been. You'd have thought she was playing Lady Macbeth. The audience ate it up. They laughed so hard, they could barely stay in their seats when the lights went up for curtain call. The laughter burned in my ears.

How could Jenny do something like that, after all the time we had spent talking about how complex the relationship between the daughter and her parents needed to be? How could she take over one of the teens' roles, especially without telling anyone? (Or rather, without telling me? Who knows, maybe the other teens were in on it, too.) How could she turn the whole play into a giant JOKE, after all the conversations we had had about the fact that we were honoring the lives of people living with the virus? After I had said that we were honoring JENNY, and all the work she has done with HIV!!! I couldn't look at the faces of the HIV positive folks sitting in the audience, feeling like the whole play had become a mockery of their real-life experiences. How selfish and infantile must a person be, to sabotage five weeks of rehearsal just to make a point? Or rather, to put oneself in the spotlight, no matter whom must be trampled to get there?

I should also mention that we had hired a videographer to film the event. Unfortunately, we forgot to tell him that it is inappropriate to stand on the stage in between the actors and the audience. While Jenny was busy becoming Mama Rose, our friend the cameraman stuck his massive equipment two inches away from the actors' faces, blocking the audience's view, and making each of the teens squirm and send sideways glances at the lens every few seconds.

It was all too much to handle. I have never felt so betrayed in my life. And as I tried to breathe deeply and regain my composure, Jenny grabbed the microphone and sweetly said, “We'd like to invite up the guy who made all of this possible...Our director, our teacher, our friend....Kendal!”

Can you imagine the effort it took to plaster a smile on my face in that moment? To accept Jenny's hug, and graciously accept the beautiful gift that the teens had purchased for me? I did the best I could, but when someone tried to put the microphone in my hand, I just couldn't keep it together any longer. I declined, and made a bee-line for the back door. I prayed that I wouldn't run into anyone as I rushed through the long corridors of the convent and out into the high-walled garden.

As I collapsed onto a stone bench, hot tears of anger and betrayal gushed down my face. I couldn't pinpoint if I was more hurt by the fact that my role as director had been so blatantly disrespected, or that the hard work of each of the teens had been so rapidly undermined by the selfish motivations of someone's over-sized ego. It didn't matter, really. The damage was done, and I was leaving town the next day.

I sat there in that garden for the next forty minutes, while Rosario's amplified testimony drifted overhead, mingled with the slow, haunting chants of the nuns in their cloisters. Gradually, I pulled myself together, knowing that I needed to put on a good face for the audience inside, and the teenagers who had worked so hard, and had achieved so much, despite the present circumstances.

When I walked back in, one of the teens noted my red eyes and said, “I know you're sad about leaving us tomorrow. But we're going to be okay. We've gotten off to a great start, and we're going to keep going after you leave.” He didn't know the real reason why I had been upset, but his words reassured me that my work in Bluefields hadn't been in vain.

As the audience filed out, I just smiled as people congratulated me on what a success the play had been. If any of the teens were upset about Jenny's stunt, they sure didn't show it. I think they had been so nervous beforehand, and were just so pleased that the audience enjoyed the final product...they simply forgot how the play was intended to be performed. The office staff was especially enthusiastic. They were so impressed by what we had pulled off in just a few weeks. I avoided Jenny's eyes, not trusting what might come out of my mouth if we spoke at all. I felt so alone in that moment—each and every compliment adding to my frustration that no one knew how the play was supposed to be. Yes, the play had been funny, and Jenny had made people laugh a lot. But I didn't care how GOOD the play was...I cared about the ownership that each student felt in the process.

As the last few people drifted out of the auditorium, the teens asked me if we could play a couple of our warm-up games, just one more time, before I left. So we sat in a circle, making silly faces and laughing our way through the quagmire of pride mixed with the impending bite of separation that we were each feeling in our own individual ways. I have to admit that they really helped me shake off my profound sense of betrayal, reassuring me that the foundation that we had laid was strong, and that the group would continue, at least for the next little while.

---------------------------------------

The next morning, I woke up at 5:00am in a complete daze, not sure if it had all been a really bad dream or not. I quickly packed my bags, and hopped on a plane to the Corn Islands—two little tropical paradises off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. I had originally planned to be there only a few days...After all, what's there to do on an island that isn't even a square mile? But after the trauma of that final day in Bluefields, being on a remote island, laying on a sandy beach and sipping a piña colada, was exactly the therapy I needed.

I ended up staying on the islands for 12 days...most of which I spent on Little Corn Island, learning to scuba dive and getting really tan. By the time I got back to Bluefields to pick up my extra suitcase, I had cooled down enough to put the performance incident behind me. I wasn't yet ready to talk through my feelings with the involved parties, but I wasn't sure what good that would do anyway, as I probably won't ever see them again.

After two days traveling by steamboat, speedboat, and several buses, I finally arrived in my beloved Matagalpa a week ago on Friday night, and collapsed into the welcoming embrace of dear friends, cool mountain breezes, and a friend's soft couch. I know that I'll continue reflecting on these experiences for some time to come. I keep reminding myself that my final day in Bluefields was the exception to the rule—that I have learned so much from my six weeks there, and will continue to learn from those experiences in future work.

But for the moment, I'm just glad to be back in the closest thing I have to a home in Nicaragua.

T-Shirt Sightings...

2008-08-28T08:06:00.001-07:00

So it's an inevitable fact that when a developing country receives loads and loads of donated aid materials (often in the form of used clothing), there will be lots of people walking around wearing items that seem out of place. This fact is especially exacerbated by a language barrier and high illiteracy rates. In my time in Nicaragua, I've seen some side-splitting malapropisms walking down the street. I should have been writing them down, but one never has the pen and paper handy when the time is right.

But then today, just on my way in to work, three different sightings jumped out at me as particularly hilarious. I thought I'd share....

3) A big burly Creole man, hunched over an shining shoes in the park, wearing a MISS SAIGON t-shirt.

2) A great-grandmother in her 90s with a scarf tied over her head, walking with a cane through the market. Her shirt said "Easy" in pink sequins.

1) My personal favorite, a toothless, big-bellied fisherman whose gut stuck out under his University of Michigan t-shirt, as he wiped his brow with an Ohio State ball cap.

Letters from Prison

2008-08-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

I asked my friends Ramon and Arden if I could share their letters with you. They wrote them for an exchange we're doing between teens in DC, at Children's National Medical Center, and our prison group here in Nicaragua. I hope you find them inspiring...

Penitentiary System, Bluefields, Nicaragua
August 14 2008

To: My Friends, Teenagers from abroad
From: Jose Ramon

Hello friends! Here's a warm greeting from me—May God Almighty bless you greatly! My biggest wish is that you are very well, in unity with all those who surround you. Let me tell you a little about my life, from my heart, that I'd like to share with you.

Since I was one, I grew up with my grandmother (my father's mother) because my father gave me to her, because he did not love my mother, and my mother was a very young girl and could not do anything to take care of me. Since then, after leaving my mother, I was raised as the son of my grandmother, and called her “Mom” because I did not know about my past. But over time, my grandmother's kids started beating me, and told me that I was not a their brother, but that I was just “picked up”. I felt really bad about what they said, but did not believe them until I realized the truth, though I continued to ignore it. From the time I was very young until I was 12 years old, my life was really bad, though I guess not so bad because I'm still alive...But yes, I've suffered a lot. At age 12, I started to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol, but that didn't last too long because we moved from here to Costa Rica. There, I started going to school, and finished elementary school. Then my grandmother died, and I came back to my country. I arrived here in Bluefields, where I am right now, and after about six months of living here, I was arrested by the police, without really realizing what had happened, and now I am sentenced to six years in prison, which has been really hard on me. I was in jail, without hope that anyone would visit me, or that anyone would speak up for me. But I decided to accept this judgement and confront it, not negatively, but instead I started to think and analyze things and I came to the conclusion that I wasn't alone in this, but that God was here with me, and that I could continue forward. I'm not the only teenager that is here—there are others who are going through the same thing and are trying to improve their way of thinking. Thank God, I've been meeting with a group of people from the outside...meeting to praise God...and this has given me strength and a will to move forward, struggling to achieve a better life for God, with God's help.

Here, where I am, is not a good place to be...neither for myself nor for the other teens...because the resources don't exist to give us better treatment. Here we are all mixed in with the adult prisoners, but I guess they are trying to give us the best treatment they can. The other teenagers and I stay in a cell apart from the rest. We have a television, and we go out to play soccer twice a day, three days a week. We are also painting a mural, and we participate in discussions to help us improve our attitudes. I'm also studying, so that I can be someone in this life.

I feel good about having come here, in the sense that I have learned many things here...how to praise God, how to play guitar, how to share, etc. What's more, I got to meet my mother, the one who gave birth to me, and my brothers, about whom I didn't know anything before. This is how I have spent my life, and have distracted myself from my situation by busying myself with something positive. And I do not want to continue to misbehave, but instead, I want to be a new person in the way I think and act, so that my family can see that though I was in jail for bad behavior, I have will leave jail a changed man. Because soon, I will be released, with God's help.

A little about me...

Let me share a little about what I'm like. I am short in stature, medium light-skinned, with black hair, and brown eyes. I am sincere about 90% of the time. I am friendly, someone who shares, an observer, amiable and good at sharing. I love to help others in whatever way that I can, to play football, to sing songs to God, and to play guitar and behave well.

I would like to share more, but that will be for another time, if the opportunity presents itself. To whomever may read this, I hope that you have liked it, and perhaps it has helped you in some way. In closing, I'd like to suggest that you try, no, fight to not be negative, because God does not want us to be unhappy, nor do we want that for ourselves. So obey your parents, and those who are helping you, and have taken an interest in helping you.

May things go well for you in life, in your beautiful country. Pour your heart into it!
May God keep you!
-- Jose Ramon

Hi! My name is Arden Alen Calben.

First of all I hope that you are in very good health, and are in the company of family and friends.
After this short and warm greeting, I want to share with you a bit of my short life. I am a young person, at 17 years old. I live in Nicaragua, in the Southern Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS) Central America. I was born in a place called Bluefields.

I am serving time in jail because I made a mistake, that I should never have made. The laws sentenced me to five years in prison. I have only just barely fulfilled one year and two months of my sentence.

At 8 years old, I started hanging out on the streets with some friends who were doing some bad things, which they shouldn't do. My poor mother was a wreck, and felt very bad about what I was doing, but I didn't listen to her advice. She always told me, "Son, stop going around doing those things," and reminding me that I was going to end up hurt, or I was going to end up in jail. But I kept hanging out with the same bad friends and doing the same things, and now I'm in jail, and I'm very sorry for not having listened to my mother, who loves me so much. I didn't not know how to appreciate her love, so pure and invaluable. Now I can't do anything but wait for the day I'll be free, and change my life, my attitudes and especially my way of thinking, including the kinds of friendships and relationships I have.

Now, my goal is to enjoy every happy moment with my mother and my father, with all my siblings and the rest of family, everything that comes my way. I wish I could stop time, to enjoy all those times that have now passed. I am very sad to be in this prison—living here is not a good life for a teenager of my age. I will continue patiently waiting for my release order.

At the very least, I will continue to participate in the talks that people come here to give or to share with us, with me and my friends here in this prison system, where I have spent so much of my life. This is what little I want to share with you: For me it is a privilege and a pleasure to have written to you. I recommend that you behave well and obey your parents, so that what happened to me doesn't happen to you. Keep moving forward, and support those who lead discussions with you, and think positive. Many hugs and peace.

See you soon, and thank you.

Singing the Blues...

2008-08-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

This week has been all about learning humility. I don't think that I'm a particularly proud person, in the sense of being stubborn or always having to be right. But I do think that lines are easily blurred between blind optimism, ownership in one's work, and a certain kind of pride. I'm plagued by the general feeling of, “Geeze, this is really exciting...I've worked really hard on this, so it's going to be REALLY GOOD!”

It's an easy trap to fall into, and one that sets you up for failure when things don't go the way you've imagined. I don't know why I continue to do this to myself...after all, people in development work say that if you're not yet to Plan G by noon, you're having a productive day. But I'm addicted a youthful idealism that causes me to lay awake at night, dreaming up lesson plans that I deem so brilliant, the world may never be the same again...

So it was with my lesson plan on The Blues. Sadly, one of our young men in the prison group attempted to take his own life about a week and a half ago, while his buddies looked on. I found out about the incident a few days before our meeting, and so I poured all my energies into developing some kind of creative outlet that would give them the opportunity to voice their pain, and hopefully find some communal catharsis after such an intense episode. I spent DAYS on the phone with therapist friends back in the US, scouring the Internet for suicide prevention/understanding resources, and developing a lesson plan based on the Blues.

The idea was that the Blues allow a person to share their emotional burden with the group...it isn't a solitary experience, music making...using the call and response of the old 12-bar Blues format. The leader sings one phrase, and then everyone repeats it back to him on the second chord progression, and then the leader comes to a conclusion at the end. Generally, the Blues tells us that it's okay to be hurting sometimes, especially if we share that pain. As a professor wrote to me, the Blues doesn't say that life isn't painful, but instead helps us feel okay about our pain. I was hoping to give the guys some background on the style of music, and then teach the pattern on the guitar and let the guys have a little jam session.

I downloaded over $30 worth of old Blues classics to play as examples...Nina Simon, John Lee Hooker, Billie Holiday, and many more. I spent about 10 hours translating lyrics into Spanish, and printing them out side by side. I stayed after work for a few hours every day, trying to master the style on my guitar—an instrument I'm only just learning.

And so, yes, I was PROUD of the work I had done on this lesson plan, when we showed up at the prison a week ago, Tuesday. But because of the suicide attempt from a few days before, our session was being observed by new faces—a sociologist, an extra psychologist, and a few others that I didn't even recognize. And as I drew in my breath to begin the lesson I had planned, one of the new faces in the room started in on a looooong tirade about suicide being a sin, that only God can take and give life away, and that in moments of crisis, we need only turn to God and God will take away our pain.

Two hours later, the group was finished, and not one note of the Blues had been played.

I was mad. I admit, it was as much about my own pride as it was about the audacity of what those teenagers were forced to listen to. I'm not arguing with the fact that turning to one's source of faith helps in times of crisis. But that needs to be translated into a tangible way of working through our pain. God doesn't wave a magic wand and take away our pain, but instead works through tangible means—friends, books, exercise, MUSIC—to help us get by.

'What CRAP!,' I thought. 'The lesson plan I prepared was so much more worthwhile than that sermon that incapable woman gave! Who lets these people work with these kids? Don't they know what they're missing out on, having me here and not letting me do my own thing?'

It's easy for thoughts like that to spin out of control. Before long, you're in pretty condescending, arrogant territory. And I must admit that I fumed about it for the rest of the evening. Before leaving the prison, I insisted that the psychologist let me come back the next day for a make up class. You should have seen the angry emails and phone calls I made to my parents and other confidantes back home. “Can you believe how foolish that woman was?,” I said. Boy, did it feel good to know that I was a better teacher than her, by far! And I'm only just getting started!

Self-righteous anger can feel so good, can't it?

The next day, I practiced my Blues guitar until my fingers nearly bled. I was gonna show THEM what a good lesson was. I showed up to the prison ten minutes early. I walked down the dark staircase to the passage with peeling paint and a drippy ceiling, that ends in the solid steel door leading to the prison yard. I knocked confidently on the metal, and the small rectangle at eye level flaps open. He didn't know where the psychologist was. He'd get back to me.

The hallway was getting crowded. Young wives/girlfriends were there, waiting on their conjugal visits, wearing tight clothes and lots of perfume. A little girl clutched her grandmother's hand, waiting to go visit her dad. A guard wearing a very thin Kevlar vest tapped the butt of his assault rifle against the wet floor.

I waited there, guitar, laptop, and translated lyrics in hand, for 55 minutes before I saw the psychologist's face. She was so sorry not to have called, but there was an all-day staff meeting and so there would be no one to supervise our group. I'd have to come back Friday.

At some point in those 55 minutes, my righteous anger from the day before melted into disappointment. It was at that point that I began to see the condescension in my attitude, and realized that I really just wanted to be there with the teens in their time of need. I was truly disappointed that I couldn't offer them what I had prepared.

I went back to the office, tail between my legs, and focused my energies on Thursday's theatre group. We had had a pretty sensational first meeting on Monday, so I thought I could up the ante a little bit on Thursday, and throw out some slightly more challenging exercises. Well, I'm still surfing the teaching learning curve, and Thursday's class was a total bomb. From the outset, the kids froze under the new activities, and gave me deer-in-the-headlights stares for the rest of the class. It wasn't a happy day for me.

Friday came around, and I braced myself for another disappointment. Surely it was better to assume that my extra make up class with the teens wouldn't ever happen, and just be excited if it did. But I became cautiously optimistic, as I packed up my guitar and started out of the office door at 1:55pm for our 2pm class. But then the phone rang. And it was the psychologist. And class was canceled.

This time, I had to laugh. Our class was canceled because the police had detained a Columbian boat in the harbor that was carrying over 2000 kilograms of cocaine. They needed the room I hold my classes in to unload the cargo and sort through the evidence. What can you do?

Saturday's theatre class went better...I try to learn from my mistakes...and I took the day off on Sunday. Monday came around, and you all know how THAT theatre class ended in disaster (see yesterday's blog post). Yesterday, I got to face all THAT music, which was certainly a blow to the pride of a guy who's been lauding himself as “fluent” in Spanish recently. But I thought I'd have the chance for redemption when the regularly scheduled prison session came around yesterday afternoon. I would finally get the chance to present my lesson on the Blues.

The session got off to a good start. We had decided to celebrate the birthdays of all six teens, since it's been a while since they've had a birthday celebration. We had cake, and balloons, and even got a few of them to get up and dance to the rather festive Spanish version of “Happy Birthday.” All good.

Then it was my turn. I told them all about the Blues, and why they make us feel better. I told them how some of the musical roots of the Blues come from Africa—which as African descendants themselves, they appreciated. I then asked for a volunteer to read my translation of an old tune sung by Nina Simone, “Trouble in Mind.” Serendipitously, the young man who tried to take his own life volunteered. He read (in Spanish):

Trouble in mind, I'm blue
But I won't be blue always,
'Cause the sun's gonna shine
In my back door some day.

I'm all alone at midnight
And my lamp is burnin' low
Ain't never had so much
Trouble in my life before.

Trouble in mind, that's true
I have almost lost my mind,
Life ain't worth livin,
Sometimes I feel like dyin'.

Goin' down to the river
Gonna take my ol' rockin' chair
And if the blues don't leave me
I'll rock away from there.

You been a hard-hearted mama
Great God! You been unkind
Gonna be a cold, cold papa
Cause you to lose your mind.

I'm gonna lay my head down
On some lonesome railroad line
And let the two nineteen train
Ease my mind.

Well it's trouble, oh trouble
Trouble on my worried mind,
When you see me laughin'
I'm laughin' just to keep from cryin'.

By the time he finished reading, I'm pretty sure there were tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. We talked for a few minutes about how deep our feelings of pain can be, but that sometimes just by saying them out loud, they don't feel so lonely any more.

“Yes, YES!,” I was thinking. “This is going so well! They really dig it! I'm such a good teacher!”

I asked a co-worker to put on the recording of “Trouble in Mind.” A few feet started tapping. A few heads were swinging back and forth. One of the teens said, “This is really cool.”

GO BABY GO! Slam dunk! Sing it, Nina!

And then it happened. Something horrific. Worse than the cocaine. Worse than the “Suicide is a Sin” sermon. Worse than anything I could have predicted.

The world's biggest RAT---carrier of the Bubonic Plague, eater of dead things, ruiner of lesson plans---ran in the front door and straight into the middle of the group. It was probably about the size and shape of a two-liter soda bottle, with its boa-constrictor tail whipping back and forth. I don't know exactly what happened after that...I think that one of the kids bashed it's head in with a flip-flop, and as it lay twitching on the floor one of the guards skewered it with his rifle's bayonet and tossed it out the open door. All I know is that when the excitement settled, I was still on top of a table, and no one was thinking about Nina Simone.

From there, it was a complete lost cause. My pathetic attempt to refocus the group and get them to sing the Blues together in a circle resulted in nothing but giggles and imitations of the rat's twitching death-throes. I had to have a sense of humor about it...after all, even I can take a hint, that after sermons, cocaine, and rats, some things are just not meant to be.

Here's the real kicker, though. After the rat disaster, one of my co-workers took over with the devotional part of the class. (We are, after all, a religious organization.) Jenny had prepared a few reflections for the group—Power Point presentations that tell life-lesson type stories of the sort one might receive in an email chain letter or a “Chicken Soup For the Soul” book. They were chock-full of smiling puppy pictures, cheesy flash animations of dancing flowers, etc. And would you believe that as I rolled my eyes, the teens sat there and literally Ooooooed and Awwwweeed over these slide shows? “Would you make me a copy of that, Jenny? Where'd you find that, Jenny?”

Praising Jenny on how well her presentation was received, I asked her where she learned to put together such fancy Power Points. She said, “I just download them from free websites, and they're always a big hit! The teens really liked my stuff, didn't they? ”

Well, if I hadn't yet gotten the message that I ought to take myself a little less seriously, It came through loud and clear last night. I had built myself up in my own mind as being such a thoughtful teacher, a radical pedagogist—How lucky those teens were to have me there to teach them! And yet it was the person who downloaded her presentations from the Internet that actually made an impact on the group! Maybe I'm looking at this all the wrong way...

I realized last night, as I was laying in bed, that I had started taking on some of the arrogance that I so frequently denounce in foreign aid workers. Who am I to say that a lesson on the Blues is more culturally appropriate or effective than Jenny's way of teaching?

This brought me to the larger question of purpose. I say all the time that I'm here to learn, to absorb, and to be changed. And yet I've allowed myself to develop a thought process that suggests the opposite. THEY should be learning all of these great activities that I've brought. THEY aren't absorbing any of this exciting teaching style that I'm trying to demonstrate. THEY are still doing things the exact same way...aren't they open to any type of change?

All this doesn't mean that I'm going to put less effort into my lesson plans. But it does mean that I need to be more vigilant about self-evaluating, re-assessing my goals, purposes, and attitudes here. If I wanted to be in control, the master of my own classroom, I should have just signed up to be a teacher in the US and ruled with an iron fist. But that isn't the kind of teaching environment I want to facilitate. I want to be a facilitator of the open exchange of ideas and methodologies. And that means that sometimes I have to let go of my pride and accept that maybe there's a better way to do things than my own way.

Foot in Mouth Day

2008-08-12T16:35:00.001-07:00

Just when I think I know what I'm doing, I have a day like today. I came into the office today, sat down at my computer, and started in on emails. I was pretty excited, because I received a few messages regarding the cross-country bike trip I'm planning for 2009...things are starting to come together, and it really made me happy.

Then the regional director comes in and pulls up a chair in front of my desk. He says, “Kendal, we have a problem. Yesterday, you called (co-worker) Jenny a really bad name, and she's very upset.”

Well...I was little dumbfounded. I certainly don't make a habit of cussing at my co-workers, especially in a second language. So I go over in my head what happened yesterday...

We were just getting warmed up for our theatre group after work. We were playing a silly little game, where everyone stands in a circle and has to assume animal characters (Elephants, Rabbits, Donkeys...) when the leader calls on them, and if they do it wrong, they're “out” and have to become the leader. It's sort of like 'Simon Says', but a lot faster. ANYWAY, Jenny was participating, and didn't enjoy very much being called “out” and going in the middle. It was becoming a bit of a power struggle between her and the teens, and eventually I stepped in and said, “The point isn't to argue about the rules, but to just keep going and having fun.” We played a few more rounds, and when Jenny got called “out” again, she wasn't too happy about it. I said to her, in front of the group, “Why do you have to fight it every time? You're so stubborn!”

Well, at least that's what I thought I said. And I admit, even that was a little strong to say in front of the group. I was definitely in the wrong there. But now let's go over the words that I used...

I've often heard parents say to their kids, when they are being stubborn, “Vos sos burro!,” which literally means, “You're a DONKEY!” I didn't know any other word for stubborn, and since I had heard parents say it to their kids, I thought it could be used affectionately to mean “stubborn.” So that's what I said. I told her she was a donkey. Not to mention the fact that I was frustrated, so I probably didn't say it with an affectionate tone. It probably sounded to her more like, “You're a jackass!” And I said it in front of our class.

So now I get why she didn't want to participate for the rest of the class. I didn't realize that the words I had used were so strong, and I was actually kind of proud of myself for using a slang word...thinking that was a sign that I really understood the language. I also thought it was particularly clever, since DONKEYS played a prominent role in the game we were playing. I thought Jenny was being a poor sport when she sat down and worked at her computer the rest of the night.

Well you can imagine the sinking feeling in my chest as the regional program director explained this to me. I felt like the jackass...having so insulted my superior, my mentor, let alone another human being, in front of our group. It's one of those moments that happens every now and then, just when I'm a little too confident in myself with the language, culture, or work that I'm doing...when I just get knocked down to size. And so today I also learned how to say, “I am so, so sorry that I did something to hurt your feelings...”

Much Needed Update!

2008-08-06T10:49:00.001-07:00

As is becoming my habit, it has been quite a while since I've posted. This is not for lack of trying, but rather because SO much has been happening, and I have a hard time writing about it in any time-efficient sort of way. Since I like to be overly-descriptive, I tend to write book chapters instead of blog entries. Unfortunately, once I start getting behind, I have an extremely hard time getting caught up, because there is just SO much to write.

For this reason, I now have a file on my computer dated from July 25^th, which I have been working on every two or three days since. In my typical style, I'm trying to give you a daily play-by-play of my time here in Bluefields. But here I am, on Wednesday of week 3, knowing that if I try to provide such detailed commentary for every single day, I'm never going to get an entry posted.

So while this is going to be hard for me, I'm going to try to give you the Reader's Digest version of what the past 2.5 weeks have been like, and provide a more detailed description later.

I got to Bluefields on July 21^st, and started my whirlwind orientation to AMC-Bluefields the next day. I received this orientation in an unusual fashion: A special guest from Norwegian Church Aid (one of AMC's donor agencies) was visiting the project site to see all of the projects to which NCA is providing funds, and I was asked to be her translator. Fortunately, she spoke English, because my Norwegian just isn't what it used to be. This meant that I followed her around (10 hours one day, 6 the next) providing steady stream translation for all conversations happening around her. In this translation format, a person has to listen to the Spanish conversation while simultaneously speaking out loud in English, because people don't often pause to allow time for the translator to catch up.

At the end of two days, I was exhausted, but well-informed as to all of the aspects that comprise AMC-Bluefields. The next three days in the office were just nuts, because our regional director was heading off to an international HIV/AIDS conference in Mexico, along with our guest from NCA and a few others. We mutually agreed to give each other the space to recuperate; I from my two-day intensive course in translation techniques, and they from the swirling hullabaloo of trip preparations. I spent the next three days getting caught up on email and rebuilding my website, the latter of which was an absolute disaster. (I got so stuck, I had to send an email to a fraternity brother from college, John Leahy, being one of the kindest and most computer-savvy people I know. He re-built the whole thing BEAUTIFULLY in a matter of hours. God love him.)

Week two was when things got really interesting. During our Monday morning staff meeting, my supervisor, Miss Jeannette, told me that I'd be in charge of working with a group of six adolescent prisoners in the local penitentiary. The prison psychologist had come by the office asking for help with these young men, who all will be due for release at some point in the next six months. Josefina, the psychologist, said that they were having severe self-esteem issues, and a lot of anger, and she feared that their attitudes were worsening, not rehabilitating, while in prison. During that Monday meeting, I was told that I would start working with them the next day, and would have two hours every Tuesday to work with them, while I'm here in Bluefields.

I spent Monday and Tuesday frantically preparing a lesson plan for our prison group, meanwhile accompanying the community health promoter, Jenny, on her visits to all the local elementary schools. Jenny was doing a workshop with the school teachers on how to recognize signs of abuse in their students. (Sexual abuse is rampant in Bluefields. In my first week here, there were five cases of rape against children under the age of 18. This is in a community of 40,000.)

Tuesday afternoon, the prison group went FAR better than I could have imagined. I had been made to think that these were hardened criminals, that I would have to work with them with bars separating the room for my own safety. That couldn't have been farther from the truth. I found that these young men were starving for positive reinforcement, and their life stories just came pouring out when they realized that Jenny and I were offering a sincere, non-judgmental ear.

The rest of the week was filled with more teacher workshops at various elementary schools. (My role in the workshops was to be Mr. Icebreaker, providing fun communication activities to get the teachers laughing and thinking about forms of non-verbal communication. Blindfolds, funny hats, and charades were involved.)

Friday evening, at about 5:30, I look up at the calendar and see “ADOLESCENTS” written in big letters for Saturday, August 2^nd. I asked Jenny what that activity was, and she told me that it was MY theatre group. 'Oh REALLY!,' I'm thinking. And how many are coming? Just SIXTY.

There was obviously a mis-communication. I had asked if Jenny would help me form a theatre group of about 4 or 5 teens, to put on educational dramas about HIV/AIDS. She said that was great, because they already had a group of about 60 teens that were trained as community health promoters, and we could select the group from that. (This conversation happened during Monday staff meeting, week two.) I didn't hear anything about it after that.

But Jenny and I had mis-communicated, and she had invited all 60 teen health promoters to come hear about the theatre group, and decide whether or not they wanted to join. This was a bit shocking for me...since anywhere from 0-60 teens could decide to join my “class.” Working in a very small space, this could have presented a huge challenge.

I tried to keep my cool, and prepared a lesson plan for all 60 of my potential theatre club members. I didn't sleep much on Friday night, fretting about how it was going to work out the next day. I went to work early Saturday morning, and continued to iron out the details on the lesson plan.

At 2:00, our scheduled start time, no one was there. 2:30, there were 3 students. Okay, so having too many students wasn't going to be a problem. By 3:15, we had about 15 students. I took them through a few drama exercises, and explained what I'd like to do with the group. I told them I'd need a group of actors, and a stage manager. All I got back were blank stares. Admitting defeat, I told them I'd go get our snack ready in the kitchen, and they could talk amongst themselves.

I was in the kitchen, licking my wounds, when a soft-spoken young woman named Berjenelle slips in, and in her lilting Creole accent asks if she could be my stage manager. She's too shy to act, but is really organized and likes the idea of participating. Thank GOD. I might just have a stage manager without any actors, but it's something. As we pour soda into plastic sandwich bags, (that's how you serve drinks here...you tie the bag off at the top, and then bite the corner off and suckle to drink), she reassures me that her peers were interested, but just shy. When we get back into the main room, there are 7 names already written up on the chalkboard. We're in business.

Now that we're halfway through week three, I have both of these projects going full swing. I'm working with the theatre group three days a week, and the prisoners just once (though today I'm slipping in an extra session with them, so that they can learn to sing the Blues). It's going really really well. I'm collaborating with lots of friends and family back home to come up with creative lesson plans, most of which involve music. I've got an actor friend putting together a behind-the-scenes video tour of his Broadway show, in Spanish, to give my group a little more context as to what theatre is and can be. I've got Blues musicians sending me song suggestions and book chapters from as far away as India. I've got college buddies creating karaoke versions of Broadway tunes so that I can teach them to our group without the help of a piano. I'm working together with people from a previous internship at Children's National Medical Center in DC, to facilitate a letter/art/poetry exchange between my prison group and one of their teen health clubs. I've been chatting with a professional therapist friend back home to get ideas on how to boost self-esteem in my prison group. I've got my sister sending me lecture notes from her psych rotation in nursing school about mental health in the prison system.

It feels so affirming to have so much support from my network of family and friends back in the US. Everyone has been so quick to lend whatever assistance they can, and it helps me feel like I have a real purpose in being here. I think our group activities give real meaning and encouragement to the teens, and I'd like to think that it is meaningful for my friends and family back home to feel like they're actively contributing to people's lives down here. I have the very fortunate position of being in the crossfire of all this positive energy...and hopefully I am able to channel it to the teens, and then back to my friends in the US in return.

These three weeks haven't been without low points. Just this past weekend, one of the young prisoners tried to take his own life by consuming pills while the other five teens looked on. They all live in a very small cell—about 12'x12'—and I know that it was a fairly traumatic experience for all of them. Thankfully, the teen is physically okay, and is getting a lot more psychological attention. He was able to talk about the experience openly and constructively in our group yesterday, and I just hope and pray that he continues to feel supported and that we can help him improve his overall well-being.

Today, I'm headed back to the prison to see if I can't teach these kids to sing the Blues. I've got the feeling that this group has some heavy stuff they might need to get off their chests. And since they like to sing and play the guitar, why not do it the way Nina Simone or John Lee Hooker would? As my friends/pastors Reid Hamilton and Stephen Rush argue in their forthcoming book, Better Get It In Your Soul,

“We sing a SAD song to make us feel…well, not happy….but maybe OK with our sadness! The Blues reflects an emotional/spiritual cycle. Now what’s amazing about the Blues is that this happens over and over and over again. One Blues song could easily include 100 cycles of this lifting up and setting back down. What’s the message? Well, for us who believe in God (and all of these Blues Musicians CERTAINLY believed in God) it’s the message that God is there, with us in our suffering.”

I hope you'll keep all of these projects in your thoughts and prayers these next few weeks. And when you're feeling down, hop on over to the record cabinet, pull out a scratchy old B.B. King record, and know that it's okay to feel blue, so long as you get out there and sing about.

Photos, anyone?

2008-07-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

Hi friends! I'm getting settled in Bluefields, enjoying the Caribbean food, people, and Creole language. I'm hoping to get an update posted soon, but until then, how about a slide show of all my adventures during orientation? If the slide show doesn't load well, visit the online album here. They're all stolen from my friend Brent, whose camera is far superior to my own. (Plus, I'm in the pictures from Brent's camera!)

Love to all of you,
Kendal

from the desks of loved ones...

2008-07-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Reflections on travel/absence/adventure---take your pick---by two of my favorite poets: Ken Graber (my uncle, writer from Illinois/Wisconsin and one of the smartest people I know), and Elizabeth Bishop, (white girl from Massachusetts who traveled through Latin America translating poetry in the early 20th century). Enjoy!

on thinking of mary’s father. . .

i've seeded in my deep mind
the request for a poem
about a room or rooms people go to

and find the smells of fathers
and lovers and children and friends
who must,
given the weight of their absence,
be needed elsewhere.

the more i listen
the better i hear mothers

describe finding their children
and, without fail,
noting the smell of them,
eyes gone soft and voice hushed:

children pungent-fresh, like pumice and sweat,
minty, soap-shrill and apple-fresh,
unshowered and just showered --
tousled, and new as a star.

do you remember,
as you put them to bed now,
the singularity
of their arrival at birth –
crazed and ravenous to drink
in this new re-creation of yourself?

yesterday, mary called after
one afternoon
in her father’s basement
and all those hours on the floor,
his sweaters crushed to her face.

what would you, i, give today for a
single deep inhalation
of our loves --
father, grandfather, grandmother,
mother, sister, brother,
each friend with their own name --
lost (already) to other worlds?

-Ken Graber

Arrival At Santos

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,

with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,
some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,
and some tall, uncertain palms. Oh, tourist,
is this how this country is going to answer you

and your immodest demands for a different world,
and a better life, and complete comprehension
of both at last, and immediately,
after eighteen days of suspension?

Finish your breakfast. The tender is coming,
a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brilliant rag.
So that's the flag. I never saw it before.
I somehow never thought of there being a flag,

but of course there was, all along. And coins, I presume,
and paper money; they remain to be seen.
And gingerly now we climb down the ladder backward,
myself and a fellow passenger named Miss Breen,

descending into the midst of twenty-six freighters
waiting to be loaded with green coffee beaus.
Please, boy, do be more careful with that boat hook!
Watch out! Oh! It has caught Miss Breen's

skirt! There! Miss Breen is about seventy,
a retired police lieutenant, six feet tall,
with beautiful bright blue eyes and a kind expression.
Her home, when she is at home, is in Glens Fall

s, New York. There. We are settled.
The customs officials will speak English, we hope,
and leave us our bourbon and cigarettes.
Ports are necessities, like postage stamps, or soap,

but they seldom seem to care what impression they make,
or, like this, only attempt, since it does not matter,
the unassertive colors of soap, or postage stamps--
wasting away like the former, slipping the way the latter

do when we mail the letters we wrote on the boat,
either because the glue here is very inferior
or because of the heat. We leave Santos at once;
we are driving to the interior.

Elizabeth Bishop

The Third Wheel, or, Tales of the Infirm

2008-07-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

I needed to get out of the house for a minute, here, visiting old friends in Matagalpa. The whole city is in an uproar, so it seems…or maybe it’s just my social circle. Roger, local tattoo artist/painter/number-one-chum of Noel and crucial member of the Artesanosites, took his one-way flight today to Amsterdam, where he will live with his Belgian girlfriend until further notice. Stephanie, my faithful travel companion/former housemate/current girlfriend of Noel will board her one-way flight back to Seattle on the 23^rd, having just completed her year of study under the Fulbright scholarship. Bobby’s beautiful girlfriend, Emma, who is nearing the end of her own Fulbright in Ecuador, is visiting for a couple of weeks and just arrived today. Natalí, Artesanos’ Barista/Acupuncturist/Noel’s sister/ex-girlfriend of Roger is coping with the departure of one significant other (Roger), and the re-arrival of Chapu, Spaniard/Musican/Significant Ex-of Natalí/current boyfriend of Sandra, with whom he is traveling in Nicaragua for three months.

Things here feel a little bit awkward, at the moment.

I’m just passing through, on my way to Bluefields (I leave this coming Monday), trying to catch all these loved ones in their various moments of transitioning. It’s hard, wanting to spend time with them as they prepare for their respective journeys, but also wanting to give them the space to be with the other people they need to spend time with. Hard being a couch crasher, when Stephanie and Noel are in their last week together, Bobby and Emma are reuniting after several months, and Sarah’s got company. So I’m in the cybercafé, planning my next move.

Actually, I'm at the cybercafé, praying that I won't write this post, only to have it get lost when the lights flicker on and off, as they've been doing for the past little while. I love this place.

I wrote earlier that my start-date in Bluefields has been delayed a week, which turns out to be not such a bad thing. In addition to spending all of this bittersweet but necessary time with friends who have one foot out the door, (I understand better now how it must feel for my friends and family when I hop on a plane every few months), I'm also just inching on over to the "all-better" side of MESSED UP. It all started last Thursday night, after an unremarkable meal of rice and beans and tortillas...

(Disclaimer: This is where those of you grossed out by my euphemisms such as "gastro-intestinal pyrotechnics" should jump ship.)

It starts as a grumble, that turns into a gurgle. Always the grumble first...at which point, you think, 'Naw, it can't be...I feel fine!' And then it gurgles (grumbles being distinct from gurgles in that the latter sounds like a child sucking the last drops of a milkshake through a straw, as one wonders, 'How in God's name could that be happening inside me right now?'), at which point, after dropping to your knees and reciting a few Hail Mary's, just in case, even though you're not Catholic but it seems to be the thing to do here, you do some emergency profalactic rehydration, grab your roll of toilet paper, anti-septic wipes for the seat, miner's headlamp for the walk to and from, and make a mad dash through the dark towards the out house (no running water in these parts, folks!).

And what do you find? Not a hole in the ground, as you might expect. But a two-holed, oval-shaped contraption covered in several peeling layers of multi-colored paint, with a plastic toilet seat, unfastened, balancing on top. The 'toilet' is divided down the middle into two chambers: In back, the bottomless chasm that ends in unspeakable horror, and in front, a small little cup of sorts, with a hose leading out the bottom and, disturbingly, across the floor and into a nondescript hole in the back wall. I wish it weren't so, but the front of the toilet most closely resembled a beer bong. (Or at least, what I imagined a beer bong to look like. I've only ever read about them in books about those kids who used reefer in college.) Most mysteriously, a large bucket of white powder with a scoop sat on the floor in front of the seat. The instructions on the back of the door of the out house read:

1) Poop in the BIG HOLE. Pee in the LITTLE HOLE. If you miss, you have to clean it up.

2) Don't pee in the BIG HOLE, or it'll smell really bad. Make sure the HOSE IS FASTENED to the little hole, or your pee will spill on the floor.

3) Throw your HYGIENIC PAPER in the trash can, not it in the BIG HOLE. When you're done, toss some ashes from the bucket into the BIG HOLE.

4) Make sure not to get ashes in the LITTLE HOLE, or the hose gets clogged.

As I make my mad dash to the toilet, I'm thinking...

Ah....NOW I get it, a composting toilet. It totally makes sense, keeping the waste products separate. Keeps them from stinkin' so darn much, and the ashes help neutralize something down there in that chasm of darkness. Ok, logical...

YEAH RIGHT, THAT'S WHAT I'M THINKING! I'm thinking, WHAT THE HECK? TWO HOLES? YOU MEAN YOU WANT ME TO AIM WHAT'S GURGLING DOWN THERE? ARE YOU NUTS?

It was a high-stress situation, trying to read all the instructions with all of the holes and the various things one was supposed to, and NOT supposed to put in them. Turns out, I had no need to worry. The grumbling and gurgling was actually a ruse. A ruse that would last all night. My body did not, in fact, want to violently wring out my entire GI track, but rather make me FEEL as if it wanted to wring my body out from hair folicle to toe nail, recruiting much time and energy and sweat and tears and physical strength and determination...only to find out that someone had put ashes in MY TUBE (refer to Rule 4 above), and there would be no need for any ashes OR 'hygienic paper' that night. Ouch.

Unfortuantely, something else came out of that night in the outhouse...I woke up at about 3am in a fever, only to discover that somewhere between bearing down and bedding down, I had pulled something in my back. And it was BAD.

Now, I know this is going to make me sound like a big wuss...and my family back home, knowing what a hypochondriac I am, they're all gonna think I'm just being dramatic. But I've never dealt with such back pain, or muscular pain, for that matter, in my life. It was like a charlie horse in my lower back, that spread up into my shoulder and around to my front side. The pain was actually nauseating. I found myself short of breath, because anything but the shallowest breathing put pressure on whatever nerve or muscle was acting up, and caused this shooting pain that went all the way down my right leg. I was doubled over, and couldn't find a position, standing, sitting, or laying down, that provided any relief.

Thankfully, Friday was the last day of our orientation, and the field team in Matagalpa was kind enough to let me skip the day's activity, and try to sleep it off. Unfortunately, though the cramping that sent me to the out house in the first place went away pretty quickly, the back spasm and fever lasted, full throttle (with only one morning of relief Saturday morning) all the way through Monday night.

I went to a private health clinic, was poked and prodded and sampled in every which way, only to be diagnosed with "low white blood cells." That didn't help the back. (It's worth noting that when asked for a stool sample, I was sent to a bathroom with no running water or toilet paper, and a clear plastic dixie cup with no lid. Glamorous, no?)

Next stop, a 'natural medicine clinic,' where I was examined by a burly Nicaraguan doctor (burly not being a word often associated with Nicaraguan men, mind you). He squeezed every acupuncture point on my body, all 388,364,826 of them it seemed, making notes on a diagram. "Does this hurt? What about this?" This question, my friend, when repeated so often by a big dude squeezing you and poking you with his thumb, could reasonably be answered 'YES! They ALL hurt when you squeeze THAT hard, you big bully!' at any point, leading me to believe that this method of diagnosis is subject to some errors in objectivity.

He then asked, "May I inject you?" To which I responded, reasonably, "Um...with what?" Apparently, in his parallel universe, local anesthetic injected at accupunture points provides double the benefit of the traditional ancient eastern practice, for which I have the utmost respect in it's unadulterated form. Being open to an adventure and praying for relief, I consented to this injecting fiasco.

First off, it was a big ol' needle. And it was attacted to what looked like a cross between a tranquilizer and a caulk gun. THINK BIG. He started on my back, pinching the skin up, insterting the needle, and injecting. As he worked his way around my entire body, injecting my feet, arms, sternum, shoulders, and yes, even my GUMS with this big needle, he recited his diagnosis:

"It could be malaria. Yes, yes, very likely malaria, based on your fever symptoms. But the particular muscle that you've thrown in your back worries me. That muscle is associated with the gall bladder. It very well might be gall stones. Do you have a history of gall stones? No? Well, let's see. This point on your chest, where the needle is right now, does that hurt? Yes? Oh dear me, that's your kidney. Have you been drinking calcified water? Because you might very well have kidney stones, and a bladder infection at that. And it's certain that you have colitis...no doubt at all in my mind about that one at all. Yes, well have to inject you here, here, and here for that infection in the bladder. But, come to think of it, have you been driving on bumpy, unpaved roads? Because it could just be that your back got messed up from all that driving...But you feel better now, don't you? The shots are working, I can tell. What do you mean, you don't feel better? Give it some time, it will. If it doesn't, come back for another treatment."

He wrote a prescription for about 8 different natural herb supplements that I needed to take to cure each of the tentative diagnoses he had given---all of which could be conveniently purchased from his secretary at the front desk. Even in my pathetic state---back wrenched, body covered in what looked like mosquito bites from this evil, injecting maniac---I had enough sense to graciously decline the drugs, grab my bags, and run...

...straight into the arms of the massage therapist at the Japonic (Japan/Nicaragua) Clinic across town. What can I say, I was desperate. The massage salon at this clinic looks like a World War II army infermerary; a big room with high, whitewashed walls and 30 cots lined up in two rows of 15 on a linolium floor. Thankfully, there are curtains hung from clotheslines, partitioning each cot into a separate unit...at least until the oscillating fan kicks up a breeze and blows your 'front door' open. They have you strip down to your skivvies, lay face down on the table, and wait. The curtain opens, the fan turns on, and all you can see are shoes. White hospital sneekers, and opaque white hose are all I know of the voice that whispers sweetly into my ear, "Anything in particular hurting you, my love?" How much time ya got, lady?

This mystery woman, for all the sweetness in her voice, is kinda a wuss in the massage department. She rubs me down with all the strength of a 4-year-old playing with hand puppets. And while this is soothing, and certainly relaxes a few of the superficial hair follicles on my back, it doesn't do too much for the stabbing spasm that makes me want to surgically remove my own trapezeus.

As she wraps up, the sound of 29 other massage therapists simultaneously doing the "chop chop" drifts throught the room. Thanking her shoes, as she breezes out before I can see her face, I take ten minutes to get dressed, as it seems my condition has worsened. Looking into my wallet, I see that InjectoManiac and ChopChopShoes have left me so broke, I can't even afford a cab home. So I walk six blocks in the Managua sun (Think SELF-CLEANING OVEN) to the nearest ATM, stopping only three times to catch my breath, since I haven't fully inhaled since Friday morning at 2:59am.

After the ATM, I feebly wave down a cab driver, who, taking pity on me, offers me the local, as opposed to the Gringo price. He gets me to the bus station just in time to see the Matagalpa bus pulling away, at which he kindly honks his horn, allowing me just enough time to half-jog, half-crawl to the door. I get inside, but my backpack doesn't, as the anxious driver closes the door on me, pulling away. In fact, I don't believe he ever came to a full stop to let me on.

When my backpack and I finally find a seat, I turn to the guy and hand him my fare ($3), of which he hands $.60 back and says, "Sorry buddy, this isn't the express, this is the local." That means, instead of a two-hour, non-stop trip home, I get to endure the THREE hour, people-packed-in-like-sardines, stops-every-two-miles-to-let-on-the-traveling-preachers-and-panhandlers ride home.

When I FINALLY get there, wheezing as I plop down on Stephanie's couch, I find relief in the form of Roger's tattoo table (doubles as a massage table in times of crisis), Stephanie's elbow ("Harder. OUCH! SOFTER! Oh geez, that's the spot. OH LORD! Higher. OH NO, THAT'S THE SPOT! OH MY GOD, I NEED A BREAK!" "Kendal, please, we do have neighbors."), a hot shower, over-the-counter muscle relaxers, and a tube of Bengay ("OUCH! That's so hot! No one told me it would be that hot! It burns!").

I spent the whole day Tuesday, and much of the day today, lying on the couch, reading a book, watching TV, and playing my guitar. Sometimes, poking and prodding and products can only do so much. What you really need, is a good friend's home to relax in, her healing hands to rub on the Bengay, and some time alone with your book to feel better. Lesson learned.

Signing off,

Señor Dramatico

Major Update...

2008-07-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gents, contrary to popular belief, I haven't died. I've been terribly slack about posting a blog entry for quite some time now, for which, I'm sorry to say, I don't have much of an excuse. I can only say that the past two and a half months (has it really been that long since I've written?) have been full of major transitions...about which, it seems, I have had neither the time nor the words to describe for my faithful readers out there. My sincerest apologies. I would promise to do better, but I would surely disappoint. So I'll just keep doing the best that I can.

I'm in the air over the Gulf of Mexico at the moment, en route from the United States back to Nicaragua. There is so much to tell you, I'm not sure where to begin. First, I have to decide between paying $4 for a bag of peanuts or $3 for a bottle of water...after having paid $15 just to check my one, under-weight suitcase. These airline cutbacks are really starting to make me reconsider traveling. Maybe that's a good thing...

I've been all over the map these past few weeks: New York for the Broadway premiere of GLORY DAYS, a musical written and directed by friends of mine from elementary school days; Washington, D.C. for my sister's graduation from her master's program and my brother's graduation from high school; St. Louis, Missouri for three weeks to perform in the MUNY Theatre's premiere of THE PRODUCERS; Road trip back to D.C. with my sister, via my Grandma's house in Arthur, Illinois; New York again for a few days to see some friends in RENT before it closes on Broadway in September; Back to D.C. to catch this flight back to Nicaragua...all in a few weeks.

Why the pause in my work in Nicaragua? Besides having all of the aforementioned good reasons to be spending time in the states---time which my supporters at the InterExchange Foundation were kind enough to allow me---things took an interesting turn down here in Nicaragua right before I left: The last time I posted a blog (I cringe knowing how long ago that was) I was still working with my dear street kids in Matagalpa, holding class for a couple of hours a day in various subjects (reading, art, even personal hygiene). Right before I was gearing up to head back to the US, I heard the unfortunate news that several of my “students” had been involved in a series of robberies and hold-ups, some of them armed with knives, including stealing the stereo system out of a car belonging to Artesanos' manager. (Artesanos is the café where I had been giving my daily classes.)

A typical class at Artesanos, with (L to R) Donald, Emmanuel, Santiago, and Milan.

Two things came out of this twist of events: Obviously, the owner of Artesanos, being concerned for the safety of his establishment and his customers, had to ask that we discontinue meeting at the café. Secondly, several of the involved persons were arrested and taken away to juvenile centers, often described to me as “work reform camps.” This was where things got strange.

To give a little context, you should know that many of these street kids are members of “street families,” wherein an older kid/teen/adult offers “protection” to the younger kids in exchange for a very large percentage (if not all) of a kid's earnings from begging and stealing. It is essentially organized exploitation, as anyone who has ever read Oliver Twist might understand. Being that I'm a foreigner, and was spending most of my time hanging out with a gang of street kids, it is only natural that I might be suspected of running such an operation. In reality, the kids I worked with probably did have a street “father,” as they're called, though I never met him or even saw him around. But, for all the police knew, I could have been the man behind the curtain.

In the aftermath of the Artesanos car stereo theft fiasco, the police told my friend, Noel, (Artesanos' owner), “That gringo” probably shouldn't be poking his nose around looking for the street kids, and definitely shouldn't be seen hanging out with street kids anymore. There was never a direct accusation made, but the implication was clear: Neither I, nor Artesanos, should ever appear to be aiding and abetting this group of “hardened criminals.”

It's hard to articulate my feelings about the whole event. I was certainly concerned about the kids: The term “work reform camp” was being thrown around far too easily, and I didn't like the way that sounded. And of course I was frustrated, especially because the main perpetrator of the crimes was Milan (the kid with the burns on his face that I met at Christmas, for you faithful readers out there), who is both the youngest and brightest of all the kids I had been working with. I had the most hope that he could break the cycle of violence and desperation at a young enough age to start building a better life for himself. I felt guilty, too, because Milan had recently stopped attending our sessions, and I hadn't put too much pressure on him to come back, thinking that it was best to give him his space and let him come back on his own. And of course there was ANGER. I had really been making some progress, especially with Santiago, on the reading front. We had learned the alphabet up to the letter Q, which, considering the deteriorated status of their glue-mutilated little brains, I considered to be quite decent. And I was confused, too: When I went to go inform my kids that we could no longer hold classes, I found that every single one of my regular participants---including those not involved at all in the robberies---had vanished from the streets overnight. Some of the child service organizations in town had patchy information: So-and-so went to an orphanage in Managua, we think. And So-and-so got hired by some foreigner to be a house-boy/butler of sorts. But I couldn't get any hard facts. Worst of all, I felt that the cloud of mistrust that the police had cast over me and my intentions in working with the kids had somehow tainted what had actually been accomplished.

When all this ñaña hit the fan, I had only a few weeks left before the start of my contract out at the theatre in St. Louis. I spent a couple of those weeks trying to track down the kids, to no avail. And it didn't really seem fair to go around looking for a new place to volunteer, only to disappear a week or two later to go back to the US. In the end, the timing probably worked out according to some greater plan. I was dreading telling the kids that I had to leave for a time and put an end to our daily meetings. I would still certainly choose that to what actually happened---especially not knowing where the kids are or how they are doing---but at the very least, I was spared feeling like I had abandoned the kids. Maybe I could have done more to fight the system, track down the kids, and get them out of trouble. I can second-guess myself about that for as long as I want, but the fact of the matter is, at that point in time, the situation was taken out of my hands. And as much as I craved closure on that chapter of my time in Nicaragua, I think that I had subconsciously prepared myself for something like what happened; expecting the worst, but hoping for the best.

And so it was with extremely mixed emotions that I said my goodbyes to all of my beloved Matagalpino friends, and embarked on my whirlwind tour of the United States. I made good use of the time...catching up with old friends, visiting lots of family along the way, and earning a little bit of dough to keep this crazy Nicaraguan adventure going. I have to admit, though, as I'm in the middle of yet another transition, all this coming and going is taking it's toll on me. I think there is a very good reason why the Peace Corps doesn't allow it's volunteers to go home during their time in-country. On the one hand, I probably would never have come down to Nicaragua if I had thought I would never get to visit my family in the states. But on the other hand, in hindsight, I realize that the repeated transitioning back and forth has been harder on me and my family than it's been worth. I'm fairly convinced that the next time I head back to the States, it needs to be when this whole adventure is said and done, whenever that might be.

Saying 'Goodbye' to friends in Matagalpa...

About two weeks have gone by since I started this blog entry (I got on the plane for Nicaragua on June 28^th, and here we are on July 13^th), which seems to indicate that my promise to do better posting timely blogs still needs a little work. But at least now, after getting my feet back underneath me, I can tell you what I'm actually going to be doing now that I'm back in the country.

Before I left, I made contact with a group called Acción Médica Cristiana (Christian Medical Action), a Nicaraguan organization that provides basic medical services and health education to the poorest populations on the Caribbean coast. The Caribbean coast is a semi-autonomous political region of Nicaragua, separated from the Pacific side by a nearly-impassible mountain range and dense forest region. Nicaraguans think of each region as practically its own country: The Caribbean is inhabited by Costeños, or Coastal people, and the Pacific side by Españoles, or Spanish people. Historically, the Pacific was colonated by the Spanish, and the Atlantic by the British. Therefore, the Pacific peoples are descendants of Spanish Conquistadors and ingigenous people, speak Spanish, and look like most other Central American peoples. The Costeños, on the other hand, are either descendants of indigenous peoples themselves, or descendants of African slaves, brought over to work the land under the British empire. They speak a variety of indigenous languages (Miskito and Rama being the most common), a version of English known as Creole (which I actually find harder to understand than Spanish), and Spanish as a second language. They cook different food (I hear shrimp costs about $0.35 a pound there, and lobster costs just a few bucks...and everything is made with coconut milk), listen to American Country Western Music, and love Reggae. The houses are built up on stilts, due to the propensity for flooding during the Hurricane season, and instead of roads, most places are reached by boats up and and down the streams and swamps. I've been told it's a lot more like Jamaica than any other part of Nicaragua...though I haven't been there yet (or to Jamaica, either) to confirm this analysis.

AMC is one of the major health care providers in the region, which is far weaker economically than the Pacific side, hindered by the fact that one must either fly, or take a long boat ride to reach some of the most remote corners. AMC works in several different project sites, focusing on a variety of health-related issues, such as child malnutrition, sustainable farming, dental hygiene, and HIV/AIDS education. I'm hoping to post some more detailed info about AMC, if I can get my hands on some of their publicity materials when I get back to Managua on Monday. (If you go WAY back to the first blog posts, AMC was the group that put out information related to Hurricane Felix relief efforts back in September.)

For the next two months, I'm going to be volunteering with the field team in the coastal city of Bluefields, working on an HIV/AIDS prevention and education project. Specifically, my job description reads:

Support the capacitation activities directed to the group of adolescents.
Form a theatre group with the group of adolescents in order to educate the population on themes related to HIV/AIDS, child sexual exploitation, and violence, taking into account the cultural aspects of the region.
Form a dance group with the group of adolescents.
Support the education program that is being developed in the penitentiary system in the city of Bluefields.
Support the development of a student health program that will be implemented in five schools in the city of Bluefields.

Anyone who knows me, even a little bit, would surmise that this job description has me very excited. It's pretty broad, which, I've been told by the volunteer coordinator, is an invitation to take some initiative and focus in on something that suits my interests. This is such an amazing opportunity for me, because it gives me a chance to work with an skilled group of Nicaraguans, after so many months of working independently, yet still provides me the space to do the things I'm passionate about.

I've been thinking a lot about what this time in Nicaragua has meant for me, in terms of what I'm going to want to do with my life after it's all over. Especially after not having performed in a while, going back to St. Louis to do a show really reminded me that I'm a performer at heart, and will always be. I didn't realize how much I was missing theatre, music, and all the rest, until I got a taste of it again. I have also loved working with this group of children, and I'm now convinced that, wherever I am, and whatever I'm doing, it will always be important to me to have a social cause to which to dedicate myself.

In trying to figure out how to blend these two aspects of my life, I realized that I've already been lucky enough to participate in a couple of different organizations that use the arts as a means of education. My senior year of high school, as an intern at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., I helped organize lead a weekly poetry and photography workshop for teenagers living with HIV/AIDS. My mentors in that program showed me how effective the arts can be in giving voice to feelings that might otherwise be inaccessible, in building relationships between people with very different lives, and in meeting people---especially young people---exactly where they are.

Those same qualities were reinforced by a brief experience I had in college, when I was brought on as a theatre consultant by a health education program in western Michigan. The organization trained a small group of teenagers (children of Latino migrant farm workers) to become health educators to their peers, helping them develop and perform short plays to illustrate the points they were addressing, regarding positive decision making and personal responsibility. I was only with the group for a short time, having only been invited to deliver a couple of workshops on basic theatre techniques. But based on the enthusiasm of the young volunteers, I could see how effective this organization was---if only in the lives of the volunteers in the program. They were so invested in the program---they even asked if we could put in an extra four hour session before I had to go home the next day.

All this is just to say that I'm excited to have another opportunity to put into practice the idea that the arts can be used for social purposes. That is, we can use creative forms of expression in order to be more effective educators. How much more effective would a play be, written, directed, and performed by young people, meant to educate their own peers, rather than having an old white guy lecture them with slides and handouts and statistics for a couple of hours? The idea isn't new, but it isn't an area that I've had too much experience in before, and I'm excited to try my hand in it again. I'll be letting you know how it goes, of course.

The orientation process that AMC has provided me, and Brent, the other volunteer, has been so thorough, thoughtful, and helpful. I really wish that I had some of their guidance from the outset, almost a year ago. We just spent the past two weeks in a rural community an hour outside of Matagalpa, shadowing the field team on their dental hygiene workshops. We went around to two or three different schools/plantations/community centers every day, toting our faithful puppet Ramon (with a very large set of false teeth and a giant toothbrush) to demonstrate proper brushing techniques. We talked about alternatives when there isn't a toothbrush or toothpaste available (a clean rag wrapped around your finger dipped in salt does the trick, apparently). I taught a song about self-esteem (familiar to any of my Maryland childhood friends as “I'm smart, and I'm strong, and I'm ready for whatever comes along...” of Blue Sky Puppet Theatre fame, only translated into Spanish by yours truly). And then we handed out cookies and soda, and played soccer and red rover and other high-energy games. We were aware of the irony of handing out sugar after our dental hygiene lessons, but the fact of the matter is, that kind of cheap, highly-processed food is all that people can afford in this neck of the woods.

We just got back from the countryside yesterday, and I'm now heading back to Managua for a few meetings, before getting started out in Bluefields next week. Hopefully, I'll do better with the blogging now that I have fun new features to play with on this new location. Pictures will be coming soon.

Must split...

...and catch the bus to Managua, so I can get there before dark. I hate getting a cab from the bus station in the dark. Shady characters abound.

Thanks for reading, and especially for your emails. Take care, and keep checking back.

Much love,

Kendal

Same Witty Commentary, New Location

2008-07-13T11:42:00.001-07:00

Hey Faithful Readers!

Welcome to the new location of my blog! Turns out, the MySpace location just isn't as user-friendly...especially in posting pictures. So I'm gonna give this one a try...hopefully I'll get some more pictures posted this way, too.

(A preview of things to come....These are the beautiful folks I've been hanging out with for the past few weeks

I've got a fresh new update to post...hopefully that'll happen in the next couple of hours. I'm also gonna try to get my old posts transferred from MySpace over to this location, and maybe even add a few pictures into the mix. In the meantime, if you want to go back and read old posts, you can find the old location here.

As always, I'd love to hear from you. Leave comments, send an email, send smoke signals...any form of communication is appreciated!

Ta ta for now...
Kendal