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.
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.
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...”
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 25th, 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 21st, 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 2nd. 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.
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!)
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.
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 23rd, 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.
