Joy Is Resilient

Our visitations last Thursday to families in our nutrition program took us through the heaviest fumes my lungs have yet braved. With burning eyes and failing voices, we walked through white smoke so thick that shadows cut visible swaths of black in the milky air. Though worried for her, it was no surprise that Maudelia's two year-old daughter, who she carried at her side, carried in turn a coarse and incessant cough.

As we rounded a corner of the single-room school that services the area, I noticed a boy gazing down at us from his perch in the leafless branches of a tree that barely rose above the corrugated metal separating his house from the next. He wore only tattered shorts and splashed mud on his chest. He looked to be well past seven, the age at which Nicaraguan children begin their schooling.

After trading his name for mine I asked, "Y porque no andas en escuela?" And why are you not in school?

In the broken Nicañole that Chureca teaches its children, he patiently explained that he was not permitted the luxury of an education because the house could not be left unattended while his father worked in the trash.

Left with a piercing feeling of impotence and that now familiar loss for words, my gaze fell through the fumes to my feet and the mange-riden animal not far from them. The seconds passed, and not knowing what else to say to my new friend whose unfortunate predicament I had just reminded him of, I absent-mindedly directed my next words to the dog at my feet. "Qué nota, perro?" What's up, dog?

Laughter suddenly burst through the air. Surprised and confused, my downtrodden spirit eagerly soaked in his broad smile and careless cackles. And, in that moment, as his laughter infected the air, I knew that it was no less real than the smoke it joined.

As living conditions range, nothing that I have known has any liberty to call itself Chureca's peer. This reality in mind, I am constantly perplexed that thoughts of my mornings in that desolate place are inexorably... joyful. Though seemingly quixotic, I cannot ignore that each visit brings cheer with a frequency almost insultingly disproportionate to the surrounding destitution.

Nicaragua's second discourse, taught in strife witnessed and smiles wielded, has been that whether life exists in privilege or penury, whether found on marble floors or shattered glass, joy is resilient.

A Thank You

I have always wondered at the mechanics of gratitude. It is a particularly trying dilemma when I feel, or know, that I am incapable of returning the kindness received. Attempts and failures to duly thank those incredible lives that have been placed into mine have led to the following realization, that every action holds the potential for two orders of dedication.

First, there is the direct recipient of the action. The soul on the other end of the hand we hold. Second, there is the indirect recipient. That is, the name in which we reach out our hand, or the recipient of that action's honor. With dual beneficiaries, each action may thus be given twice. My suspicion is that the latter beneficiary is equally, if not more, important than the former. I pray that I will come to understand the latter more intimately. And so, a thank you.

To that brilliant woman who has so often opened my eyes to the beauty and power of creativity, I dedicate my leadership in our creative arts program. To the man whose wisdom I cannot ignore, though he himself may be oceans away, who has dedicated his life to job creation, I dedicate my involvement with our budding business development program. Finally, for that angel of a woman I am blessed to call my mother, to whom I owe my nurturing and my life, I dedicate my role in our children's nutrition program, which provides oatmeal, milk, and vitamins to Chureca's malnourished children.

The immeasurable love I have been shown throughout my life may only begin to be paid tribute through reflecting that love forward. And so, it is with these dedications that I fully enter my year of service.

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Attempts to match my words to my deepest emotions expose that I am given to use of the phrase, "there are no words to describe." Though my affinity for hyperbole perhaps leads me to overuse the construction, there are times I will defend the appropriateness of the title "indescribable." The term has rigidly applied to relationships with loved ones, materializing in thank-you's and goodbyes. One week ago, a pile of trash shattered my understanding of that steadfast and hallowed word.

It has taken a week and three return trips to come to terms with my inability to describe Chureca. It is so bad. So bad. In a way, when I say that there are no words, I mean that there are too many; more accurately, too many to be efficient. That place is so bad. So bad. Words have incredible power, but if I may be louder I must be.

Last Tuesday we walked the long and sodden path out of the dump in near silence. The occasional glance over my shoulder revealed again the circling of those black and outsize birds. That ominous cloud fixed in Chureca's sky reminded me with renewed sorrow that what I neither dared nor desired to describe survived my wish that it had been a terrible dream.

In my room at Vanderbilt a small flier that once caught my eye hung just above the light switch. It read, "Compassion = Action." If I may be louder, I must be.