The Three Sectors

My undergraduate studies focused on governments' ability to enact change.  Though that capacity is great,  it is often misguided by political leaders' ambitions providing an incentive to maintain the status quo, and on a global scale is inhibited by nations' territorial sovereignty.  Even the political body with the most extensive multilateral support, the UN, has had its hands tied by China's unmoving commitment to noninterference.

Deciding that large-scale political change moved far too slowly for me, I committed to a year in the non-profit sector, hoping a small-scale operation, if limited in geographical impact, could at least enact change more quickly than government bureaucracy.  Working with Manna Project, I have seen, by absence rather than example, that if an NGO is adequately focused in its mission, and governed well, it can indeed see a measurable impact (preferably, impact would be measured).

Yet, I cannot help but think that there must be a manner to address global poverty that has the scope of the public sector and the intimate impact of a focused non-profit.  It is with a desire to find such a vehicle of comprehensive change that I turn my hopes to mobilizing that final sector, by far the largest and most dynamic.  If consumers and investors are encouraged to view private capital as mutually inclusive with social responsibility, the world may see some unbelievable results.

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.

Nicaragua's First Lesson

Each place in the world, with its unique history, geography, and people, has its own lessons. If you are silent in a place long enough, you can hear the secrets that a culture bestows subtly on those visitors willing to listen. Reflecting on the past two weeks, having spent them with a family on a packed upper lower-class street in downtown Managua, I feel that I have heard Nicaragua's first whispered lecture. Woken every morning either by the proximity of our neighbor's PBC pipe shower or the volume of the avocado and mango hawkers shouting their prices outside our padlocked front gate-door, and frequently falling asleep soaked in my own sweat, as well as that of the children whose nightly street games begged our participation, unable to take my dripping shower with the water cut off, I listened. The life of the average Managuan will teach even the most recalcitrant student that here, the delineation between surroundings and self is not quite so rigid as its American contemporary.

A fly makes his way across the screen of my laptop. A pause to think takes my eyes to his spasmodic jaunt, his movements often too fast for my eye to process. My thoughts formed, I avert my eyes without incident. Two weeks ago I would not have suffered the intrusion, but here his erratic stroll is welcome.

1 Corinthians 12:22

If nothing else, I pray that a year in Nicaragua reveals the truth of Paul's assertion in his first letter to the church in Corinth that, "those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable."  Show me why I need Nicaragua.  In our indigence, your surfeit.

Looking Ahead to Nicaragua

To picture what my life will look like one week from today and thenceforth would exceed my creative foresight, but it is atypical that I have yet to try.  Any trip or event of consequence has always been preceded by those daydreams in which I am already the man I aspire to be.  And, always prolouged by the acknowledgment that I have a long way to go, that I proved too timid or weak to say what I dreamed I would say or take that action I promised my imagination I would.  Yet, with only seven days separating me from Nicaragua, no tales of what I would do have been fabricated, no improbable standard has been set.  Strangely, my eager imagination has laid dormant in anticipation of this, my greatest adventure.  With a college diploma has that imagination convinced itself to tame the reckless hope of youth's wild dreams, or could it be that my heart has finally shown the courage to promise those dreams a better story than they would dare to predict?