Martin´s Musings
Touching Souls in Nacoscolo
The day had begun early in Nicaragua; 4:00 Am I think, though I wasn’t wearing a watch. The roosters began to crow a couple of hours before sunrise and the birds began to sing; one bird singing such a complicated song I thought I was dreaming until she repeated it over and over again. The cows began to bawl shortly after. I shifted uncomfortably on the Thermarest air-mattress that separated me by ¾ inch from the concrete floor of the village chapel; a one room building, 20´ X 14´housing 13 men.It was our third day in Nacascolo; a small rural village 90 miles, but 4 hours drive from Managua. Our delegation consists of ten men ranging in age from 16 to 68. This was my second visit to the village. In the intervening year electricity had come to the village, though not running water. Staying in rural Nicaragua, or the campo as it is called, is a rustic experience complete with outhouses, cold water bucket showers, simple, delicious food cooked on wood stoves and animals everywhere; cows, pigs, chickens, horses, dogs, cats; all part of the ebb and flow of everyday life.
As the day wore on I found myself involved in many activities that are not part of my normal routine. After a breakfast of refried beans, bread and pineapple I headed to work on the clinic, nearly completed after a year of work by brigades like ours and that of the villagers. A concrete block, three-room building that will serve people from miles around who formerly had to walk as far as 2 ½ hours to the nearest clinic which might or might not have a doctor. This clinic will be well served by a health-promoter, selected by the community, trained and supported by Drs. Laura and David Parajon to function much like a physician’s assistant. Nacascolo´s health promoter, Victor Urbina, will be assisted by a health committee in preventative measures that will make an enormous difference in the welfare of the people of Nacascolo and surrounding villages.
The clinic at Nacoscolo is one of ten (more are planned) in the county of Boaco. Laura and David recently completed training 15 new health promoters. That makes 15 communities in rural Nicarauga who will have basic, life saving, life enhancing health care where none was available before. It means 15 villages where babies and mothers will survive child birth, where children will be much less likely to die of the completely preventable diseases that are the leading causes of death in the compo.
Today I was part of a three person team mixing concrete: ten 5-gallon buckets of sand, five 10-gallon buckets of rock, two 94-pound bags of cement, mixed on the ground in a great mound with 15 gallons of water. This, then, was hauled in 5-gallon buckets to the craftsperson who poured it into wooden forms containing rebar (steel reinforcement) creating four pillars to hold the roof for a covered front porch which creates a forth room in the clinic.
Juan Carlos, the foreman for our work, taught Vinny and me to hoist the 5-gallon bucket to our shoulder in one smooth movement; we got close a few times. After a lunch break I joined David Howell (Mitch´s dad) who in his 20´s served in the Peace Corps in Columbia. We walked five minutes to the village elementary school where he guided three of us, using hand tools, in preparing a sample section of a raised garden, crucial for rainy climates; something he taught while in Columbia. Tomorrow, after forty years, he will teach another group of children and their parents a skill that can help put food on their tables.
We returned to the clinic and resumed a project, begun the day before, painting the interior of the clinic. The other project of the day, with which I was fortunately not asked to help, was the digging of a new latrine behind the clinic; they were digging in a rock bed. Members of the community and our brigade worked side by side on all of these projects. And as the week progressed the relationships were definitely building in spite the language barrier.
At about 4 PM I had just enough time to take one of those bucket showers before we gathered in the house of the school teacher for a worship service led by Victor Urbina, who serves as Delegate of the Word (a trained catholic lay leader). There were 25 of us crowded into the largest room of the house with another 25 or more looking in the windows and doors. Four women, accompanied on guitars played by a man in his 70´s and a boy of about 15, led the singing. They sang loudly and enthusiastically though they all wore serious expressions on their faces.
The service formed a picture I don’t want to forget; the makeshift congregation of villagers and brigade members, old and young; the guitar music; the choir of four women; the men and boys looking in the windows and standing around the doors. Calves were bawling, chickens were clucking, children were laughing and playing in the front yard of the house not 20 feet from where we were sitting, a baby chick ran across my feet.
Sitting there in the warmth and serenity of that gathering I was overwhelmed with the privilege that has been extended to us. These brothers and sisters have invited us into their lives; to live with them, to work with them, to eat and play and celebrate and worship with them. In this week in which we accompany the villagers of Nacoscolo we are reminded in the most personal way that poverty is not an issue to be dealt with. It is the daily struggle for basic survival of people with names and faces. It is Victor and Matais, and Fani, and dona Sylvia and Raynaldo and Paula and Fidal. Poverty is mother and fathers who want for their children what I want for mine.
It is this personal accompaniment to which Jesus calls us. Not only sharing from our abundance but also engaging with those in need long enough and deeply enough so that we can touch each other’s souls. This, more than any material thing we provide is what gives hope to these loved ones in their struggle. And this is also what causes those of us who make the trip from First Baptist to return to our lives profoundly changed. I am so grateful to have been part of the experience.
The Peace of God,
Martin