Medicine and Rocks

April 1st, 2009. Managua, Nicaragua.

I had coco puffs for breakfast this morning. As I sat down and took a few bites, the board chairman said to me, “You’re not eating coco puffs are you?” I said, “Yes, why?” He said, “There’s rat poison and feces all over their cereal down here. I would stop eating that if I were you.” Not totally believing him, I took my next bite. He looked at me strangely serious, I said, “seriously?” as I put down my spoon and gave him a puzzled look. “No, really…April fools.” I finished my cereal in peace.

Today we headed to Del Rio, to the St. Augustine clinic where we met a doctor who works for Rainbow. We took the Pan American Highway for about an hour north (I believe) and picked up our guide for the day, Erica. She led us to the house where the doctor was treating patients that day.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been off-roading in a vehicle, but it’s not much. You know things like going mudding or taking a rental truck and plowing through three feet of snow (thanks Justin), but I have a feeling that I was on an excursion that would match up with the best of them. You see, to get to where the doctor was practicing, you don’t normally use a vehicle…in fact, a vehicle won’t even get you to the house…you had to walk no matter what. Most people, well, a good number of people in the rural areas have horses, and they are not for breeding or showing or racing…they are for transportation. There is a reason. A mild description of the road we were on would go like this: Imagine a relatively tropical/desert looking topography with the upper layer of ground being made of semi-smooth rocks averaging a size a little bigger than my head. I’m not talking rocks and stones that have been smoothed out over time into a street, I’m talking about a road that makes my drive across Kenya seem like a limousine ride. And, we were on that road for a good 30 min. Lucky for us, it was only one of three such roads we would encounter today, but this was by far the worst. The guys that have been coming down here for the last several years also agreed that it was by far the worse road that they’d seen.

So, at the end of the road, we arrived at this beautiful place with an amazing lush setting. (lush for dry season anyway). The house sat on the edge of a cliff that opens up to a huge lake, with very green surroundings and huge mountains in the background. It reminded me of the scene in ‘Land Before Time’ when they finally reach the ‘promise land’, or the land of the ‘five star leaf.’[or whatever they called it]

From here we trekked back across the road from hell, which I have since learned is a lava field actually, and went down another road similar in conditions to the newest housing development. They are building 35 homes, and the last few are almost complete. In May, they will have a ‘opening’ ceremony when all the houses are complete and the owners get to move in. We spoke to the head of construction for the development and spoke to the leader of that community. They are very excited to see the benefits that will come from the houses.

The reason these houses are such a blessing came evident in our next stop. We drove ½ mile and went to see a family that had purchased one of the houses. This family lives in a mud house, with a tin ceiling that has multiple holes in it. These two things mixed together do not make a good combination come rainy season. The house floods and the walls melt away. The home is most likely re-built every year.

The unique thing about this family is what they are doing to get themselves out of poverty. They started a family business of making hammocks several years ago. They would but the yarn from the same man who bought the hammocks from them and then sold them in different markets. Apparently the man sold them the materials at such a high cost and bought the hammocks at such a low cost, that the family never actually made any money. They received a micro-loan from Rainbow, two actually, and within the last twelve months, have increased their profits many times over because they are now buying the materials themselves and making their own yarn. They are making enough that they were able to purchase a new house and anxiously await moving to the new place in May.

From here we made a pit stop to meet an old friend of the guys in Rainbow. Her name is Victoria. When they first met her, she was more or less crippled in some way and couldn’t walk. He children would carry her around in what you and I would call a plastic lawn chair if she needed to go anywhere. In September, they were able to bring Victoria to Springfield to have surgery. The results were amazing, and today she jumps for joy and walks everywhere. To show just how much she went through, and just how much she is loved, we drove as far as we could to her house, and then had to walk the remaining 20 min just to get to her house. The path to her house was full of bigger rocks than we had driven over earlier. As we arrived, I discovered that we merely did all this just to say hello. Her entire family met us as we came over the hill to her house. She was sad that we could not stay, yet tears of joy welled up in her eyes as she embraced those she knew.

It is people like Victoria that give you hope that there is still good in this world and there will be until the end. She is one of many stories that exist in the developing world that should humble you to your knees and reflect on the meaning of life for a while. Any amount of problems that I personally face, just don’t compare to the struggles of the everyday man/woman and child throughout the world. The day we spoiled rich kids learn to stop complaining and start acting on our natural God-given instinct to do good in this world, we may finally find true peace amongst the chaos of life.