Alumni Update: Julie FryeSemester at the Casa: Fall, 2001 January 2006 Update Email Dear Family and Friends, I write you on Superbowl Sunday, with what I believe is factual evidence that the Seahawks are actually one of the two teams competing. I struggle to believe the news, but it doesn’t really matter because Nicaraguan coverage of the Superbowl isn’t exactly extensive.
Over the past few years there has been an effort to privatize water in Nicaragua, but there has been a lack of public support because it would create a monopoly over the system, meaning rising costs and little state regulation. In an effort to gain popularity for this idea, water has been coming to the poorer barrios with less and less frequency while it is still in public hands, with the statement that we need to privatize it in order to have access to it. In practice that means in the barrio where I work water comes for two hours each day: from 2 to 4 AM. At that hour every woman in the barrio crawls out of bed to wash dishes, clothing, and flush the toilet if she has one that flushes. She fills up bottles for drinking and bathing during the day, and then goes back to bed for another hour before making breakfast. If you think it isn’t tiring to get up in the middle of every night to do household chores you should see these women’s eyes. As they always tell me, "It’s bad enough that the doctors are on strike, the buses are on strike, and the teachers will go on strike next week, but we need our water." I wish I had an answer for them, but I’m left speechless as those of us in the middle class and wealthier barrios never lack water. When I’m not at work eating large portions of food and listening to their struggles, I am at home, just a neighbor away from great entertainment. There are the ones across the street who invited us to Christmas dinner, which began at midnight. There are the religious next door neighbors who often wake me up at 5 in the morning with their singing to God, but for whom I have a special fondness because where else can your next-door neighbor sneeze in his house and you say bless you from your house because you can both hear each other? The most constant visitors though, are the mounds of neighborhood children who stream through our house. Last week was no exception, as I was rushing out of the house when 10-year-old Roger came to the door wanting to make a cake for his family. Our house is famous in the barrio for our cakes, mainly because most Nicaraguans love their sweets, but don’t have the money to make a cake, driving many of them to eat spoonfuls of sugar before bed every night. I told him to come back the next morning at 10 and we would make the cake. Then, for the first time ever, he asked me what he needed to buy, which only endeared me more to this child, and I told him just to bring two eggs and I would supply the rest. An hour before expected, as I was in the midst of mopping and balancing our house budget, Roger came over with not only the eggs, but also his little brother Marquitos, his cousin Lester, and another friend, for whom I never heard his name because I couldn’t make out his whisper amidst the yelling of the other three. The cleaning quickly came to a halt as the flour, sugar, and all other ingredients began flying around the kitchen with sticky fingers as evidence that they were equally interested in testing the batter as trying the cake. Just when I thought things were going about as well as could be expected, I asked Lester to put a toothpick in the middle of the cake to see if it was done. Obviously a foreign concept, he scooped it like a fork, creating a huge hole in the middle, causing Roger to chase after him as they jumped on and off the furniture in hot pursuit of each other. I eventually slowed them down enough to show them the accident could be repaired, just in time for Roger’s mom to come inspect their work of art. I’ve never seen those kids light up with pride like they did that day. In the end, if Nicaragua has taught me anything, it’s the resilience of the people, and the way they solve problems. Eventually the doctors, bus drivers, and teachers will come to a resolution with the government and go back to work. Roger and I have been practicing our checkers game and his oral reading skills which have boosted his self-confidence. As for the farm, I made it clear that I could still love Nicaragua without owning a piece of land with a few cows, leaving us with only the problem of the water. God willing it will be resolved soon. I hope you are well, and always love hearing from you. Take care, ___________________________________________________________________________ Four years since leaving the Casa, I find myself finishing the first of a two-year commitment as a Jesuit Volunteer in Nicaragua. I’m not sure a “two-year commitment” is a fair phrase, because I’ve learned that whether or not I’m physically in Central America, I’ve really made a lifetime commitment of accompanying the vast majority of our world in their walk. I currently work with two Nicaraguans and one Salvadoran in a micro-finance program in Managua where we lend money to women to start/amplify their small businesses. The experience isn’t necessarily life-changing to them: it’s not tearing people out of poverty and their problems, but it is providing a little extra to pay for their children’s education, necessary medical care, and other emergencies that seem to be a constant reality here. While it makes a small, positive change in these women’s lives, the greatest effect is watching the changes within me. I thought I came because of the skills I had to offer, and realize now that as important as they are, my desire to listen is really what the people want. I believe one of the greatest contributors to poverty in our world is our ignorance of others, and the Casa was instrumental in beginning to remove my ignorance. How blessed I have felt in knowing that is only the first step, and the longer I stay, the more I realize it isn’t just about studying abroad, but a way of life, and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more fully alive. ___________________________________________________________________________ Dear Family and Friends, A New York Times editor once referenced Managua saying, "When I first got here and rode to the hotel, my impression was that this was the ugliest place I had ever seen in my life. After being here a few days and getting a chance to look around, I can be sure. It is the ugliest place I’ve ever seen in my life." While I find the description humorously exaggerated, a couple of us housemates recently found ourselves needing a short break from our picturesque home. We decided to visit a friend, Marta, one of the banana workers who had been in downtown Managua protesting, but had recently returned to her home for a little while. We arrived in her small town, about a 3 hour trek from Managua, where the landscape was a green I thought could only be found in Ireland, with a volcano towering above in the background. It was heaven. In true Nicaraguan style we spent the next twelve hours meeting virtually all of her siblings, children, grandchildren, and parents, most of whom live within a few blocks of her. At every house we were invited to share in the food they had: in one case that meant her mom offered us delicious hot tortillas and homemade cheese she had just made. At another house they were cutting down coconuts, and split one open for us to drink the milk, which was refreshing given the heat. Then there was her daughter, who offered me a chicken foot to chew on, a sign of good luck. I’m pretty sure I could have done without the luck. As it was getting late we finally made it back to Doña Marta’s house where we were trying to figure out the sleeping arrangements. Eight year old Maria Luisa who shares a twin bed with Doña Marta, the accepted custom down here, asked if I still slept with my mom. "No," I explained, "my mom never let me sleep with her because I always stole the covers". Well the real problem has more to do with how much I move around, but as Maria Luisa begged me to let her sleep with her, I just kept telling myself I wouldn’t move in my sleep. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed when I woke up in the middle of the night to find I was half crushing the small child. Fortunately, in the morning she only mentioned how great she slept, adding with a laugh, "You really do steal the covers". Doña Marta’s family was not the only family to leave an impression on me that weekend because after doing the morning chores on Sunday, she asked if we had time to visit a sick neighbor. As we approached the one-room house, Marta asked a woman standing outside washing clothes how Santos was doing, and he and his dad soon emerged to talk with us. I can’t give an adequate description of what the 9 year old looked like, and maybe it is better that way, but he had a skin disease that covered his entire body from his neck to his toes, with all the skin a redish-greyish color and raised. His ankles were swollen and his feet had what looked like huge cuts in them. He said he wasn’t in pain, it was just hot and uncomfortable. The dad was practically in tears explaining how the doctors had been prescribing expensive creams, but that the creams hadn’t done any good and they had very little money left. The desperation of parents down here is almost as heartbreaking as the actual suffering of their kids sometimes, because their helplessness is as great as the need. I felt like we were abandoning them and their problem when we left awhile later, with only the offer of our home if they were able to get a transfer to see a specialist in Managua. What I find even more disheartening, though, is that a bill called DR-CAFTA was recently passed in the U.S. Senate. It’s a free trade agreement between the U.S. and the Dominican Republic and Central America. One of the stipulations is it subjects Central Americans to certain U.S. patent laws, making a lot of the medicines down here that much more expensive because it lengthens the period before generic drugs can be introduced to the market. I kept thinking of Santos case, and how already the medicine is almost prohibitively expensive. I can’t even imagine a day when only U.S. name-brand medicines will be available, making it truly impossible for his family and so many others to get critical healthcare. The effects of this bill are far-reaching, and I realize from a U.S. perspective it can be difficult to see any reason why it would be beneficial to have barriers to trade. Yet, I can’t help but see it from my current perspective, where this agreement will make certain medications subject to intellectual property laws for longer periods of time. I can’t help but think about the farmers who will have to move to the city, or illegally to the U.S. or Costa Rica because the can’t compete with U.S. farmers who are granted subsidies, an advantage farmers down here are prohibited from receiving. I can’t imagine a growth of the sweatshops near Managua, where the workers have the advantage of making enough money to feed their children, but where they are stripped of any rights, making the Sally Lee Gifford case nothing out of the ordinary. There are certainly days here where I am amazed how the longer we live here, the more we get involved in a seemingly endless cycle of problems and frustrations. Yet the Nicaraguans have taught me that we can’t get stuck in the problems, that there is a lot of goodness and beauty here that the editor from the New York Times couldn’t see in such a short visit. In many ways it can only be seen through spending time here, through watching the cycle of success and failure, but most of all that the people continue to pick themselves back up from their problems, trying to take care of each other a bit too. Roger, a neighbor child, just came in to ask me what I was doing. I told him I was writing my family and friends because I hadn’t talked to them in awhile. He said very astutely, "you miss them, don’t you," and then gave me a big hug. I can’t think of a better way to sum it up. Take care of yourselves friends. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Love, Julie __________________________________________ Favorite quote: "If violence is forgetting or ignoring who we are, nonviolence is remembering and recalling every day of our lives that we are all equal, all sisters and brothers, all children of God, all already reconciled to one another and God.” |
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