Missing the point

I had the unique experience (for a broke college student) to have my feet in both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean within 48 hours. Neither time was a particularly clean experience, taking place in two fine and very different armpits of The World: Nicaragua and New Jersey.

My trip to Nicaragua was for ten days with my church from Damascus, MD. It wasn't quite a missions trip, as we went to churches already established and, to a certain degree, thriving in terms of most everything (except funding). We stayed on a farm (don't tell the customs people please!) just outside of Managua, the capital city, for about five days, and traveled to extremely poor villages in and around Somoto and Somotillo for five days.

As with most third-world countries, the streets have no names. You get directions by remembering where the Old Cathedral used to be in the 1980s and then count blocks. It's tricky. Also, the roads are very rarely paved, and never paved well, leading to the longest bus ride (seven hours) of my life. Then we would pull into these places that were living in 1880 and do things like hand them Bibles and soccer balls and frisbees and flashlights. We would pray with them and sing with them and teach the kids some Bible stories. Then at night we would go to the house we were graciously put up in. My brother Daniel and I spent our time in Somotillo in a house that was one room, about twice the size of my bedroom, with cinder blocks, logs and cardboard making up the walls and roof. The floor was dirt. There was no electricity or running water.

I hated it, and realized that while this was some sort of sick cultural experience for me, for these people, this was their life. They would know no other way.

Reaching Wildwood, NJ for the annual Wildwood Beach Ultimate tournament the day after I got back only caused me to further furrow my brow. As people were starving in Nicaragua, people I had met, here was I, dropping way too much money to stay near the beach in a hotel. Here we were, unable to finish our pizza and funnel cake.

I thought about American imperialism while I was in Wildwood. All the sweatshops in Managua and all over that country, all those ads for Coca-Cola, even the poorest villages. Those "On the Run"s next to some gas stations we grew to adore, the only places in the country (that I know of) where you could have air conditioning and a flushing toilet. America has Nicaragua, and many nations, in an economic stranglehold. It was always sad. Seeing it was enraging.

I thought of the beach we went to in Nicaragua, some small tourist trap we went to for the afternoon as a treat. The weather was beautiful, but the water was more or less impossible to be in, on account of some brown, dark sludge that was on the surface. And while the busy season is in the winter for them, it was unreal how empty it was. Unable to make this oasis easily accessible or completely desirable, the economy was missing out a potentially very good tourist industry to an extent. Even Wildwood, where in a matter of three days Sara stepped on a sewing needle, Tracy found a scuba knife in the surf, I stepped on glass and a nail and Dan stepped on something that made his big toe bleed a lot, they had money flowing in at a tremendous rate. Because in America, if the beach sucks, build a roller coaster.

I was angry. Where was the justice in this? How could I, as a Christian, just be content with seeing this? What could I do? Where were the picket signs? How could anyone be anything more than glad to be an American? How could they be proud of what we are?

And then it sank in. This isn't why I went to Nicaragua, to be jaded and cynical. I met people who had nothing, and yet fed me three times a day. I met people who didn't speak my language, nor I theirs, trying to tell me how much it meant to them that I had come. I saw people thanking God for what they had, and really, truly meaning it. I saw middle class youth giving up their summer, and last spring, and this fall, and all year round for the next many years, to help their church grow and prosper, so they could do more good in Managua and in the impoverished areas more and more as time goes on. I met a lady who showed me her home, built for $1,200 completely on the offering collection of my church and dozens of others. And I watched her eyes tear up as she smiled proudly when I said her house was beautiful.

And I saw God as I stood in a circle of Americans and Nicaraguans with my eyes closed, praying in our own languages the Lord's Prayer, Our Father reaching across the cultural divide, the language divide, the economic divide and showing us that we are all brothers and sisters of the same heavenly family.

I waded a little deeper into the freezing Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by joyous, drunken ultimate players but alone in my thoughts. I thought of my friends in Nicaragua. I thought of Adrian, whose funeral I missed while I was away. I thought about the past year, the good and bad. I thought of my family, and my friends, past and present.

And for the first time in a really long time, I thanked God for what I had. And really meant it.