The Last Waltz, Adios For Now, Muchisimas Gracias

The Last Waltz, Adios For Now, Muchisimas Gracias

The rain's been coming down pretty hard as of late, falling at its pleasure at all hours of night and day.  A few weeks back, an especially strong afternoon rainstorm rolled in as Cully was coming home on the 1:30ish Mariano bus.  The road was a river, and as he disembarked, Miriam was there to meet him with a raincoat and a smile.  She had fought her own torrent of water to get to the bus stop - ideally situated at the bottom of a hill frequented by every cow in El Tololar - and thus had been standing in a feces flow for the better part of 15 minutes. They hiked in shin-high water up the hill and made it to the house with a mostly-dry computer and minimally soggy groceries. 

The storm roared on all afternoon, and the first 1/2 hr after arriving home was set aside for sweeping water of the patio, shifting Olle's bed out from under a leaky roof, and monitoring the multiple trickles springing from Miriam and Cully's ceiling.  The electricity flickered but stood fast, yet ironically the water shut off.  The clothes drying on the line had got soaked for the third day in a row, the flies were seemingly everywhere, and it had been another rough day of schooling on the home front.  It was a seminal moment; was it time to get annoyed and just frustrated at the general dreariness of the situation? Or, just laugh in the face of aggravation?  In the end a third option was decided on, one that included popcorn, cloistering in a room, singing a few songs, and having a frank conversation about the challenges and learning's of living in Nicaragua for a year. 

We often take things for granted when they are a part of our everyday life.  These things become almost like background noise - maybe it's your neighbor starting their car every morning, or the mini-mart cashier you say hi to on your evening commute.  We don't pay much attention to them, but they are comforting in their commonness, their normalness. They make us feel safe because they are always there, present but not intrusive.

Here in Nicaragua, there are plenty of things we will miss; some that we've taken for granted, others we've just gotten so accustomed to being around.  We'll miss (some of us will) the chirping sounds of myriad lizards in the beams above our beds, every chirp a sign that we can sleep knowing that lizzy will eat the night bugs.  We'll miss the majestic views of smoking volcanoes (Telica, San Cristobal) all around us, and the cows, horses, and trees that serve as living, munching, growing images, framing the landscape.  We'll miss the children in their white and blue school uniforms, walking to and from school down dusty or muddy roads or across wide pig-inhabited, green peanut fields. 

We'll miss the sound of Carlo or Aquiles sharpening their machetes the night before a big chopping, slicing or cutting job.  We might even miss the "thunk, thunk, thunk" sound you hear on the chicken bus, produced by an errant branch whacking each window frame as it quickly approaches and then smacks you - mooshed up against the side due to the large woman's behind taking up 3/4 of a seat meant for no more than three 7-year olds - upside your head.  

It'll be hard not to be able to fist bump the bus terminal attendant who goes out of his way to connect with us as we board the bus to El Tololar, or the smiling old man with glasses who sells us our "La Prensa" newspaper at the far-end of the terminal.  Oscar, the gentleman who runs our favorite venta (small stores inside houses) will be missed; he always smiles and comments about how excellent Harlan and Olle's Spanish has become.  It will be hard to find a place in Boston to buy enchiladas as good as Alma's little comedor, which doesn't look like much but tastes like fried heaven after a long, dusty bus ride. 

We'll miss the impromptu stop-bys at our house throughout the week by any number of friends; Beto, Adilsa, Yader, Fernando, (usually with his most recent work of art) Marden, Miriam, Carlo, Chico, Don Leonel, Yessica, Denis, the baseball boys, Belkes, Franklin, Maynor.  Miriam will miss her special times cooking with our friend Ivania, and the extraordinary time we've had just to be together as a family.   We'll miss the people the most; their stories, smiles, and openness to others.

As of this writing, none of us will miss the flies, gnats, mosquitoes, biting ants, mangy, barking dogs, water shortages, or the incessant dust and dryness in the winter followed by equally incessant rain and summer mud.  We won't miss the 2-4 am rooster cacophony, followed by the 5-7 am rooster cacophony (well we might, in a "that was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience" sort of way). We likely won't miss our pee bucket, or having to use a latrine for #2 for a year, or only having cold, usually dark, dank outdoor showers.  "Missing" might not be the correct word for how we'll feel about not having to dodge or smell roadside cow diarrhea after a storm - what do these bovine eat anyways? More fiber, por favor.  We just won't feel too much nostalgia over no longer having to wipe white mold off the handle of our kitchen knife after only a two-day absence or needing to scrub pink/green mold off our room doors after one too many days of unshakeable humidity.    

We had always been told that before peanuts (mani) came to town, the only previous destructive crop that had frequented these parts was cotton.  Both mani and cotton (algodon) have their own stories  which you can read more about in previous chapters.  Tempate trees represented another foreign effort (this one by Austria) to cultivate, grow and harvest a non-native, questionably beneficial product.  This was in the early 90s, and it seems that the Tempate strategy  (as is often the case with many well-intentioned but misguided non-indigenous money-making schemes) started off strong.  Tempate definitely gets the environmentally- friendly nod over both cotton and peanuts, planted as it was with the goal of producing bio-fuel from its seeds.  An added , perhaps unexpected advantage of the Tempate seed - as relayed by locals - is that if you mix the juice from seven seeds in one liter of water, it is very useful as a remedy for both kidney problems and incontinence.

Tempate may have ultimately had very positive environmental and economic returns but for a pesky worm. This omni-present little guy  began devouring the tree's seeds by year three. A noble attempt was hastily made to plant another tree - called Nin - next to the Tempate.  Nin has naturally occurring anti-worm repellant properties and seemed just the tree for the job.  But Nin, too, promptly succumbed to a different insect plague, leaving both the Austrian investors (and the Nicaraguan farmers they had given hope to) with nothing but a novel, slightly acidic, pee-suppressing juice - made from the few trees that remained - as their profit. 

Last Saturday morning's events are a great example of how a typical weekend day often unfolds for our family in El Tololar.  It started with roosters - of course - and then an extended stretching time for Miriam and Cully, both of whose body's have required regular exercise to combat their painful bed and soccer-induced cramps and sores.  During exercises, Mimi the cat could be seen along the fence-line playing with an injured bird.  Not five minutes later, the bird - now dead - was behind our stove being batted around by Dark Paw, the kitten we had gifted to Don Leonel four days earlier.  Dark Paw, along with our other kitten Dusty - so named for her obsession for sleeping in our dust bin - both resisted living elsewhere and  returned long enough to pee in the kitchen corner and ravage the poor dove. 

After Cully had managed to scoop the mangled bird out of the kitchen, feathers flying everywhere, a sizeable scorpion appeared on the kitchen wall, not far from where Miriam was bleaching our mold and spider-ridden suitcases as we prepared for our return home.  We killed him, just as Olle returned from playing with Rachel, our five-year old neighbor who he graciously and patiently plays with on many occasions.  Rachel had apparently informed Olle that she no longer wanted to play, following his revelation that her kitten Figaro - whom she was supposedly looking for- had in fact died more than five months ago. 

The rest of the morning's events included Cully stepping on a giant ant hill as he tossed the pee bucket contents not far from where Grey, our neighbor's puppy, was sipping water out of the kitchen sink outflow pipe, milk-flavored this day as Cully had inadvertently tossed sour milk down the sink rather than in the backyard garbage hole.  Grey had a bad looking gash on her side, likely from either a dog fight or from being launched into the air by a cackling Rachel.  Later that day, in the same milk canal, one could find Miriam and Carlo's pigs wallowing, an activity that has resulted in the side of the house (including the nearby shower) smelling increasingly like a genuine sty.   

Here in El Tololar, it's easy to forget that being connected to everything through the internet is the norm back home.  It's definitely not here.  There is no internet at our house or anywhere nearby, so we have grown accustomed to living without being wired.  We no longer check our phones every five minutes for that telltale buzzing sound that foretells an incoming email. It's really cool to be unlinked, even if only for a year.  And yet, it's also hard not to be able to connect with family and friends on a regular basis. So we try our best to hold the two in tension.

Before we arrived 10 months ago, there were a lot of things to be scared or worried about, and even now as we leave, we know we have been protected supernaturally.  Living with children in an environment with minimal access to healthcare is not easy, and something parents here just have to deal with.  A day has not gone by in Nicaragua where Miriam and Cully have not thought - with some apprehension - "Where the heck are Harlan and Olle and are they all right?"  Besides the scorpions, tarantulas, snakes, and disease-infested fly presence, we have succumbed to many undiagnosed rashes, ailments, and peculiar disorders.   Then there are the stories of dangerous encounters that we hear about, or see etched on others people's mugs.  Both Larry and Alicia, for example, have scars on their faces from running full speed into barbed-wire fences, Larry's having barely missed scarping his eye out.  Harlan and Olle cross and run near barbed-wire fences every day....and jump out of trees, play near rusty nails and broken glass, and....Thank God they are safe!

There came a point, about a month a half ago, when collectively we kind of hit our local food threshold.  It started with a stab at eating less beans, brought on by a rather rapid and unexpected increase in daily, frijole-induced flatulence.  Even the sight of beans began to make us nauseous at times, and soon rice, platano chips, and various sweet drinks began to join the food strike.  It came in waves, and we have eaten beans and many local foods since, but legume-isitis is apparently a thing.  We'll definitely miss the Nicaraguan food after we leave, but we won't mind having a few burgers and a pizza pie or two in between.

Conversations about mosquitoes and the diseases they carry - while you are actually in the process of getting stung by mosquitoes - can be unnerving.  We recently had a final conversation with our 97-year old friend Maria Jerez.  As we conversed with Maria - on a patio surrounded by mud, standing water, and other excellent larvae breeding grounds - she kept shifting in her chair, complaining about the severe pain she had in her joints from a bout three years back with Chikungunya, an extremely dangerous mosquito-borne illness that produces awful symptoms akin to or worse than its more famous disease cousins Malaria and Dengue.  As Maria talked, we couldn't help but imagine what poison our legs and arms were being injected with.  We've had similar conversations with Denis (joint pain in his hands from Chikungunya), and Aquiles - who can't move his right arm at night in bed, a gift from the same sickness several years back.

At times, we have conversations about what we have actually accomplished since we arrived last September 1st in El Tololar.  It can be hard to quantify results when you haven't had a specific job title or description.  Yet this predicament has forced us to look deeper into our daily lives, exploring and mining for the experiences and moments that have made a difference for others, and for us.  So following a post-dinner family meeting under our rancho not long ago, we came up with the following catalog of accomplishments.  Each and every one of them has been made possible because of the Tololamos team, the great people of El Tololar, and your unwavering financial and emotional support.  THANK YOU!

·         We built a house: Actually, Aquiles, Nestor and Carlo did, but many of you helped provide the funds for the house - about $6,000.  As of this morning (June 30th) the house - a darned pretty one we might add - has been passed onto our friend Miriam.  Her family will live there, an asset they would never have been able to afford on their own.

·         A horse: For about $160 (the price of a room for one night in a not very nice NYC hotel) we bought a horse for Ivania after her previous horse died.  The new horse has enabled her to continue bringing food to the school to sell to students each day, providing an invaluable income to her family.

·         A plan: We assisted Wilmar in developing the first business plan for his computer business.

·         A business:  We provided $500 as an initial start-up investment in Wilmar Quintero's computer business.  That investment, along with other support and a lot of sweat equity on his part, enabled Wilmar to launch his computer business (repairs and sales) in León.  Wilmar's ultimate goal is to make enough money to be able to bring his wife Mariella (currently working 16 hrs a day in Managua) to El Tololar. They want to live together with their daughter Rachel as a family.  As of today, Wilmar's business is still a work in progress.  He's had to shift locations and focus more on selling than repairing.  We're rooting for him big-time.

·         Another Business: We invested $200 in training and capacity-building for our friend Belkis, also wanting to start a business in León so that she can actually live together with her son Leo.  She's now self-employed as a massage therapist, and things are looking up!

·         Scholarships: Thanks to your financial support, we are sustaining five high school students and two university students with scholarships.  With just over $2,000 a year, these students (all promising students in tough economic circumstances) receive a monthly stipend that allows them to stay in school (transportation, food, books) or pursue their career dreams at the university level.

·         Micro-Investments: We gave small Christmas gifts of money to a few local families. They weren't much ($50 bucks each) but in one case, that small investment made the difference between having to quit their small business - and being able to continue on.

·         Guide Training: Our friend Yader - in training to be a tourist guide - needs practice, especially with foreigners so he can practice his English.  We hired Yader (paying out about $150 total) to be our guide on several hiking excursions (including the deliciously fun but grueling hike we did up Volcano Telica in early April).

·         Cash-For-Work: Instead of chopping our hands (or heads) off with a machete, we hired Carlo - and sometimes Larry and Aquiles - to cut our lawn and do other jobs around the house.  They are much better at it then us, and besides, they needed the cash.  So we invested in them (about $150 bucks total), and by extension helped support the local economy. By comparison, the average annual salary in Nicaragua is about $1,200.

·         Cash-For-Life: There are a group of very smart people who have spent years researching the best ways to help people who are in tough economic circumstances.  Their results are far from definitive, but they have come to the conclusion that simply giving people cash is the best way to help them. Why? Because people know their needs, and those living on the edge generally spend money on the things they need the most.  These researchers feel that we could save a lot of money - and bureaucracy - by giving money, instead of implementing complicated programs laden with lots of red tape.  Our family feels that smart NGO's like Tololamos and others actually do a great job of identifying problems and dispersing funds in a equitable way with minimal overhead.  But just to test out these researchers theory, we made multiple, discrete cash outlays to various families - totaling about $800 - with no strings attached.  These people were extremely grateful, and we feel confident the money is going to necessities much more than desires.  

·         Bed-For-Work: We hired Yader's Dad Yader to make us a bed, hoping it would be a vast improvement on our first bed, dubbed by some "the world's most uncomfortable bed."  It never quite lived up to the hype from a comfort standpoint, but at $100 it is beautiful, and provided Yader with much needed income to support his family and bed-making business.

·         Bike Dreams: We provided Miriam and Carlo with $300 as a down payment on a motorcycle.  It's hard to say just how impactful a motorcycle can be for someone, but it can really make a huge difference.  Just think about how hard it is to get by where you live without a mode of transportation. Then add that thought to the following equation: Dirt roads + minimal public transportation + long distance to school x very few resources = I could really use a bike. So a bike is huge...

·          Helping Health: Your donations and material aid resulted in over $1,500 to support the local health clinic.  This included basic amenities like chairs for waiting patients and electric fans, to a variety of medical supplies including antibiotics, bandages, glucometers and much more.  For an insufficiently stocked local health outpost serving thousands of people each year, these contributions have been immensely valuable.

·         Clothes Encounters: Many of you donated clothes, valued at close to $1,000 in total.  You provided t-shirts, shoes, sneakers, pants, hats, sweatshirts, dress-shirts, and socks to local families, scholarship recipients, and students at Rebekah Rivas Elementary School.  A well-made piece of clothing goes a long way here - clothes take a beating so strong fabric is highly prized - and your donations won't wear off anytime soon.

·         Barking up the Right Tree: Donations from Harlan and Olle's School - Go Tucker! - toward the nursery (vivero) project led to $702 dollars raised through an old-fashioned coin drive.  That is enough money to buy 10,000 seeds, 6-8,000 bags, hire workers to fill the bags, improve the irrigation system, pay for someone to watch and care for the saplings, publicize the project, and offer tree varietals and planting advice to anyone in the community who wants them.  Wow! 

·         Does Compute: Many of you (including good old Tucker School parents and families) donated over 20 devices, valued at over $1,000, (laptops, smartphones and tablets) to be used by Tololamos in a variety of ways, including as gifts to high-performing students in local schools. 

·         Play Ball!: Between donations of soccer balls and baseball equipment (gloves, balls, hats) you helped provide over $500 worth of sports gear to a previously, very austerely outfitted baseball team and to several local elementary school gym classes.

·         The Human Race: As told in our last chapter, we helped put on the first ever race in Tololar to support the education, health and environmental work of Tololamos.  In all, thanks to you we raised about $2,000 and initiated what we hope will be an annual event fostering a more intentional community mind-set about the importance of health and exercise.

In addition to the financial and material support you all provided, your support of Familia Lundgren over the past year also allowed us to take part in so many great activities in the community. Here is a snapshot, in rhyme:

We helped plant yucca, in Nestor's field nearby

Sowing seeds, cultivating, and dodging cow pies

The corn harvest happens, once every year

And so in January, we cut maize from ear to ear

We served as judges in a battle of some singers

These students were real artists and man there were some ringers

We taught English class, twice a week for an hour

Some students learned a little, with others we were "wow"ered

(* for the purposes of rhyming, we feel that make-up words are cool)

We helped Adilsa at the library, learning Dewey Decimal

It may be kind of passe, but that system is no bull

We had a big Thanksgiving Dinner, as a way to thank our peeps

Miriam cooked a giant batch of pasta, people seemed to like it heeps

We instigated soccer games, every Sunday afternoon

They became a huge event, from September until June

Twice a month we showed a flick, different films every time

Everyone was welcome, and it didn't cost a dime

Most of all this year, we learned anew to love our neighbors

That we may be different on the outside, but our souls are just like theirs

Year Summary by Harlan Ray Keith Lundgren

This year has been an amazing mix of fun, sadness, hardship and learning.  I think in the end I will come away with a good experience.  In the end I have seen rewards, such as after hundreds of times going out to practice baseball with the group of boys, and after enduring months of teasing, the last Saturday here I made the Tololar baseball team.  We beat a neighboring community, Los Positos, in a big two games.  I have seen many rewards but am super excited to see the end.  It has been a good, hard year.

Summary by Olle Winslow Lundgren

In Nicaragua I have felt a lot and learned a lot.  One of the things was I learned how to respect other people and to respect the culture.  I have felt sad, happy, and missing the states.  This year has been hard.

Quote from Miriam

To feel understanding
Real
under standing
You must stand, for a long time
in the shoes of another person's life

It can be a tug,
a drudge
pulling us out of all sense of comforts
zones and placements

OH but to understand to really Understand
IS A GIFT.

So what do you say on the other side of everything? When you are looking backwards at hundreds of experiences and emotions, ready to return from whence you came? How can you encapsulate, in a paragraph, just how deeply, and painfully, and graciously, and thankfully you have felt during the past year? It can't be done justly, so perhaps simply noting the few key words that have been our allies and friends this year will suffice. 

We've learned what it means to have grace for ourselves and others.  We've experienced a deep connection with the other.  We've come to understand on a deeper level the power of community - a community that includes our new friends here and all of you back home.  We've had the opportunity to take a big risk, and are now reaping the rewards in so many ways.  We've seen faith in action, and we've felt acceptance.  We've had a chance to live a dream, in the midst of all its messiness, pain, and complexity.  We've witnessed the kindness of strangers, and seen strangers change into friends.

Today, we finalize this last update from the Camino Real Hotel in Managua, the same hotel our first update came from exactly 10 months ago. 

Last night, a farewell party was held on our behalf on Don Leonel's dusty patio/soccer pitch.  Sixty of our closest friends from the past year showed up, and we danced way into the night.  There were some beautiful comments made by lots of people - including Harlan and Olle, in Spanish - and lots of tears shed.  It was like we were trying to suck the marrow out of each moment, knowing that our time - for now - was up.

This morning we woke up at 5:15 am and over the course of the next hour, people started arriving, appearing from across fence lines, behind trees or out of the blue.  We were all tired, but every family member and friend showed up to say one final goodbye.  They brought a carreton (horse-drawn carriage) and we piled our 11 bags on top.  All the kids pushed and pulled the cart down the dusty road to the bus stop.  Twenty minutes and many tears later, we boarded the Mariano bus to León for the last time

Tomorrow, we leave a life we've loved, at times loathed and learned so much from.  We leave Nicaragua, for now.  Our goal is to return every year, continuing to build relationships with our new family and friends here.  In addition, we have been asked to join the Board of Directors of Tololamos. Thus, we are excited about investing our time, money and souls into this truly special little part of the world.   

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you ALL for being with us on this journey, every step of the way. 

We'll send an update once we've got settled back home in August (we're spending July with Miriam's family in Utah then driving back to Boston in late July) letting you know what it looks like from the other side and keeping you updated on the work of Tololamos in El Tololar. 

Enjoy your summer, your family, your friends...and your strangers.  Learn from the people you don't know, seek out those who are different, and search for community in even the most unlikely of places...it's there!

Que te vaya bien

Miriam, Cully, Harlan and Olle

P.S.  Click here for a compilation of photos from the past year.