The Real Reason to be in Nicaragua

Sometimes I forget why I’m here.

I forget why I’m working far from home, friends and family. I forget why I live in a little room with a bathroom instead of an apartment with storage space. I forget why I volunteer to fight with subcontractors instead of getting paid to fight with subcontractors.

And then I am reminded.

Last night I was in my office later than usual and everyone else was gone. Marlin (one of the social workers) walked into the building with two kids to give one of them a pair of plastic flip flops because he didn’t have any shoes.

I said hello to the first girl, who was about 12, and she hung back in the dark office where Marlin hadn’t bothered to turn on the light, so the only illumination was from the hallway. She didn’t say a work, didn’t smile, she just looked at me.

I said hello to the second boy, who was about 8, as he bounded towards me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

These were our new arrivals. I have no idea what their lives were like 24 hours before. I don’t know if they have parents or other siblings. I don’t know what level of poverty they lived in, they pretty much all just come with the clothes on their back.

I can’t imagine what fears or hopes they have as they enter a place so foreign as NPH. I can’t imagine leaving my family in a culture where family is absolutely everything. But I can’t imagine how much I would desire the promise to be regularly fed, clothed, sheltered and educated if I had spent my life without enough of any of those things. So they’re brave, even if they don’t realize it yet.

And for some reason, I get to be a part of it. I get to help make a home for them. I not only get to help them change the trajectory of their lives and therefore their communities, I get to see it happen.

Some may think that it was a sacrifice for me to give up all that I have to be here, but really, I am simply so blessed.