Tag Archives: Nicaragua

Making An Impact, Reflections, Rural development

Yareli

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There are certain moments in our experiences that become a sort of “freeze frame” of reference, an event or an exchange that transcends the moment and suddenly represents something bigger, more meaningful.  I’ve been privileged to experience more than my share of such moments in Nicaragua over the past seven years, but none were more sudden, more memorable than the encounter last week with an angel.

Mark Lester and I were given the opportunity to visit the Roberto Clemente School in Ciudad Sandino, operated by the education entity Fe y Alegria.  Through its Louise V. Nielsen initiative, Winds of Peace has provided funding for a number of key education organizations in Nicaragua, one of which is this organization founded by Father Fernando Cardenal, himself an education force in Nicaragua’s history.  This particular school serves some 1400 students, from pre-school scholars through high school.  (I’ll have more to report about that visit in upcoming blog entries.)  Suffice it to say that the hour and-a-half visit was exciting, energizing, motivating, moving and hopeful. In short, everything one might hope to experience amidst a large group of youth.

When the tour of the school was finished and the conversations with several student leaders had been done, time had come for Mark and me to take to the road again, on our way north to Esteli.  We made our way across campus, accompanied by Leslie Gomez, Director of Programs and Projects for Fe y Alegria and our liaison for the visit.  By the time we approached the truck, my head was already filled with recollections, of bright classrooms and joyful sounds (that’s right, I said joyful!), of faces evident with curiosity and welcome, of teachers beaming with pride to present their classrooms to visitors.  Lost in such visions, as I grabbed for the door of the truck I felt a tug on the back of my shirt.

When I turned around, I needed to adjust my gaze down, way down, to look at the tiny person standing before me.  She could not have been more than six years old.  The shy smile on her face gave her an angelic look that instantly touched my heart.  And she offered up her two hands pressed together, as if in a prayer, seeking some reciprocation from me that I could not immediately discern.  All I could do was to look at her and smile.

“It’s a type of greeting, or blessing,” explained Leslie, “just put your hands together over hers to return the good wishes.”  My own hands engulfed the fragile hands before me and I gratefully embraced her tiny offering.  My response brought an enormous smile to Yareli who seemed to want nothing more than to create an indelible moment in my day.  I might even go so far as to suggest that her gift created a lasting moment in my life.  Such was the surge of affection that I felt for this little jewel who had come out of nowhere to shine a bright light on my day.  She granted me one quick photo and then she wandered off, likely in search of another unsuspecting subject to bless and entrance.  Do angels actually come among us in that size?  I asked her for her name and she replied, “Yareli.”

Well, there’s nothing else to say about the episode.  Like an apparition, Yareli came to me and disappeared within the span of minutes.  By the time I was back in the truck, I actually wondered whether the encounter had really happened, so fast and so touching was the connection.   But that adorable face was fortunately captured forever in my camera; I looked back at the picture on several occasions during the balance of my week, just to bring a smile back to my feelings.  Sharing it with you here is a pleasure I offer with this one additional reflection:

Children are born of biological parents and step into a line of genealogy which, in part, helps to define who they are and where they come from.  Sometimes the continuum also shapes where they are headed and who they will become.  But in a major way, children are also universal beings who belong to us all. We may not have biological connections to every one of them, but we do share emotional ties and responsibilities to each.  We do have an impact on others, whether intended or not.  Yareli reached out and affirmed that feeling in me, just as 22 years ago a young Nicaraguan boy named Fernando did when he asked me whether I would adopt him, whether I could love him, and whether I thought he was a good kid.  They are moments and faces never to be forgotten because they awaken in us the truth of our shared love and responsibility for children everywhere.  It doesn’t matter that eventually those beautiful children grow up to become adults who speak a different language or live in a land foreign to us.  Small hands can still be held out for friendship and blessing if we’re receptive.

It was a huge affirmation from a very little messenger….

 

Announcements, Making An Impact, Reflections

How Do You Help A Blind Person To See Someone Who Is Invisible?

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During our drive last night on the way to meet some friends for dinner, my wife Katie described a book that she has been reading as part of her volunteer work with Decorah Reads!  It’s a program that connects middle school students with reading mentors and Katie has enjoyed being a volunteer for several years.  Her current book is entitled, Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements, the story of a boy who literally becomes invisible, and the blind girl who befriends him.  As Katie described the unlikely story line, I was immediately struck by a conundrum that became my title above: how would you connect someone who is blind with someone who is invisible?  Physics and biology aside, it’s a fascinating puzzle.

Over the years I’ve known enough blind people to recognize the cultivation of other senses they exhibit in navigating daily life with efficiency and grace.  For many, the enhanced senses of touch and hearing, especially, cultivate an awareness of the world that sighted individuals can only dream about.  This was made clear to me years ago during a time when I was recording programming for the Minnesota Blind Radio network.  My weekly shows were broadcast around the state of Minnesota on a closed blind radio channel.  Nonetheless, I was shocked one day when, walking and talking with Katie on the St. Olaf College campus, a young man with a white cane approached me and asked, “Is that Steve Sheppard?   I’d know that voice anywhere!  I listen to your programs every week!”  His audio acuity as evidenced in a chance pass-by on the sidewalk demonstrated a remarkable ability to “see” me, in some ways better than sighted individuals might have.  (For one thing, he didn’t have to contend with my face.)

I confess that I’ve never personally known anyone who is physically invisible; I suppose that I may have met such an individual and simply not seen him/her.  But I imagine that similar compensations must develop in anyone who cannot be seen by others.  Initially, it must be downright exciting to go anywhere, to do anything, without being seen.  The condition could certainly open doors closed to everyone else, and the fun one could have is nearly beyond imagination!

But for the blind person, I doubt that there is often a feeling of preference for blindness over sightedness.  Heightened other senses notwithstanding, sight is a gift, to be treasured, to be strengthened, to be used with every other faculty we may have in order to discover the truth of our lives.  It’s not that blind people cannot do this, but that they have one less tool to use in pursuing it.  And for the invisible man or woman,  I think eventually it must become frustrating to realize that no one will ever really know you’re “there,” that your very existence is unrecognized by anyone else.  The anonymity in moving about covertly, privately, becomes overshadowed by the sense of an unseen and unfelt existence.  In the end, blindness and invisibility are both conditions with which we all must contend in pursuit of the truth.  Blindness is not always about physical sight.  Invisibility is not always about defying physics.

The characters in Katie’s book eventually must discover each other through touch, and likely that’s the remedy for the rest of us, as well.  We must come to know and touch the “other.”  Only when those of us who are blind have taken the opportunity to reach out and discover the invisible can we begin to understand their existence and the realities of their hidden lives, to meet the needs for which they have desperately searched  in an opaque world.  When we do that, those apparitions begin to materialize for us, to become real, to be human.  And when their invisibility starts to fall away, an interesting thing happens to the rest of us.  We begin to see.  Only vaguely, perhaps, at the start, but the shapes and forms and intents in our lives begin to hold some very different meanings.  That which we have previously beheld through touch and sound or fear and surmise can become vision, and lead us to a very different way than the way from which we have come.

As I jockey myself between the often radically different cultures in the United States and Nicaragua, I find some important truths within the worlds of the blind and the invisible….