moments of wonder...

Last week I was lucky enough to return to a rural community in northern Nicaragua for the students' last "rural homestay experience". It was my third time back and it's one of my favorite places to visit. Not only is the climate more agreeable (much cooler than Managua), but the food is fabulous, we sleep 12 hours a night while we're there (one advantage to no electricity) and the people are incredible.

One of the older women in the community always tells her life story to our groups, a recent history of the community. As a child she essentially worked as a slave on the 'finca' (a plantation-like system); as a grown woman she saw revolution change their reality: they were given land, she was taught to read as part of a national literacy campaign, and they became producers in their own right, not just workers. And then, as she tells it, less than ten years later the 'spring' of their existence came to an end as the Contra war began in Nicaragua. Living in the north of the country, and being a rural community they were repeatedly attacked by the contras (who were largely financed by the US through the CIA) and burned to the ground, despite the fact that they had no desire to be a part of this battle.

And as I think about their experience during the contra war, and for that matter, before and after it - everything looks different. The mountains are gorgeous and peaceful at first glance, but as I climbed to the top of a lookout to take in a sunset with students, I couldn't stop imaging people running through them with guns, houses burning along the path we took, people hiding in the crevices carved out long ago by water and nature and God. The man walking with us must have been an adolescent in those years when he was fleeing the US funded troops that came to scorch their earth...and now he's leading us up the mountain to share with us one of their greatest beauties.

And there are moments when I wonder if travel is selfish, moments when I wonder if education is really enough to change things. And then there are moments when all I can do is revel in the generosity and tenacity and beauty of these communities. Moments when the questions quiet, when I feel broken open and stretched and healed all at once. And it's so much more than enough in those moments.