We got here on Wednesday and will be here until Wednesday,
then I have one more weekend in Florida before
I leave for North Dakota.
My time is fleeting.
But Nicaragua
was awesome. We took a team of 12 or 13 players (depending on if you counted
Chris as a player or coach) and seven others. One of those was a girlfriend of
a player and another was Chris’ wife. One was a dad of two players. Two worked
with Scott, who organized the trip.
A dozen of the guys were straight-up players, mostly from a
Christian college in Lakeland.
Most of the others had played for Chris, who coached at several levels in Tallahassee. They were
primarily between 18 and 22, with one having his senior prom the day after our
return.
That guy, Alec, was a trip and a half. We got him to play
David in our David and Goliath skit and he nailed it. (Miming only; we had a Spanish
translator doing the narrative.) Part of what made Alec so funny was that we
met his brother from another mother there – this guy who worked for the mission
was *exactly* like him.
Lester was also 18, had the same slight frame, same facial
features and mannerisms, including wearing his hat backwards. More than once I
mistook one for the other, even though one was white and the other incredibly
dark-skinned. They were a hoot together. They really were the same person.
All the guys were, really. I felt like I was some kind of
team mom. I and the other adult woman (with apologies to the wife of the
player, who was 23) were called upon to fix the teams’ boo-boos. And since they
were playing on the roughest fields imaginable, there were quite a few.
The fields. Oh, man. Unlevel, with grass here, hard dirt
there, weeds there – I am not sure how the team (Real Florida) managed to
escape serious injuries. We did have a couple of tweaks and some big time
strawberries, but overall we were really lucky in that aspect. Heck, we never
even had anyone get sick to their stomachs.
The games were pretty cool, too. I’m not a futbol fan,
really, but I got into the games. Our guys, playing at a disadvantage most
times, did really well. They won a couple of games and lost a few tight ones,
including one to some international championship team.
The non-players did a lot of entertaining kids, blowing
bubbles, making balloon animals, playing limbo and the like. We did a sort of Vacation Bible School
with a David and Goliath skit (the dad played Goliath) and then had the kids
make puppets after.
Holy cow, the kids. We visited several venues and were
overrun with kids. For the most part, it went great but oh, man. Visions of my
dar chebab in Morocco.
What made this different was that instead of being just an
after-school activity, what we took part in was a bonus activity during the
normal feeding time. The organization we worked with, run by a guy named Oscar (cachphrase: "Si, si, si!"),
feeds 10k people, mostly children, every single day. We went to about five
different venues, from a dump to a church celebrating its first anniversary, to
help make the food, provide some entertainment and then feed the children.
I delved out I don’t know how many hundreds of portions to
kids, the only meal most would eat that day. This organization works with a
nonprofit to feed them, and it’s mostly rice. On the first day, we helped
unload a truck of two months’ worth of rice. (Two weeks later, I still have a
six-inch bruise on my leg where I dropped one of the 1,400 boxes weighing 30.7
pounds each on my thigh. It’s still ugly.)
Because we were there and infused a little more money, we
were able to go to the market and buy vegetables and meat to add to the usual
rice mixture. And by “meat,” I mean chicken heads and feet. This grossed me out
so much, especially since I was one of the volunteers to chop the veggies. One
day, I finished the veggies and got a handful of chicken feet to chop up. This
is TMI, but I had to whack off the tips of the chicken feet, with the nails. To
me, it was nasty, but to the kids, it was a piece of meat, a rarity.
A lot of the players hadn’t traveled internationally and
were stunned at the conditions in which people live, especially the dump, where
250 families live. They have little shanties and what the guy’s organization
wants to do is build homes there. Currently, they have built two permanent
homes, for $5k each. That’s amazing. The one we saw – belonging to the pastor
of the church there, where we also installed a toilet – was no bigger than my
apartment in Jakarta,
but it was a home for four people.
We had one half day off and went to the beach, the Pacific.
(We were in Leon,
on the west coast.) A couple of the guys surfed but most of us just enjoyed the
sand. I know I did. Finally, I got to wade in the ocean. I really needed the
toes in the sand.
One of the incredibly bizarre things we did, at least in
comparison to the US, was
similar to what happens in Morocco.
We did some promoting of our group and essentially walked up to a high school,
knocked on the door, then went into every single classroom to speak, hand out
flyers and then spend a class period entertaining the entire school,
unscripted, on the futbol field. This is just not possible in the United States.
We stayed at the home of the guy who runs the organization.
It was amazing. Not that the home was anything spectacular, just that we
weren’t in some dorm somewhere, or a hotel or hostel, but were in his home.
Last October, Scott had gone with another team down there to scout the
organization and brought a builder, I think, with him. That builder later came
and added several rooms to the home, which will allow teams in the future to
come and visit. I think we were the first. It was just so strange to be sitting
in someone’s living room, all 20 of us, and eat at his table. (Or tables – we
took up three.) So hospitable.
The food was pretty darn good, too. We had these amazing
juices with almost every meal. Fresh squeezed, and it was always some kind of
mixture. My favorite was purple, although I’ve no idea what fruits were used.
The second best was some kind of strawberry banana.
We only went out to eat once, which was the day on the
beach. We were right on the beach, too.
I didn’t take pictures but am hoping to filch some from
June, who was our official photographer. I was the reporter and am due to write
a story to submit to the Democrat.
And now I need to get on the stick on that one.
In the meantime, here’s a YouTube link to the space shuttle
Endeavor’s last power down. Laurie is featured at the beginning.
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