0 degrees North

Yadira (Blue shirt in back) and her family in front of their new home we helped them build. Jason-John is in wheel-chair and he was my friend! (I'm in back wearing red).
Coffee beans drying


Back in Wisconsin.
I am lucky to have a nice home, clean sheets, hot showers, an abundance of food, American coffee and the love of family and friends. This is not the first time going through an adjustment back to the United States culture. I can't be insensitive saying that it gets easier each time but it does. I think the awareness that here is home and I can't change that I grew up in a very privileged city and family compared to a lot of people I have met in the world. I don't take it for granted.
What doesn't get easier is telling people my stories.
The class I was in while I went to Nicaragua was supposed to teach us how to tell a personal narrative about community development. For three days now I have sat down to my Sony Vaio Laptop with a $2.00 cup of coffee, my notebook, the guidelines, assigned readings and pictures on facebook at my favorite coffee shop. I stare at the blank screen, scan my notes and desperately search for words to write. It doesn't help that I picked what my professor called "an abstract" topic... on deforestation. Yet environmental issues are my passion and I thought that would be easy to write about... turns out, it isn't. My topic lacks the 'grotesque and exoticism' that readers are enraptured by. Land cleared for crops and logging... sounds similar to Wisconsin.
I have stories about the people, about the culture, about the poverty, about the nature. What is hard is telling a story that will impact others, that will transport them, that will help them understand and see what I truly saw.

So, I sit and pray for inspiration for 3,000 words of inspiration to be exact. And right now I am just thankful for my hot coffee.


Psalm Posted on the walls of on of our host families:
Psalm 91:4
"He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart."