Choosing

As a Community, we worship together on Monday nights…well, when we are not with delegations, or working late, or just overwhelmed....although we should always do it.  It helps us focus.  Often we have a reading and we reflect, sharing our thoughts and seeing where it leads us….frankly most of the time, it leads far, far away from the reading.

Monday we read about making a choice…about how choosing a path is sometimes the most important part –  even more important than the follow through. Mike noted that not making a choice is part of being privileged.  Most often, people who just “ride” life out are able to do so because they don’t need to choose.  Not choosing is a luxury of the wealthy…and a luxury the “haves” enjoy all too well. 

Martha with her daughter Abril

Martha, of Guitarra Madera Azul, is dying of cancer and has been for a long time.  She has chosen life and has fought and fought and fought.  I often times think that I would have given up long ago and let death choose me…she suffers so, but she in her family she is the best bread winner…and they are poor.  She has been the one to help raise her sisters and she has a daughter who needs her desperately.  What will happen if she gives up?  So for today, she is still breathing and when awake, taking care of her family.* (Note: Martha has since passed away, see here for more information)

Sometimes I am too fearful to choose.  When we, the JHC, chose to go out on a limb, take a loan out for spinning plant machinery, take our collective retirement, emergency health care money, and make a cash guarantee on that loan…I thought, “what will happen if something goes wrong?”  And it did…Jack Coker took our $150,000 down payment and did not live up to his end of the bargain.  The spinning cooperative folded, we are paying off more than $230,000 -- the biggest loan we have EVER taken out, and YET choosing to side with the cooperative was right…I was glad to have community members who challenge me to choose despite my fear.

In January we had a clinic staff meeting where I asked everyone to dream of what they wanted for the clinic…beautiful dreams were expressed.  And as I took notes and listened to our staff member’s dreams to make the clinic better and better, I got more and more afraid…”what if we start this?”  “How are we going to pay for it?”  “How are we going to staff all these projects?”  “I’m so very tired.”

So what do I do…do I wait and not choose?  Or do I take a deep breath and take a step on a path?  Taking that first step, making that one choice to do what is right is often the hardest…it is scary, overwhelming, and daunting.

What holds me back? It is my fear of being sucked dry and being left an empty shell.  What holds you back? -Kathleen

Jumping in with both feet

Our good friend and board member, Nora, is here helping us get started in this New Year.  In the last few days Nora has participated in or watched us do the following activities:

• ·         Orient 3 new staff members including a new manager of the hospitality staff; a new construction/maintenance staff member; and a new doctor (Dr. Avila quit to work more hours with the Ministry of Health).
• ·         Host a family of 9 and a past volunteer (Jessica Burge)
• ·         Orient 2 new volunteers (Neville, a new volunteer coordinator; and Jim, an IT volunteer)
• ·         Get ready in the clinic for 2 volunteer doctors and 3 dental volunteers
• ·         Ready the dorm for a delegation of 28 and 3 more coming midweek plus a family of 4 past volunteers just visiting one night
• ·         Arrange to show peanut buyers around next week, plus hosting talks for 2 student groups & a trip to rural communities with visiting Rotarians



Roughly half of today's shopping

• ·         Buy a replacement refrigerator and rearrange 4 fridges to accommodate sizing
• ·         Repair 4 broken washing machines
• ·         Plan menus and shop for food for approximately 50 people
• ·         Start the new financial books while ending 2012 books
• ·         Help the clinic staff orient to a new administrator (Josefa is working there now)
• ·         Juggle 3 broken vehicles and airport runs for 9 flights
• ·         And that’s not remotely all…

Fruit for 50

Nora said, “I don’t know how y’all handle all this [especially the surprises].  It would drive me crazy.”

So how do we do it?  We have friends like Nora and Jess who come to visit and jump in and help do whatever needs doing.  We have brand new volunteers who throw their bags in their rooms, grab a bite to eat and start working.  We have a wonderful staff that takes all the news with calmness and then quietly work miracles.  They are the epitome of the saying on my coffee mug “Keep Calm and Carry On.” 

How do we do it?  Grace.  We are given grace by so many that it makes the overwhelming tasks possible…that, and humor…sometimes we just have to laugh. -- Kathleen

 

The Last Gift

Photo by Ben Stechschulte

 Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and there are more reasons to be thankful than we can count.  We have good friends and loving family here and abroad.  We have the necessities to live and we have luxuries like internet and computers.  We have wonderful people we work with day in and day out.  And we have supporters like you who keep this Center going.

We have a doctor who when a special need arises will give through his family foundation…he has rebuilt the volunteer bus, hired a nurse for a year, and is helping the orthopedics program…and on top of all that, he volunteers.

Once Again Nut Butter supports our growers giving them fair prices, negotiates face-to-face, and has even given to the Center’s budget by donating part of their tahini proceeds.  Their-Bucks supports the coffee growers, also gives farmers fair prices, negotiates face-to-face, and when they were here last fixed the Center’s water pump which lowers our costs.

Students at Bucknell raise funds all year round to support the clinic.  They have fund raisers and sometimes they raise the equivalent of one year’s tuition at Bucknell and - believe you me - that is no little change!

We have donors who faithfully give monthly.   We have a few who tithe to the Center.  Some respond to each newsletter with comments and gifts.  We even had a donor, Georgia Quirk, who has supported this work for years.  She began generously donating quarterly, and in the first part of this year she sent us a check for her whole pledge for 2012 stating it was her last gift, because she found she had stage 4 cancer.

It was not her last gift.  Her last gift to us was her love and encouragement for us to keep up the good work.  She always wrote the sweetest notes to us that just warmed the cockles of my heart.  We just learned she died on September 12.  We will remember her with gratefulness.

On this Thanksgiving we thank you one and all!

Nueva Vida homes & minds open to HIV awareness

The last week of September Drs. Ronna Krozy and Rosanna DeMarco from Boston College led workshops with our health promoters on HIV and AIDS.  Rosanna developed a teaching film with poor black women of South Boston who are living with AIDS.  In the film, titled Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives, these women speak honestly and from the heart. 

Despite the fact that our health promoter Jessenia was in the hospital, we had excellent participation that improved as the week went on and more people learned about the workshops.  Martha, our nurse, did a wonderful job stepping in to help in Jessenia’s place.

Health promoters, new mothers, and men from a gay and transgender group all participated in four different trainings.   Health promoters wanted more training.  Rosanna and Ronna came with questions and answers written. 

Both women have the personality and openness to elicit questions and discussions and Martha did a wonderful job of helping them put the material into the Nicaraguan cultural context.  Rosanna talked to the women especially about how women will not take care of themselves but instead put husband and children first…you could see the nods go around the groups as these women who also constantly put others first.

Participants were also impressed that the women in the film had lived with HIV for 15 and 20 years.  This makes testing easier when they realize that a positive result is not necessarily a death sentence, especially if HIV is caught early.

Each workshop started with showing the film, then questions.  We are going to continue this model with the film and a donated portable DVD player in homes in Nueva Vida.  We are looking for donations to purchase rapid HIV tests to test people who have been motivated by the workshops to get tested. 

Nicaragua has the lowest HIV rates of any Latin American country…testing, education and prevention are the only ways to keep Nicaragua healthy.  This is critical in a poor country.  We are grateful for Ronna & Rosanna’s help and the boost of energy they brought to for more community education.   -Kathleen