A "liberal education" in Nicaragua

So where is he now?

While still on sabbatical from MOM, Dietrich Gruen is now in Nicaragua, on a scaffold somewhere, bridging a gap or painting a wall, along with 25 other students from his alma mater Bucknell University, and son Mark from the U of M-Minneapolis. His son Eric, who lives in Nicaragua, is their crew boss. Eric Gruen is dedicating a year to the Nicaraguan poor as an unpaid volunteer coordinator with Jubilee House Community (JHC, a.k.a. the Center for Development in Central America).

Dietrich’s 93-year-old dad passed away last week (March 9), just the day before this trip began. A family memorial is being planned for May. To honor his dad and to be comforted by his sons, Dietrich will enjoy some father-son bonding and mission work down there. He welcomes the therapeutic value of hands-on work and father-son reflections on site.

Hola! from Nicaragua. On this trip, the second phase of my 3-month sabbatical, I come with an agenda similar to my Gulf Coast mission last month. That is, I meant to get far away from home and work. So far, so good. Yet daily email has my wife exclaiming in reply: “I hear more from you when you are in a foreign country than when we are one couch apart in our own living room. But then you always were the master of long distance romance, weren't you?”

Nothing ”romantic” about where I am this week. My second purpose in coming to Nicaragua was to experience extreme poverty up close and personal. So I come to Cuidad Sandino, the poorest city in the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and where the faith-based JHC conducts their mission.

I say “mission,” but Eric is reticent to use that word to describe himself or JHC, because of the overt Evangelical or Pentecostal connotations of mission, and because he considers the work here as just so much mundane serving and simply doing what needs to be done, with no proselytizing. JHC is doing sustainable community development responding to community needs only as designed by the community. They foster local co-ops in manufacturing and service industries, extend micro-business loans, do health care and educate others (through internships, visiting delegations, and off-site speaking tours in the USA).

As for mission work, I am painting the walls of their medical clinic this week, as well as sorting 24 suitcases of medical supplies (much as one sorts donations at MOM’s Food Pantry). Despite all the hands-on work getting done on site by the 25 BU students and staff and yours truly, it is the educational experience—what we see and hear and feel and smell down here—that is the big take-away.

Michael—the white-bearded, hippie-like, eccentric, father of two adult children in the States with Sarah and with Kathleen three teen-age boys who live here (but chomp at the bit and want to go to the States). Michael, Sarah and Kathleen live in community and founded of JHC in 1979 to work with the homeless, AIDS victims and other poor back in North Carolina. In 1993, JHC was invited down here to help in Nicaragua. After planning together with locals what was needed and what JHC would be asked to do, JHC closed up is NC operations, and moved down here permanently.

Michael is the rainmaker, but and some see him as the ringleader, but this place is very communal and makes decisions by consensus. Day-to-day operations and a $750,000 budget (2/3 cash, and 1/3 in in-kind donations, such as the meds for the health clinic he founded) are turned over to others—among them two lovely sisters, Kathy and Pat. (I see parallels taking shape at MOM.) The founders of JHC in their 50s, and are very committed to the idea of faith-based intentional community as lived-out here.

These people live their work. For them this is life, not a job. There is no successor plan, and so this place, which is doing a world of good, may not last beyond its founders, simply to perpetuate an institution. They will live and die here. So may JHC. (Lots of animals live here at JHC, too, including 15 guinea hens, 10 cats & kittens, 5 dogs, 4 horses, 2 monkeys.) I am learning from one and all that I must also serve in this way, and that no work is beneath a Christian to do, in emulation of his Master, the servant of all.

There are two paved thoroughfares in all of Cuidad Sandino, and no sewer system. People have outhouses, if they are lucky; most have just the plastic bags, then all this human waste is taken to the curbs, dumped into the streets. Of the 200,000 people who live in this suburb of Managua, 80% of are unemployed. By begging, selling wares from their house, or working in sweat shops, 72% manage to make $2 per day; yet 45% live on just $1 per day. How can these poor Nicaraguans survive?

They have something that binds them together in common misery and hope that we do not have. By contrast, my MOM clients, who are also poor by our cultural standards, most work and make $30 to $40 a day. And when we talk Great Depression for comparison purposes, the height of US unemployment never reached beyond 25%; even so, people were committing suicide in higher rates than they do down here.

No, I will not romanticize this Nicaraguan lifestyle of poverty. (For these people poverty is non-optional; for me it would be for a season.) But I will advocate for these poor, and will learn from its civic leaders and social workers and community developers a new paradigm for doing ministry at MOM.

Advocacy for the poor refugees of this area gets very political, very quick. I say “refugees,” because that is how this city was founded in the early 1970’s—in the aftermath of local floods and the big earthquake of 1972. This city, and specifically the barrio of Nueva Vida, grew exponentially after Hurricane Mitch, which hit with Katrina-like devastation in 1998. Nueva Vida, where I live and work this week with JHC, has been the object of many relief and recovery efforts. Some ten different NGOs are working here side-by-side with Jubilee Housing Community. Just as they do in New Orleans for the Katrina victims.

But guess what? New Orleans will rebuild, but many poor and Blacks will not return, as their situation is more acute than chronic, and volunteers are stepping up. But I have my doubts about such a chronic situation as Cuidad Sandino’s unemployment, where no one is leaving, and only more are being displaced to here. For another comparison, just as with those residents of Allied Drive who resented the attention showed on the Katrina evacuees who arrived in our midst, so also it is the permanently poor of this community, those who were already living here, who resent being passed over in favor of the more recent hurricane evacuees.

A stated purpose of this Spring break trip is, unabashedly, to bond with my sons, but what I did not expect is that I would bond with the other students. They are 35 years younger than I, but are also my teachers. I thought I’d be regaling these BU students with stories of my college era. I tried. I had lots of pictures even, but no takers. Bad motivation, wrong crowd. Half of them are doing as my son Eric and Mark are doing, joining the Peace Corps or some other volunteer service overseas. What an enlightened generation of leaders we are turning this war-torn world over to.

Admittedly, one learned prof and Bucknell’s doctor who accompany every “Brigade” are also taking me under their wing. But so are the little Nicaraguan children endearing themselves to me. They roam the streets, attend the medical clinics, or hang out with the Jubilee House Community. JHC is hosting a group of us from Bucknell University. I say “us,” because I am one of them, as Bucknell Class of ’72.

Yes, I admire the pearls of wisdom and humor that my son, the volunteer coordinator, tosses out as he leads this Bucknell Brigade on tour and work assignments. He bridges the culture and interprets Spanish-English, and English-Spanish fluently, even regurgitating (translating) a homily of liberation theology on the bus ride home—this after we sat through an Catholic liturgy conducted all in Spanish. Duh—where do you think you are, Dietrich? This is not your father’s America.

Nor my father’s country. As I reflect on what my own father has meant to me, he is the one who made this trip possible. What he may never realize until now (now that he is in heaven) is how much his provision of support and his ethic of savings and getting through the Great Depression served his family so well, even to the second generation. Eric and Mark enjoy much riskier lifestyles, in a perverse, ironic twist, thanks in large measure to Dad's conservative ways. With Dad’s money to bank on, and emulating his work ethic, my boys can leave college with no debts, take risks with their careers and travel to places that Dad (or even this dad) never would.

What I did not expect to get out of this trip was another “liberal” education, in the best tradition of that word. It’s not the kind one gets from books, and not the one I got the first time around (1968-72, also paid for by Dad), when I joined Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA). I have been subjected to self-critical thinking that exposes who I am and what I believe about our country. Confronted by values and worldviews that take me out of my comfort zone, I wince. People here not only discuss, but live out counter-cultural ideas on economics, politics and history. Comfort and convenience are out (no hot showers, no flush toilets as we know them, no high-tech amenities except this computer). Dialogue and diversity rule.

“Classes” are in continuous session here, not unlike when the first disciples followed their Master through the countryside, mingling with the poor. Here too we wander though the countryside, the city, the parks, reviewing “The War” (ending in 1979), “The Revolution” (1980-90) and the decline since Nicaragua has lapsed from many of its social reforms.

I am naturally curious how the other side thinks, how they live, even how they survive. At mealtimes, on bus rides, on worksites, after hours, I ask lots of questions, take notes, pictures, reporter-style. Case in point: I ask why people are (kept) poor by the policies of the US government and aid groups. I am told that, money is loaned to groups down here, but usually as a line of credit, so the locals are forced to buy only from the US business interests. This policy is not very enlightened and does this not grow or empower the locals. In saying this, I feel I am being converted to becoming a liberal, and strangely liking it.

Upon hearing me say that, my dad, the arch Conservative, must be turning over in his grave. So be it. Except now he sees things from the “other side”! So maybe not. Join me (and Dad and my sons) in thinking for a change, and seeing things from the other side. More of this parent’s liberal education will appear next week.

© 2005 Middleton Outreach Ministry

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