A Strange Old World

For those of you who don’t know me – I’m Topher Hunt. After graduating from high school in 2006 I spent my gap year volunteering in Masaya, Nicaragua – a year that was unsurpassedly formative and unsurpassedly intense. This summer, having no other plans, I have decided to return to Nicaragua to check up, see my friends and host family again, and hopefully continue giving to Project Chacocente, where I volunteered.

As I said, it was a hard and very intense year. For a pampered Vermonter, living and working in third-world Nicaragua is physically grueling. To reach Chacocente from my host family’s house in Managua, I travel 2-3 hours by bus and by foot – often leaving early in the morning to arrive in time for classes. This is cheap but slow, loud, crowded, and attention-intensive. Because I can’t reliably screen out all the pathogens that try to get into my body, I can’t eat until full at any meal (I’ve found) or the bacteria already in my stomach will get out of control and get me sick (fortunately clinics are cheap). The heat is draining, the food is heavy and sometimes difficult to digest, and to keep my energy up I need to make an effort to get extra sleep (something that’s difficult at first with dogs, roosters, and insects providing ample night noises).

Living here was also emotionally and mentally straining. The technoeconomic structure, straddled between agrarian and industrial, is ubiquitously loud and intense – not the best for an introvert like me. The local dialect makes comprehension difficult and straining. The cultural assumption set and perception are pretty different from my own, adding an energy tax onto any successful interaction. The incredible poverty and ubiquitous litter are painful to see, and clash horribly with the hospitality and joy of the people I know, and with the sterile materialism of the elite malls, which I generally avoid. The people I met talked about the problems they faced, which were often so intense that I found it hard to really focus on teaching.

Please don’t get me wrong: Nicaragua is an amazing country and my year was very satisfying and certainly a very positive influence on my development. It was intense in both positive and negative ways. All that is to share the trepidations I was experiencing as I prepared to come back to Nicaragua for this summer. I am coming back not to teach again – that would be difficult – but to visit my friends and host family, to get to know this place in a more relaxed sense, without the grueling regularity and schedule that I imposed on myself while teaching. I want to see this place with eyes trained by two years at Middlebury and by extensive study of Ken Wilber’s “Integral Theory”. In contrast to my last trip, when I obsessively focused on teaching classes, I plan to spend more time getting to know the people I meet, listening to their perspectives and struggles and hopes. And I want to process those emotions and those experiences that were just too intense to work through as a nineteen-year-old just out of high school. I’m going to take better care of myself on this trip. I plan to get more rest, meditate, talk with people more, form more community, find more intellectual and emotional connection.

So it’s a good thing Nicaraguan people are typically very personable, very open, very friendly, and love meeting Americans. I was sitting on a bench in the depths of sunny Huembes market when a CD-vendor named Milton came over to me. Once we established that I wasn’t there to buy but to visit, we started practicing his English that he has picked up from tourists. Then Leonardo, who sells sunglasses, recognized me from a 5-minute interaction two and a half years ago, when he sold me sunglasses. He’s  sold sunglasses from a portable case for around ten years and I wonder how many Gringo tourist faces  he’s seen in that time. It’s really nice to be remembered, to feel like I made a lasting impact on someone. I want to do more of that. Pretty soon they had shown me around and I got to know six or seven really fun, really genuine people.

Friday was my first day back at Chacocente. Plants have grown and fallen, buildings have expanded and the kids have grown in the last two years. It’s strange and wonderful to see them again, to hear the noises of the busy school day in progress, to recall old running jokes I had with them. The families were ecstatic to see me. I really love these people. Chacocente is building a new kitchen and a new library – I helped a little with the construction. I’ll spend the weekend at home in Sabana Grande with my family, then return to Chacocente on Monday.

It’s easy to get super-stingy with money here. I need to guard against that. It’s a source of useless worry, I have ample resources to live comfortably, and I’d just as soon that some of my resources can trickle out to help the economy in a small, insignificant way. More important for me is getting to know the interior side of Nicaragua better, the rich experiences and norms and beliefs and perceptions that collectively make up Nicaraguan culture. Apart from the direct usefulness of knowing the culture I live in, I think this practice is a humanizing influence for me.

Saturday, my birthday, I spent relaxing at home and with my friend Dania in Managua. Dania, a university student in marketing and accounting, is the one person I have met here who holds her daily experience against a framework of spirituality and philosophy. It’s funny to see that when we first met, her philosophical ruminations were often so abstract and foreign to me that I couldn’t follow her or identify; now we share much more connection somehow. In Wilber’s framework she is currently exploring a healthy Green faith, something that I have explored and loved and serves as the basis for my current philosophy and worldview. Apart from that connection, it was great to see an old friend who I’ve kept in touch with. I hurt for Dania – a Green voice railing against the objectifying rationality of a Blue/Orange culture, she has found no one here to share a connection like what I share with Gabi. I know that’s hard. But one has to have faith that minds and hearts do not exist in isolation; where one arises, so it will find a second and a third, and a community will form.