Breaking with routines

The last 9 days I have spent with my cousin David and his friends Matt, Jon, Katie, and Caroline as they toured around Nicaragua. We spent three days in Ometepe, a spectacular volcano-island in Lake Nicaragua four hours to the south of Managua. After returning from Ometepe they spent time at Catarina, the Volcano Masaya, Granada, and Leon. On Wednesday David and I hiked around the dormant crater of Volcano Masaya, slunk through a roost of around 80 vultures which circled above us angrily, and stood at the peak of a 600-foot rockslide. That was one of several great bonding experiences we have had on this visit.

I have a slew of pictures but won’t post them here. Visit my Nicaragua photo album to see more.

Dave and friends are fun, intellectual, and at that post-college stage of life where one feels particularly free and open to travel and explore. They were good and healthy company for me to relax in for a week, to step back a little from my normal experience in Nicarauga. It meant a lot to me to have the chance to introduce Dave to the Project, the Chureca, my host family, and my lifestyle here. He clearly enjoyed the experience.

Travelling with Dave and friends last weekend, I felt refreshed, active, creative. I was facing new challenges, trying untested muscles, breaking with routine, trusting my feet and my sense of direction, packing for the worst and expecting the best. I think I should make a point of regularly exploring outside of my box at Middlebury; it’s healthy and invigorating. I have tried to make that a routine before, but it fails to stick. That would be a great thing to change this year.

I don’t have many friends at Middlebury who I can connect to in a “stage-of-life” sense. I want to find more of that to connect to. I want to feel like I have a close community there, something that has been iffy for me despite Middlebury’s amazingness.

After six weeks here I feel more complete, more resolved than I have felt since leaving Nicaragua last time. I have reintegrated the parts of me – the values, the memories, the hopes and determination – that I left here and was unable to access at Middlebury these two years. I have spent time with the Project – the economy is making matters hard for everyone, but the families will pull through and they have a lot of support compared to other communities here. I have done what I came to Nicaragua for, and after a couple weeks of reflection I have decided to cut short my trip. I’ll fly out on August 3rd instead of August 19th. That will give me around a week with my girlfriend Gabi before she leaves for Africa and a week with my parents, and enough time to read, rest, and metabolize my trip experiences before heading back to Middlebury. It was hard to tell my host family and it will be very hard to tell the families at Chacocente. I am glad that I planned a longish stay, proud that I have thrived so far. I am already toying with plans to visit again in a couple years.

My family was in culto service at the church nextdoor when I woke up this morning. The off-pitch voices, always loud enough to hear clearly from my room, are a comfort noise for me now, like roosters and crickets. I arrived six weeks ago deeply uncomfortable about living in Nicaragua: the dangers, the exhaustion of travel, the hygiene standards and malaria pills, the loud noises and intense sunlight. Now I feel in my element, comfortable, relaxed, at home with the Tellez family, even as I know that it is time for me to leave.

So Michael Jackson and Shaggy walk into a bus…

This last week has been a little more laid-back, more hands-off than earlier weeks. Instead of actively visiting families and playing games and talking with people and making decisions about what to do, I just lounged around, read articles about Integral Theory and sustainable development, and let go of the reins for a few days. Except for the fact that I got a lot of reading done, this was a highly ungratifying experience and I don’t plan to repeat it. I’m not a type-A achiever but I need to feel like I have a plan and a purpose or I feel like I’m wallowing.

On Tuesday I went to the cyber cafe with David, who wanted me to help him use his email, only to find out that he has forgotten his password and security question for his account. Foiled, we wandered through Masaya and ate pizza, which was rewarding. We bonded on the way. Apparently David has a girlfriend, who goes to his same high school. He didn’t seem to know what she was interested in or what she wanted to do with her life. “Well, what do you two have in common?” – “Kissing each other.” I’m happy for him.

Early that morning, someone tried to break into the room where I was sleeping at the Project. I woke up around 4 AM to the sound of my cinder-block doorstop scraping across the floor. The noise stopped, the door slightly ajar – apparently the intruder realized someone must be inside. Flashlight in hand, I crouched by the door for about an hour before dawn broke and I realized no one was outside. It was pretty unexciting as attempted break-ins go, but it definitely got my heart rate up.

I keep losing my sunglasses. I stepped on my first pair, my second pair were too brittle to keep in a backpack, and my third pair just disappeared from under my nose one morning. It’s very frustrating – I can afford new sunglasses, but it makes me feel disorganized and crazy. I really hate feeling like I’m not taking good care of my possessions.

People keep asking me if I knew Michael Jackson (often pronounced “Meesh-ail-yak-soon”), both friends of mine and people I run into on the street. There seems to be this mentality that all Americans must have gone to school with each other or live in one giant fun park together. The first time someone asked, I was disoriented and could only respond a mumbled “Uh, no.” Now I have a standard response that seems to make people much happier. “Yeah, we were buddies. On his deathbed Micky was like Hey, thank Topher for being such a good friend.” I also get called Shaggy a lot when I’m wearing my lime-green Chacocente shirt. I never heard that on my earlier trip. Apparently Scooby Doo has entered the TV cartoon lineup.

On Saturday I met up with Dania again and we went to the beautiful lookout at Catarina. (Photos pending, if she sends them to me.) We relaxed there for the day, talking about philosophy, Integral Theory, developmental psychology, and sustainable development projects. It was a relaxing day and left me invigorated, ready for another week.

Sunday I relaxed at home and organized thoughts from my readings about Integral Theory. I’m wrestling with the conclusion that while my worldview has progressed from concrete-literal in early high school to rational to pluralistic in late high school to emerging integral in college, my self-sense (based on how I understand this to be defined) has not really progressed past sociocentric since early high school, up until this spring when I mostly resolved the themes of that stage of identity, suggesting that I am now at an individualistic / Orange self-sense. It’s a conclusion that resolves a lot of questions about my development and has deep implications for how I view myself. According to the available research, one’s identity and worldview generally take 2-5 years to mature through each stage (as defined by Integral Theory’s color altitudes). Yet while it looks like my worldview has matured at a healthy pace of 2-3 years per stage, this conclusion suggests that my self-sense has been arrested at Amber / sociocentric themes for 6-7 years. The ironic part is that I specifically remember many times where I focused on developing my 3rd-person understanding of the world and explicitly rejected opportunities to participate more directly in that understanding; a large gap between my worldview and cognitive development, and my self-identity development, would be the most obvious result of such a focus.

There’s no joy in Hell

When my parents visited me in Nicaragua for a week during my gap year here, they delighted in how happy, smiley, energetic the children are and how warm and welcoming everyone is. Different people come with different eyes and pick up on different aspects of Project Chacocente – but the warmth and loving hospitality of the families will always be my strongest impression from here. That and lots of bucket showers.

I just realized that I’m really not looking forward to going back to college. I’m not looking forward to being surrounded again by lots of sheltered, elite students who can’t really identify with economic hardship. I’m not looking forward to my schedule and energy being subject to an academic framework that doesn’t necessarily focus on my personal meaning and fulfillment. Here, my every interaction and day is full of meaningful interaction and chances to contribute to the lives of others. The activities and avenues that give meaning to the majority of students at Middlebury don’t really do much for me – I will have to find ways to make my own meaning out of my experience there.

The last few days have been less… satisfying? less balanced? than my experience so far on this trip. I have been a little on edge, a little disoriented. I have been craving Gatorade (dehydration?) although I’m resting enough and drinking plenty of water. After visiting the Chureca on Saturday morning I was looking forward to visiting with some friends in Managua to relax for a little – but our plans fell through, partially due to one friend getting mugged and seriously injured this morning. The news didn’t help my mood. I spent today relaxing and reading at home, only to realize that getting R&R isn’t what I need right now as much as getting away from my routine environment for a bit. I have had a few outings in mind; this week might be a good time to take one of them.

As mentioned, I visited the Chureca (the dump where the Chacocente families used to live) on Saturday morning. I went with Nelson, who has lived there for all but the first 2 and the last 2 years of his life, which was a good idea because he knows everyone there and he introduced me to lots of his friends who I wouldn’t otherwise meet. For those who don’t know it: The Chureca consists of a low plateau built up from years of dumped, composted garbage, around half a square mile in area, where around 200 desperately poor families rake through recently dumped garbage to sort out any valuables and scrounge out a living, averaging an earning of $2 per day. A combination of steady sun and steady wind dry out the garbage and fuel mini-fires that smoulder constantly, filling the air with a highly toxic, noxious smoke. A low (natural) ridge next to the garbage plateau breaks the wind a little and provides a safer place for a small neighborhood of squatters’ shacks patched together out of materials found or scrounged from the dump.

I have been to the Chureca twice before, once alone, but I wanted to experience it in full this time. I waved hello to the teens lounging in shady corners sniffing glue. I forced myself to breathe in the sickening odor as we climbed onto the mounds of garbage. The wind whipped smoke into my nose and mouth and grains of who-knows-what into my eyes. I looked into the eyes of the humans – humans – sorting through the garbage in loose packs, shook hands black with stuff I’d rather not be touching, noted their odd dress and occasional gas mask, their lost teeth, their bright and welcoming smiles. I waded after Nelson through soggy mounds of cardboard, assorted vegetation (Managuans throw away a lot of plant material), broken glass, and Coke bottles. I used a simple breathing trick to get over the stench of the air, but even so my lungs were physically aching after about 15 minutes on top of the trash mounds and we headed back down. I noted that there was no development, no houses within sight downwind of the smoke.

I didn’t bother to take any pictures. I don’t think they’d do the place justice. I’d much rather take in the sights, sounds, smells, feel, and carry them with me. If there were sweatshops in Hell, they would look like this. Yet even here, there is life… there is hope, there is joy. I’m told there’s none of that in Hell.

Pictures

Let me briefly share some parts of my visual experience here so far. Please note that I also have a second post, below, which I never got around to writing yesterday.

Me with some of the kids at the Project when I arrived.

The joyful sight of Chacocente houses when I arrived.

Bathroom scribblings in the facilities at Huembes market. Culture is ever the meeting point of the profound and the profane.

Sunsets during rainy season are awesome.

Just lean into the curves

It turns out that Jose Luis has been giving computer classes since I left Chacocente! I hadn’t heard anything about progress in the Project or the school since I left… I really wish there were an easier way to get news from down here when I’m away. The laptops that we received and I gave classes with have lost some keys, three have broken with time, one screen flickers, but five work and they are in a dedicated computer lab in the school and they are being used regularly by the students, and that’s what matters to me.

I’ve mostly processed my initial intense reactions to being back in Nicaragua and found my niche here. I feel much more in my element now. I think that generally happens when you visit an experience, leave it for a while, then come back to it: it feels more familiar, deeper, because it is those things. The friendships I formed on my last trip are stronger and deeper now, they are based on more shared experience and they are more meaningful now. It’s especially nice that I have the time to get to know my host family, the Tellez family, better. My brother Isaac shares the sentiment, and I quote: “Topher, why don’t you die, disappear, and then get a life!” Isaac speaks amazing English but generally doesn’t prioritize common sense when talking with me.

I stayed at Project Chacocente on Tuesday night. I spent a pleasant and relaxing evening chatting with Manuela and her family, but the sleeping arrangements weren’t exactly as I had remembered them. Now it’s the rainy season and a storm pounded deafeningly on the Casona roof most of the night; aggressive mosquitos, which weren’t a problem during the dry season (“summer”: December to May), could only be kept at bay with the portable fan I had the foresight to invest in, but which made me uncomfortably cold; stupid moths kept bumping into me; and the rusty cot I dug out of storage seems to have shrunk since I last used it. These are nuisances to get used to, I think, as I really need to stay at the Project some nights each week to get to know the families as well as I want to. A mosquito net might help. In any case the families I have talked with were very happy to see me and very happy to have someone present to listen to their concerns. It made me feel useful – I love feeling useful – and it gave my presence here a definite sense of purpose that extends beyond my personal fulfillment.

Thursday through today (Monday) I have spent in Managua relaxing, reading, gathering my thoughts. Saturday I met with my friend Alejandra, an architect from Masaya who I haven’t seen since around March of my year here. When I met her she was working on her first real job after leaving school; now she is directing the finishing details of a four- or five-star hotel in an elite section of the city. She feels more precise, more efficient, more confident, more professional, a little less stressed, more in her element as an architect and I’m happy for her. It feels like achieving success and making her way economically is less of a conflict for her now, and she is starting to turn to more existential concerns about life quality and emotional relationships. (You who know me know that that’s a happy shift in my eyes.) I think as a result of each of our growth, our interactions had the same style but more depth, more energy than they used to. I love seeing people change, including myself.

Whatever else can be said for a Blue / Mythic / agrarian-structured society (see either Jean Gebser’s worldviews or Wilber’s color stages), it is exhausting, bewildering, and chaotic. You can rely on chaos factors knocking your plans awry, which makes matters exciting for a population that generally lives with very little financial cushion to absorb such chaos factors. The slightest errand literally becomes an adventure with an uncertain outcome. Perhaps that’s why Blue values so heavily prioritize order, security, stability, and absolute truths. At the same time, the fact that you have to improvise so much, instead of reacting mechanically to reliable circumstances, makes the experience much more personable and vivid than a heavily Orange / Formal / industrial society. Especially if you get enough sleep each night, which I’ve mostly done.

When I lived here before, I liked to believe that I was invincible in some ways. I disliked wearing sunglasses because I felt they would prevent my eyes from growing strong enough to withstand the harsh sunlight on their own. Sunglasses felt like a distancing shell, impersonally cutting me off from the people around me. Well, yes – I use sunglasses now and they probably keep my eyes from adapting as much to the light. They also protect me from the general energy drain that constant bright light causes me, reduce my headaches, and make me feel like Morpheus. It’s pretty impersonal to subject your body to abuse in the hope that it will get used to it, it’s impersonal to go around all day with a headache toning down all your interactions with others.

My first trip to Nicaragua made it clear that a heavily Green worldview, which I had at the time, was no longer an adequate filter for me to interpret the world through. It pushed me to look for a sturdier and more complete philosophy, eventually leading me to Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory. Now, being back here after two formative years at Middlebury, I feel more growth stirring inside me. I like growth, but it’s very roller-coastery and I never really know where it will lead me. I think sometimes you run into situations where all you can do is hold on, lean into the curves and be aware of who you want to be in every moment. At least life isn’t boring… that would be disappointing and much less fun.

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.