Drew Paton traveled here in January. It was his first time to work with us in Masaya, but his fourth trip to Nicaragua. He is a New Yorker. Studied at university at Albany and Hunter College in Manhattan. In October he is moving to Nicaragua for a year to work at another Bridges to Community location in Ticuantepe. He has long range plans to go to seminary and keep working in Nicaragua. Good dancer, too.
Jim

My heart raced as the landing gear unfolded and clunked into place. When the plane touched down I felt sick. The wheels skidded and stirred the dry, red earth and instantly I could feel it in my lungs, even before the door opened. I imagined the chalky grains stuck to the back of my throat. I coughed and stepped down out of the plane. I scanned my new surroundings. Trash filled every ditch and the scrawny, sparsely-feathered chickens stabbed at the hopeless earth. Stray dogs roamed between the knees of the stilted homes, rummaging through the shadowy cool. The people simply stared. I was distinctly aware of myself as a foreigner.

The night settled into the palms around us while we loaded our bags unto an ancient school bus. There was an ironic lightning bolt painted on the back of the nearly crippled bus, accompanied by the English word "Flash." Somehow I found comfort in that one comprehensible word. My companions all spoke English, but that night we were silent. The air was too full already. There was no room for words. A single word might have disrupted the balance. We simply sat there and stared at each other like paratroopers approaching a night jump, behind enemy lines.

I was 18 years old and a freshman in college when I traveled to Nicaragua for the first time. I was, of course, brimming with all the expected emotions, but hidden within my exuberant awe was a profound sense of discomfort. I was without the company and companionship of my family and friends; without the luxuries that I had come to expect; without the comfort of familiarity; without the security of home; without out all those conditions to which, erroneously, I felt entitled. I felt what anyone would feel: instantly, desperately homesick.

In what felt like days but was probably only moments, my panic subsided and my reservations dissolved in the tropical heat. I spent ten of the most amazing days of my life in Nicaragua and when I came home I knew that my life would never be the same. In the past several years I have returned to Nicaragua three times. With each trip I take I fall deeper and deeper in love with the land and people of Nicaragua. Each time I leave Nicaragua I leave with new memories of smiling children and breathtaking vistas, with reaffirmed faith and rediscovered gratitude, and with a new understanding of and appreciation for love, laughter, hard work and responsibility. And in the most cliché way: for everything I take home with me, I leave a part of myself behind.

Nicaragua, like so many places on earth, has had a long history of oppression, corruption, war and disaster; and without question the United States has played a role in this history. This, however, should not be our sole motivation for traveling to Nicaragua.

Our obligation to the people of Nicaragua has very little to do with being American. We are not to descend benevolently with our magic wands to right all the wrongs and make up for the mistakes of our forefathers. It is not our charge to amend the damage done by the Contras and the funding of unjust campaigns. Our obligation has very little to do with being American, but our opportunity has everything to do with being American. We've got the resources. We are blessed with the funds, the good health, the energy, and the precious time to spare. These things are only on loan to us and so it is our charge to repay that loan with gratitude and service. In this way, our obligation is only that which comes simply from being human. The greatest thing that can evolve out of our willingness is friendship. We can hope only that our blessings and our lessons learned will not go to waste, and that our Nicaraguan brothers and sisters will come to understand just how much we care. Our service is only a small effort to recognize what Marian Wright Edelman referred to as "the rent each of us pays for living, the very purpose of life."

Nowadays there is nothing in the Nicaraguan landscape that makes me feel threatened. The vast beauty and inspired hope of Nicaragua have left little room in my heart for fear. However, my trips to Nicaragua have become progressively harder, not easier. The more we learn about our world, the more we are forced to confront ourselves. So often, after returning home, the impulse is to try to forget what we have seen and heard and to distract ourselves with other things. Because hidden in this life-altering experience are the two greatest human burdens: guilt and responsibility.

Guilt: because we have been born into relative affluence and unparalleled good fortune, and they have been born into such undeserved, unpardonable poverty; and perhaps it feels worse sometimes to have what we know we do not deserve than to be deprived of that which we know we have earned.

Responsibility: because the recognition that we are responsible for raising up all our brothers and sisters who have been trampled down is often too much for us. We are scared, understandably, and we don't feel ready. We feel as though even contemplating such a responsibility may crush us. And so feeling guilty reminds us of our responsibility, and rejecting our responsibility makes us feel guilty.

It is so easy here in the comfort of our homes, to forget. It is so easy to get lost, and let's face it: we welcome those distractions because the alternative is often too frightening. Once we have accepted, onto our shoulders, the weight of knowing, we feel ready to do anything to relieve ourselves of the burden. If we move fast enough everything that is hard to look upon, every site that pries tears from our eyes, every image that fills us with guilt or reminds us of our responsibility, will just be a blur. We never have to see anything that we don't want to see, but if our guilt is a blur than so is our love, so is our gratitude, so is our purpose, so are our lives.

Drew Paton, July 2004