There is a small patio area in back of our house. Soon after we arrived here in Chinandega, I was walking through the market and saw some pants for sale. I decided I’d buy a couple to plant by the fence that separates our back yard from our neighbor's. I enquired about the plants and was told that one would produce white flowers. I took it home and borrowed a shovel to dig a hole for it. My neighbour, Carolina, said, “You know that plant is going to get very big.” I said, “In two years I’m going to leave, and it will be your problem.” Fortunately, Carolina thinks all my jokes are funny, or maybe she thinks it is funny that I try to make jokes in Spanish. Anyway, she laughed and repeated it to her grandmother who also laughed.
It has been touch and go for that plant. At first it withered down to a twig and a couple of dried out leaves. Then it came back and was looking quite robust, but ants got at it and whittled it back down. With the start of the rains this year, it got very healthy, grew to a waist high bush and is flowering profusely. The neighbors admire it. I admire it every morning when Deb and I sit out there to have our morning coffee and play cribbage. I take photos of the blossoms. These are my thoughts about that plant: the both of us, me and the plant, are putting down roots in Nicaragua. However, I know that my time in Nicaragua has an expiration date. It may be in June of 2017. It may be later, but eventually I’m going to uproot myself and go back home. The plant is going to stay. The neighbors are going to stay. What I leave behind is going to be somebody else's problem.
It is an interesting aspect of being a Peace Corps volunteer that an essential part of the service is community integration. We live as a member of the community and have strong ties of friendship and family. However, we are clearly extranjeros, foreigners. And it is also clear that we are not immigrating permanently. From time to time, someone will say to me, “John, with your US money you are a rich man here. You could live here like a king.” I reply, “I think about it, but I miss my family and friends too much. That is why I have to go back.” That is reasoning that Nicaraguans understand and respect. Everyone has a father or brother or son who is living as a foreigner in the US or Costa Rica or Spain. They are there for economic reasons, but the longing for home is pretty universal.
Therefore, I think one of the challenges Peace Corps presents is how to live with intensity and authenticity as a member of the community while knowing you are extranjero and that there is a close of service date coming up. I really fit in in Chinandega. I have friends and a host family that looks out for me. I’m part of the community health system and I’m part of the cultural life of the city. I introduce people to each other and they say, “Oh, you know John, too? Small world.” I don’t hold back on getting involved. However, I maintain as part of my consciousness that my presence here is temporary. I have conversations about leaving when it comes up. People ask me, “When you go home will you come back to visit?” I say, “Yes but only as a vacation. I won’t be living here.” One buddy says all the time, ”John, in 2017, I’m going. I’m going North.” I say, “Wait till June then you can come and visit me.” He says, “OK. June 2017, I’m going.” Of course, everyone will be fine without me. They were fine before I showed up. I think I’ll be missed, and life in Chinandega will go on. People tell fond stories about volunteers who have come and gone. They’ll tell fond stories about me. “John, buena gente.”
The thought that is coming up next, may be more weighty than the bush with the white flowers can support, but asà es. (…so it is.) All of this is related metaphorically to mortality, at least it is when you're seventy. Go back in the paragraph above to the sentence that says, “I don’t hold back on getting involved.” Read to the end of the paragraph, but imagine it is about somebody at the end of their life thinking about the inevitable. It all fits, right? And how about this one: “…the challenge… is how to live with intensity and authenticity… while knowing… that there is a close of service date coming up.”
