Home is where the Heart is

Today marks about the halfway point of my work in Central America. That statement probably doesn’t hit you quite the same way it hits me, does it? In approximately five weeks I have done, seen, and learned more than perhaps any other five week period of my life, but I remain focused on what this place has left to teach me, even through my reflection. I will be spending a week in Honduras to get involved in the programs at the largest S.H.I. field office. While there, I mainly hope to learn about their approach to microfinance, as well as join a small group for a dairy goat workshop for a couple days. I am very interested to see the differences between the country programs, whether those differences are due to culture, materials and resources, or simply experience level. Another thing I will do in the next five weeks is a home stay with a local farmer. This experience will be crucial to me actually understanding the life of a farmer in this area, as to know how current programs are helping and could be improved. Outside of those two small journeys, I will make sure to learn about organic pesticides, composting, and irrigation practices. Those are the few areas that S.H.I. is heavily involved in, with which I have yet to gain any understanding of concept and implementation.

So now that I have talked about what is coming up for me, how about we discuss the last week? The Smaller World Chocolate Tour group made it here for about a week, and I was fortunate enough to join them in their activities most of the time. We did and learned so much over a seven day period, including building a solar latrine and wood conservation stove, touring a couple different organic farms, making delicious chocolate by hand from freshly picked and roasted cacao beans, touring a local Mayan ruin, visiting a waterfall, and swimming through a huge cave system. Sounds just like every week of your life, right? Outside of all of that action, the best part for me about having the group here was the opportunity to connect and process with other Americans. They stayed at Cotton Tree Lodge, which is a wonderful natural and environmentally friendly lodge with cabanas right on the Moho River. That is where we decompressed and processed each evening. The people in the group had so many questions for me that greatly helped me understand my experiences thus far, and also helped them take more away from theirs, I hope. Also, hearing all of their reactions to, and personal insights on life here really helped to challenge and shape my own. I value tremendously my personal reflection time, but this helped me realize the importance of verbally processing my experiences if I am to fully understand them.

Yesterday, as the group raced by me on the airstrip in a tiny airplane heading to Belize City, and onto their lives in the states, I waved goodbye and had a strange feeling of returning to real life myself. Having them here, especially the Stein family, was like a vacation for me, and as they left I felt that, just as they soon would be, I too was now home. It was that instant that I realized that “home” has changed dramatically for me in the past few months. I have never understood the phrase, “Home is where the heart is” quite like I did at that second. My heart is out here with these people, with their struggle, and with my small role in helping and empowering them in their fight against that struggle. And so I am home. Frederick Buechner’s character, Cuthbert, in his book, Godric, puts it this way – “When a man leaves home, he leaves behind some scrap of his heart. It’s the same with a place a man is going to, only then he sends a scrap of his heart ahead.” I am no longer living in Seattle, LA, or Salem, not right now, though a scrap of my heart rests in each place. Right now I am at home in Belize, and soon I will be at home in Kenya, followed by Europe and eventually India. Each one of those places represents a home to me because they represent a group of people with a struggle for survival, and an opportunity for me, all of us, to be involved in their victory and triumph against that struggle.

The top photo is of the group at Rio Blanco Falls, where we went on Thursday afternoon and got a chance to explore and swim. On Wednesday, I went with a few of the extentionists to Boom Creek to help put up a thatch roof, made of cahun palm leaves, on an observation deck at the research center. It was a lot more complex and difficult than I imagined it would have been, and you can tell from the photo that I was up in the air a bit trying to figure this thatching process. I have been surprised to find out how much people here followed the U.S. presidential race, but what wasn’t surprising about it was which candidate the overwhelming majority of people supported. This photo is an example of the way people campaign here - nothing official; just all homemade signs showing support for the candidate of their choice. I love it. For those of you who know me, the next photo might surprise you. At Rio Blanco Falls, from the very spot we all stood for the group photo, I jumped about 30 feet down into the water. I know that doesn’t sound like much to a lot of you, but I get terrified of jumping any more than about ten feet, so after about 20 minutes of trying to convince myself to jump, I finally did. It was really important to me to have documentation of this jump. The last photo is just because I am really cheesy. This is a coconut, picked fresh from a tree at the research center, that I chopped open, drank the water inside, and then dove into the flesh of the fruit. It was delicious, and I took this photo because it perfectly illustrates what I was talking about in the above paragraph. The coconut is my whole heart, which is with me now in Belize, but you can see that the right side of it has some “scraps” missing, which are the scraps I have left behind and sent ahead. I know, I know, I need to quit being so sentimental dramatic. It is a piece of fruit, for crying out loud, but just let me have my moments. Have a great week, everyone, and give some thought to where the scraps of your heart are, and if you truly are at home where you are right now.