Homesick Moment

Yesterday there was no golden glow.

For two hours Marlo and I whizzed along the recently resurfaced Pan-American highway to Chinandega for a planning meeting for the upcoming visit of our church’s service-and-learning team. In addition to Steve Holtrop and Alma Hernandez (church team trip coordinators), traveling with us were Alma’s 80-something widowed mother who needed an outing and Lourdes Espinosa who needed transportation from Leon to a different Chinandega meeting.

Sweating in hotter-than-Managua temperature, Marlo and I drank juice and ate empanadas (jelly-filled-pastry crusts). We understood about five percent of the all-in-Spanish meeting with six Chinandega pastors.

Heading north to Chinandega two pens ran dry, as I scribbled notes during a follow-up interview with Lourdes, who teaches a Buen Trato, a Nehemiah Center program to reduce domestic violence. On the return trip, I propped my laptop screen against the dash of Steve’s Toyota Prada and keystroked as Steve answered my questions—whenever he wasn’t passing trucks or taking bumpy shortcuts to back to Managua.

It was all so, um, well--so ordinary, like a committee meeting back home: questions, opinions, circular conversations, eventual decisions.  The trip, too, was ordinary, with its jokes about government road resurfacing because of upcoming elections, its waitress who got two out of six food orders wrong, and its multiple-offer-negotiations about paying for lunch.

Back at the Hernandez residence, I felt restless, empty. The Hernandez family members were busy with their own lives. The Internet service was down. I was tired, but not sleepy. I lost a game of gin to Marlo. (In our ongoing competition I am now behind by 29 games.)

For one brief, black moment, I wanted to fly home. And then I fell asleep.

This morning I sit in the kiosko (pagoda) in the Nehemiah Center courtyard, preparing for two follow-up interviews. Within two hours I have set appointments with six more people for whom I have follow-up questions. Last year Eric Loftsgard told me the roofed, outdoor hallway that surrounds this courtyard was designed for interaction. This morning I experience it first-hand.

I suggest a revised schedule to my co-author in Nebraska. My email to her says, “Donna, this may be a moment of blind enthusiasm, but I think I can complete that list of needed information for the book before the team arrives!”

The golden glow is back.

What a difference a day makes. . .

Or is today’s glow the result of that two-full-mug, Nicaragua-strength dose of the “holy drug?”*

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*To understand the "holy drug" reference, see yesterday's post.