The Peru Gazette

By Rachel Daly 

To be back in Nicaragua this year was quite a feeling. We arrived in the middle of the night on an antiquated but functioning bus, and as the compound came into view, there was comfort just in seeing it again. I was ready to be back with the Nicaraguan people I had come to care about so much.

At first glance, everything appeared the same, but I soon learned that it wasn’t quite so. The price of rice, a staple food, had skyrocketed, and daylight revealed that the Sandinista Party, having won in recent municipal elections, had gone to every street corner and telephone pole and spray painted it in their signature colors, red and black. As much as the Mission of Hope had brought about progress, there were still new things arising to challenge us.

Last year was my first mission, and to put it simply, it made me completely overhaul my mindset. As I went to the school, the orphanage, the disability center, and the neighborhoods, everywhere I looked, things screamed to me that although I had never had to think about this, it was something I needed to see. Poverty now had a face—I could see the children who knew me by name, and at the same time, I could see the destitution they went home to every night. It made things real to me in a way nothing else could have.

Yet, at the same time, I never saw sadness from them. The children laughed and played and ran around and gave hugs as if they were the happiest people that ever lived. I knew there was hope for them, because there was joy for their hearts to hold on to. It was why I never felt depressed by looking around at their situation.

This year, I knew my mission experience would take me deeper than last year. I could tell, from the first day when I looked at a young boy who I recognized from last year and saw how much he had aged in the short space of a year. He looked as though the weight of reality had been set upon him. It was unsettling to look at the other kids and know that someday, they would all carry the same burden.

But the most powerful brush with despair that I experienced was the Managua city dump. Nothing could have prepared me for it, and nothing will ever erase it from my memory. It was a chilling revelation of the extent of human suffering, and because it thrust before my eyes the level of pain and affliction that so many members of our human family live with day in and day out, I hope I never am able to forget what I saw.

It was like an enormous expanse of rolling hills and sprawling fields, sculpted completely from garbage yet dotted with the homes of some eight- to twelve-hundred people whose lives were spent scrounging through the rubbish for the means of survival. It extended for miles in every direction, shrouded by a fog of foul smoke and overshadowed by clouds of circling vultures. The wind whistled through like a death knell, bringing a smell so fetid, it was overpowering, and all around us were flowing streams of sewage, bones of dead animals, and feces. A group of utterly filthy children whose hair was beginning to lighten from lead poisoning ran up to see us and wrapped their arms around some of our legs. Heartbreakingly, we couldn’t even hug them back for the sake of our own safety. I felt as though I was staring out at the landscape of hell.

I have yet to make sense of that experience, but I know one thing is true. The people of the dump should not have to suffer another day because those of us with the means to lift them up cannot bring ourselves to look. Their story needs to be told so that people must stare this desperation in the face.  Only then will we be unable to ignore it, and only then will the people of the dump have a chance at a life of dignity. I know my efforts to bring relief to them are not finished, and that is my source of sustenance. I hope that it keeps me going until I have done all in my power to make things change.

Both the sad things and the happy things that I experienced in Nicaragua are still with me. The Mission, through it all, has done truly amazing things, and continues to touch people’s lives with every trip. I hope that I can return next year and maybe take another small step in making a difference in a very needy world. 

Rachel Daly is a junior at Seton Catholic Central. She is the daughter of Matt and Bobbie Daly. In February she traveled to Nicaragua as a member of the North Country Mission of Hope.