Remembering Home

We weren't really gone that long.

But coming back to Nicaragua this time, I am struck with how much I had forgotten about how things are here.

I forgot about:

• the flowers on the hillsides
• dusty feet
• mosquitoes
• the singsong call of vendors in the market
• power outages
• buying just how much you need for today
• how complex achieving a shower can be
• a deep sincere hospitality 
• the noise and commotion of streets full of buses, horses, and bike carts
• butterflies on hanging vines
• that smell
• strangers stopping to push your vehicle over a hump 
• the pace of a meal, or a business transaction
• stopping in the street to greet friends
• the feeling of needing to rely on others
• eating rice with three fingers
• the lack of pretension**
• the openness and camaraderie born of a life not built around privacy
• the morning mists on the mountains
• the fine art of leaning in a doorway

**OK--I won't explain all of these, but this one example is too perfect to pass up. Our dear brother Luis stood up in church to lead a prayer, to a flurry of good-natured giggles. He had been half way through his Sunday morning buzz cut when the power went out. So there he stood, half his hair a quarter inch long the rest about three times as tall. No embarrassment, no mockery, just an amused acceptance of the way things go sometimes.

I am amazed and grateful for the welcoming spirit of my brothers and sisters in Nicaragua that make this exotic, strange place feel so familiar and so much my home.