Recently, I wrote an article sharing some accounts I had experienced when I worked as a volunteer in Nicaragua. This is a continuation of the original story:
As a group of volunteers and myself were on our way into Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua, we saw the aftermath of a car crash, where it seemed that a car had hit a motorcyclist on the "highway." This crash scene was unlike anything I had seen before, it was almost bizarre to me. We drove by at a slower pace, as our driver wanted to see if he knew anyone in the wreck, thankfully, he didn't.
There in the middle of the street was the car, an old and beat up Chevy, something you might see in an 80s movie as a teenager's first car. Lying next to the car in the middle of the road was the motorcycle, broken into bits, and the motorcyclist, with his leg swung over the side of the bike; it didn't appear that he had been moved since he was hit. There was a crowd of people around the man on the bike, it looked as if they were trying to grab his arms and legs to pull him from the street.
Another volunteer in the van asked the same question I was thinking, "Why doesn't anyone call an ambulance, why is everyone just standing there watching?" The driver answered, "There is no ambulance here. They are waiting for him to die, they need to move him so they can get around to scene and carry on."
I was appalled at the mentality of this group of people, although this accident seemed normal to them; they stood around chatting, only one other man was kneeled next to the motorcyclist. As we watched longer, another volunteer spoke, "If they wanted to go to the hospital to save him, they would have by now. The only reason they don't is because the government owns the hospital and you have to pay for medical attention with money you don't have. The linens on the bed and the food they serve you is an extra price, most people here would rather die in their own homes or on the street than leave their families in crippling debt." The driver only nodded in agreement.
I watched from the rear window now, staring back at the scene as we had come to pass it. My mouth hung open as I reached for my phone to dial 911, but my fingers stopped just over the buttons. There was nothing I could do to help, that man would die in a matter of minutes. Everyone around him knows it; he knows it; and they are all just waiting for the right time so they can move his body and continue on with their lives. Instead of another volunteer, I became another bystander who couldn't help.
Yet another story from my adventures in Nicaragua:
On my first night as a volunteer, as I exited the plane and obtained my luggage, I was welcomed into Nicaragua with a brick wall of heat and humidity. I followed the swarm of other volunteers out the glass doors and into the road, just outside of the airport. There was a school bus and a fleet of vans waiting to take us to our final destination, but as the vans had already been filled with suitcases and with people, I chose to ride on the bus.
My first view of Nicaragua was through an old school bus, spray painted with graffiti inside and out. The bus had a rusted out floor and broken seats (every seat only had either a bottom or a back, never both) and the windows were permanently screwed into the open position, to try and get any breeze to blow through the bus. There were Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling and a television chord wrapped around the door frame to keep it from rattling, the bus itself was an adventure.
We passed a Mercedes dealership that had bars on the windows and padlocks on the barbed wire fencing. We also passed a BMW dealership that had recently gone out of business, and a school that looked as though it had gone up in flames. I saw my first ever stray dog as it wandered down the street, sniffed another stray dog that laid dead on the road, and continued on. I watched a mother shuffle her four children underneath a tarp and close the door to her home in the alleyway between two buildings.
As we moved further down the road, I saw the "capital building," a beautiful, marble, palace-like structure that had a stairway so grand it could have lead to Heaven. The pillars glistened in the evening air, slick with humidity, and the lights on the roof projected into the night sky, lighting even the smallest clouds in the star-studded sky. I looked again to the alleyway where the mother had been, then back at the capital building. My heart sunk and my stomach ached at the thought of how this country treats its citizens.
My head swiveled left and right trying to soak up everything the light touched. I realized then, that this country, and this culture were more than just another people, they were individual lives in need of help and in need of food, shelter, and love. This country, ruled by a corrupt government that leaves its citizens for dead would be the new home of my body for the next week, and the home of my heart for years to come.
As I apply to leave for Nicaragua again in February, I look back on my first night, as my eyes were open to a new world of poverty and of pain, and how my heart would cease to be the same.
