I went to the A&P today to pick up a few things since our cupboards were bare. I was also feeling somewhat guilty because J bought a package of Double Stuff Oreos yesterday and most of them were gone when he checked this afternoon. Quite the mystery. I never buy Double Stuff Oreos because they’re way too delicious and they have 70 calories a piece. Multiply that by the twenty or so that I can easily consume in one sitting – willpower is not a concept I’m familiar with -- and therein lies the problem (and the solution to the mystery).
As I was walking through the store’s parking lot a car slowed down next to me, and I saw that the driver was C, a lovely older man – he’s about 80 now -- who I met in March of 2007 when we both went to Nicaragua with Bridges to Community, a nonprofit community development organization. We traveled with fifteen other people, including my son L, who at 12 was the youngest member of the group. C was the oldest by at least ten years.
We went to Nicaragua for a week to build two cinderblock homes in a small, impoverished community near Masaya; they were the 276th and 277th of what are now over 325 homes Bridges has built there since 2000, when two earthquakes struck. The work is backbreaking and the living situation is challenging.
You start by digging six very large holes in the rock hard earth (March is the dry season) for the support beams. You then make the first of many batches of concrete the old-fashioned way – no cement trucks aqui. Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of sand and gravel are mixed with 80 pound bags of cement and tens of buckets of water. When the concrete is just right, you shovel it into a bucket, heave it up onto your shoulder and carry it to where it’s needed. The cinderblock, enough for a house roughly 16’x20’, is carried bucket brigade style from the pickup truck to the building site. All this in the sweltering sun.
At the end of the long workday you return to the school where you’re staying, take a bucket shower, eat a simple but delicious meal of rice and beans, use the outhouse and collapse, bone-tired, onto your mosquito-netted cot. The next morning you’re awakened by the roosters at 5:30 or so, you get dressed and don your construction boots (after first shaking out any slumbering scorpions), and the day begins all over again. It’s exhilarating.
Despite the fact that there were many easier tasks at the worksite that C could have undertaken, he tackled the most grueling ones and worked just as hard, if not harder, than anyone there. At a time when many of his contemporaries were probably on the golf course in Florida (and rightfully so -- they’d earned their retirement) or in poor health, C was making volcanoes of concrete and hauling block in Las Conchitas, Nicaragua. He was changing the world for two families. And he looked like he was having the time of his life.
C was an inspiration to all of us. I’ve been on two more Bridges trips since I went with him; we could have used his help, and would have enjoyed his company, each time. He has shown me that you can remain strong and involved and committed despite advancing age. That you can mix it up with the best of them. That compassion knows no limits. How great would it be if I helped build the 1000th house when I’m a septuagenarian?!
Back at the A&P, C and I, both in a hurry, simply exchanged hellos and how are yous. I look forward to catching up with him the next time I bump into him (it’s always at the A&P -- I guess he likes Double Stuffs, too). I hope he’s taking a well-deserved rest, but I doubt it.
No comments:
Post a Comment