Hard Knock Life

Business has been picking up at the bike shop. Well, not business as you normally think of it, but people have been coming in to fix their bikes and a few have asked if I have bikes to sell. Its notable that the people coming by aren't just wide-eyed neighborhood kids trying to get their hands on whatever they can. These people have been adults who use or will use their bike as their primary mode of transportation.

Meet Brian, a tall, thin anglo man. He is soft-spoken and very humble. He rides a black Huffy mountain bike, the kind that you buy at Walmart for $90. Today, Brian has his long, wavy blond hair bunched upwards into a beanie. He is a Bible student at Bethel College in South Bend. Luckly, he only has one class per week on Monday nights, to which he rides his bike. He is so serious of a student, so passionate about what he does, he carries all of his books 15 miles or more each way in a hiking backpack. Recently his seat post had to be replaced because his body weight combined with the books had bent his first one down to his rear wheel (I find that hard to believe, but he wasn't joking). He came by on Tuesday as well to work on his bike a little and check to see if I could help him install a 49cc motor inside his bike's triangle. Today he is here to install it.

We open the boxes to check out the parts. Several are very heavy, others are complicated to the point of being intimidating. I spot the manual at the bottom of the box. Drawings cover a few pages of the manual, speckled with hundreds of scratchily handwritten, hardly visible numbers. On one page, there are a few paragraphs written in far-from-perfect English describing installation sequence along with a picture of the finished product. Looking at the sketches, into the box, and at the tired little Huffy, I have a feeling of uncertainty. Brian suggests that we pray about it and I chuckle. I always pray once I've messed a project up, rarely before I even start. I turn to look at him and see that he is serious. I drop my hands and close my eyes, admitting that he has a point, then Brian prays that God will give us what we both feel is lacking, the ability to complete the project.

We didn't finish the installation, but we came really close. It'll make for an inspiring motored bike. The experience of just meeting this man was already plenty of inspiration for me. He used to live with some people close to where I live now, but he moved out when some chemical dependencies showed up in his housemates. Now he lives in a storage unit where he says he plans to build himself a loft set-up, like a dorm. He says living in a storage unit is fine, except sometimes you just want some light, like in the mornings when you want to get dressed. His light is currently a few LEDs on a utility battery. It blows my mind that he can live in a storage unit and bike 30 miles once a week to take a class.

I stayed at the Catholic Worker house in South Bend. Their commitment to simple living goes beyond ours over at the Jubilee house. Thirty of them eat nearly all donated food together every night, they work real jobs and contribute all of their earnings to the house, and on the weekends they voluntarily run a busy soup kitchen. When I commented on how busy their lives must be, I was corrected, full, not busy. One of them was gone and I stayed in his room. The only decorations in his spacious room were a crucified Jesus on the wall and several big piles of books. Yet it almost felt like home. How are these people renewed, where do they find life, how are they filled?

I puzzle over that question. I think that either of those lives would exhaust me. I am filled by many things, singing, eating with people, working with people, praying, exercise, working with food in all of its stages, going to church, being with people, reading books, and other things. I guess I could still be filled by all of those things if I was in either situation, but I'm not sure about that. I am reminded of the Liberian A Capella, a singing men's group that has gone through civil war, the loss of friends and family, and surely are familiar with looking despair in the face then staring it down. These men sing songs of freedom, joy, and peace despite witnessing atrocities and intense heartbreak. Could I still sing if my family had been killed, my friends raped? The resonance in their voices stands as a testament to the power of faith. Also, it stands as a reason to be thankful for all of the people in our lives, for the good times and for the hard times. One struggle helps to give us a cheerful perspective during another, when we know the beauty and triumph that comes out of the pain.

Back to My Roots!

Liz and I have finished one week of language school here in La Ceiba, on the north coast. This city is named after a huge tree that grows here in Honduras and the city is known as Honduras´ girlfriend. Thats apparently because there is a thriving nightlife here that is lacking in all other cities. Theres a well known Honduran song about La Ceiba that has a really catchy chorus, ´Es mi novia Ceiba, dum da da da dum´ and its kinda fun to sing.

Here on the north coast, the (Honduran-African) Garífuna people live in their own towns. Liz and I went to one this past weekend to hang out. I was really excited because I had heard that the towns are very similar to African ones. It was really nice to walk around that town, smiling at people and being greeted in turn by huge white African smiles. The Garífuna like to play music and dance, but the day we went we didn´t see any maybe because it was raining.

We went for a walk on the beach and finally picked a spot to sit down and enjoy the beach and ocean. The beach was deserted and the waves looked perfect for body-surfing, so I went out to catch a few. Liz went on a walk. While neither of us was watching, someone grabbed our bags (and my clothes) and ran, leaving us moneyless and me mostly naked. By the grace of God, my wallet happened to make its way out of a pocket inside my bag, so we had enough money to easily make it back to La Ceiba. I felt like going back right away would just feel too much like defeat, so I got back in the water, got knocked around by a few more waves, then came back in. We then decided to stop at a hotel and get a coffee to enjoy for a while. We sat at the restaurant and watched a storm come in from the ocean before we made our way out. The owner ended up giving us the coffee for free and we went on our way running through the rain to the bus stop, yelling ´Adios!´to massive white smiles as we ran out of their friendly town. We made it back happily and safely without too many losses, and it was a great story to tell our host-mother. Haha, she really enjoyed telling it back to us the next day, laughing uncontrollably about how we showed up at the door without a key and how I was almost desnudo.

We sometimes talk about how our stuff, our technology, really complicates our lives. We talk about how life would be more relaxed and probably better if we didn´t use technology as extensively as we do. But at the same time we are reluctant to give up our technology because it is the most expensive thing we own. I lost my camera to the beach-robber, but that only means that I am forced to pay more attention to the beauty that I see in everyday life and in the faces of the people I would normally try to take pictures of. I see the beauty or the joy or the life and I say to myself, wow, I wish I could capture that in zeros and ones. But since I can´t, I just take a good look at it and soak it in, remembering not just the image, but also the feel of the rotting dock below my feet, the wet and salty sheen on my face, the rolling waves and the mist that trails them as they pass me on the way to the beach. So regrettably, I won´t be able to post pictures for a while. But I´ll do my best to soak in all this beauty around me and tell you about it as best I can. :)