men between worlds

man between worlds IMG_3497

Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

Brandon, Bill, Tyler, Tessa and I journeyed above the clouds to film the first segment of what will become The Inukshuk Chronicles, a multi-discipline public conversation on life’s meanings. We were all awe struck by the ascent, starting first in lush forests of moss, rock and trees the day before and ascending over barren ski slope then green forest and then through dense fog and breaking out into perfect sunlight above the treeline. I will revisit this ascent and this weekend of shooting and adventuring and friendship-making many times to come I am sure. For now what I meditate on is how much I have changed and how this ascent particularly revealed the changes to me.

I love the desolate places. Climbing above the treeline has always been a particularly special experience for me because there the world is simple. Mountaintops are like the sea, they are singular and unfit for human habitation, they are places man can only cross at best. It is no wonder the religious have sought God above the treeline and in the more terrible places, for only a God could survive such a place. In my past I not only loved the solitude but actually felt an almost familial kinship to the geography of these places. When I moved to Maine after college I did not date but spent my time sailing solo to the islands offshore and just being alone in God’s creation. When I think back to those days in Maine it is not just the memory of a place but it is like the memory of a first love. I can smell the hot granite rocks on the west shore of Outer Heron Island as I laid my cheeks against them for a pillow and a bed. I can taste the sea salt on my sun burned face from hours of sailing alone in strong wind. I can smell the odor of old fish wafting up from tide pools. During that time I also climbed. My favorite climb was the backside of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. It is not a tall mountain, but you can get above the treeline and there the wind is so ferocious you might think you were on the surface of some horrible young planet had you just been placed there without knowing it.

A pattern started in my life back then and it seems that throughout the years many of my memories of places are the memories of…well… places. Mine are mostly the memories of geography. I think of Maine and I think of granite and sea. I think of Ohio and I think of shale cliffs and limestone walls. I think of Arkansas and I think of brown rivers and tall grass. I remember places by the geographies that have nursed my soul.

When the five of us journeyed above the treeline to shoot our movie I anticipated meeting up with an old friend and soaking in the nurturing spirit of that place. What happened instead though was that I basked in the conversation with Brandon and Tessa and Bill and Tyler. I walked with my friends, stood back and photographed my friends in that place and in some ways only experienced the majesty of that place as a secondary experience to the experience of being with my friends. I thought about this and realized my recent months in Nicaragua were the same. In Nicaragua it was not the geography that affected me but the people. Everywhere I went it was people. Even when we traveled down the Rio Coco into the sparsely populated jungle I found I did not seek the solitude that was actually engulfing me but rather the people. I realized I have changed.

I like this shot of Tyler filming Bill on a treacherous mountain precipice. Look at it. Here we are above the treeline in this desolate place and it is what it is, desolate. Yet surrounding them are markers, tini inukshuks, symbols of direction, markers erected by people for people to guide people through the danger and desolation to the safer places where people are again.

I lost a daughter to gain a friend who is teaching me how best to love my daughter

donovan plummer contemplatesIMG_2438

Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

–I am writing this blog to the song “Romulus” by Sufjan Stevens–

I lost a daughter to gain a friend who is teaching me how best to love my daughter. Let me explain.

I just got an email from my good friend Donovan Plummer who is still in Nicaragua. Here is the entire text of the email:

“just bought some tortillas from Evelyn, she was waiting on the porch at the mission knocking on the door.. it was already pretty much nightime. She was with a friend but i forgot her name.. Strange thing, Lahnden told me there were two kids knockin on the door and i was like “what do you want me to do about it?” i actually was not even gonna open it but something inside me thought about Jesus so i was like whatever.. (im not telling you this to make myself look like a saint either trust me)… man am i SO glad I, HE rather, opened that door cuz there she sat. I didnt even know it was her till after I had talked to her for like 5 mins cuz she sat facing the wall kinda doodling imaginary lines and talking to me at the same time… its crazy man, thanks for being Jesus to that girl. She misses you and wants you to come back, she says your her “friend”.. and she doesn’t just use this phrase loosely cuz i asked her if we were friends and she shrugged her shoulders lol… anyway love ya man, hope your body gets better soon… Keep God on your throne… peace.”

A few days ago my friend Christian Lopez who was at the time still in Nicaragua posted this on my fb wall: “hey philip just want you to know that rachel and i have been purchasing [tortillas] from evelyn and rachel gave her a dress.”

A few days before that my friend Benny Baker wrote me this in an email: “Today Evelyn came by the office (she was close yesterday, Christian bought all her tortillas). At first she would not come in to see me but did and I talked to her for a few minutes for her to get comfortable with me. I asked her, do you miss Phillip? And brother, I wish I had a camera to have taken a picture of the smile on her face as she said “yes.””

Evelyn saved me. Funny how it seems to others I may have saved her. The day I dared to follow Evelyn with my camera in the street in Nicaragua a tiny earthquake jarred the floor of the ocean of our lives. Since then it is like a wave is building in the lives of my friends and family and moving across the seas of us. Evelyn, or rather the encounter with Evelyn, was the tiny encounter that was the earthquake beginning that wave. On the wave love rides and returns to Evelyn in the form of gifts and purchases of her little tortillas. Funny, but as my friends now help her I consider the irony that perhaps it is not Evelyn who is being helped as much as my friends. It is the case with me so why not also with them. I wonder in my dreams if Evelyn and her family who live in a dirt-floor shack that is crooked from mud slides on the mountainside are not maybe angels in disguise and only playing parts for our care. The book of Hebrews says that when we are kind to strangers we are sometimes entertaining angels without ever knowing it. What I do know is how important this little girl has become in my own heart’s transformation.

Just before I got the email from Donovan I got a phone call from my ex wife, Nicole. We talked for more than an hour. This weekend I fly to Ohio after a long absence. Nicole has asked to pick me up. Drive me home. She and our daughter Sofia will get me. This is a big deal because not six months ago neither of them would speak to me. I deserved the silence in so many ways. My life has been pretty selfish and hurtful. As I talked with Nicole we talked a lot about life and love and forgiveness. She asked me lots of questions about my experiences with this new life of mine, this odd mixing of journalism and social care. I told her about the many different people. I told her about Evelyn. Nicole told me that I have changed and that she is proud and that she is hopeful that Sofia will benefit greatly by having me around. Again, this is a really big deal because just six months ago Sofia said she was done with me because I had failed to be a caring father. She did not want to see me anymore. I deserved it in some ways and she completely deserves to be loved properly and fully.

I don’t want to make a metaphor or an analogy out of Evelyn. I am only reflecting on her becoming my friend. I am thinking that I am grateful for my friends taking up her care after I left. I am thinking that I would love to take Nicole and Sofia to Nicaragua to meet Evelyn. Just before I left Evelyn asked me if I would ever consider inviting my daughter to her house. Just the question is painful. What did she mean by that? Was she wondering if her house would be good enough? Dear Evelyn, you are a daughter who has taught me to love my daughter. Your home will always be good enough.

things unseen

water girl and trees IMG_2454

Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

Sometimes something magical happens. I am standing in a rain forest. I am standing by a stream that is flowing to a river. I am far removed from cars or roads or even bicycle paths, for there are no bicycles here. I am bathing, or I have finished bathing. My buddies are bathing on the far side, on the other shore where the water is unpolluted by bathers up yet a second stream, one of them has said. I am standing in the rain that has not yet become a rain but is a mist and she comes like a wraith or a ghost or a siren or a mermaid I know not, she is a girl but she is not. Another girl talked to us about mermaids later. Even here in this remote place there are legends bigger than life. She has a bucket to gather her family’s water. I photographed her the day before in the village and she was shy. She is Miskit. She came with her family like all the other families to see what would happen when we arrived, two foreigners and a host of guides. We came in a boat, which is how everyone comes here. There is no other way unless you are a monkey and you climb through hundreds of miles of hot, dense jungle. The village is in a cage or is an island in an inland sea of green, however you choose to understand it. When we came we brought goods to fulfill needs, boots and barbed wire, seeds for planting, a lantern. People came to see what we had brought. She came. She stayed in the background. Now she came again but this time it had nothing to do with our arrival. We had come to her water source, where she comes twice a day to gather water for cooking and drinking, and once to bathe. We were like her. We were not living like the other visitors, at least that is what another villager said. Maybe we were strange. She didn’t seem to care. She came to the water and filled her bucket and moved back up and along the opposite shore. She moved into and among the trees and in the mist and morning light it was as if she was becoming the trees. I panned her with my camera soft clicking mixing with the dot drop pluck of rain, the hiss crackle of flowing water, the breath of wind. Click click through two dozen frames, me clicking to capture all that is unseen.

A verse comes to mind from Hebrews where it says of faith that faith is the substance of what is hoped for, the evidence for what remains unseen. A poem comes to mind from Emily Dickinson, a poem memorized a lifetime ago that returns to me anew…

LXXXIII

This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;
Philosophies don’t know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
Sagacity must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
And crucifixion known.

Evelyn smiles

evelyn IMG_2389

Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

There have been a few moments where I have felt like time could stop and I could be happy to stay in that moment forever. Today I had one of these moments when Evelyn smiled. Today Evelyn came to my house. I have become one of her top tortilla customers. You would think (and she probably does think) I feed an army of people by the amount of tortillas I purchase! She was at my doorstep just before noon with her little neighbor who we met the other night at her house.

I came out of the door and was shocked to see them sitting there. As always Evelyn was a bit shy, but she is after all a business person so she must figure if I am a good customer why not bring the goods to my door. I was so excited to see her there and to know she was warming up to interacting that I just sat down on the walk near them and began chatting and totally missed the fact she was working. Then she asked me if I wanted any tortillas. Of course! I said. How many do you have. Cuarenta, forty, she said. I was already counting my spare change and handed her what I had, which was forty two cordoba. She had thirty-nine and I told her that was good, to keep it. As she counted the tortillas she broke into a smile. She has this little pig squint smile that only rarely comes out and when it does it is a flash of a smile and is then gone, like joy is escaping her and she must resist letting too much escape lest none be left for her later. Silly thoughts maybe, but it is how it seems.

We chatted for a bit and some of the other kids from the market came over and we all chatted and then Evelyn and her friend, Maria, stood up to go. As they hopped away I told Lloyd that we just bought her freedom for Saturday afternoon. She is stuck selling tortillas until either the last one is sold or she just cannot stay out any longer. The last two times we encountered her she was fearful and crying around six o’clock because she had failed to sell most of her tortillas. How amazing that she would get to be a kid for an afternoon, I told Lloyd.

These are such small matters and some may even accuse me of being made, but I have been to Evelyn’s house and I have seen the hopelessness before her. I know Evelyn’s smile was not that of deceit but that of genuine happiness. I would be happy too if some stranger bought my freedom for the afternoon. I wondered where they would go to as they ran into the market. I had never seen Evelyn run before, I had only seen her walking slowly. Wherever they would go I knew one thing they would not be doing, trying to find people to buy tortillas because her little burden was gone and she no longer had them!

the miracle of burdens

evelyn family with philip IMG_2906

Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

This is Evelyn’s house. Evelyn is not in the photo, she hid in her house. Evelyn is the little girl I photographed and wrote about in an earlier blog titled “burdens.” In that post I called Evelyn the tortilla girl because she carries tortillas. Now I know her name. This is Evelyn’s brother in the blue shirt, her mother beside me, her stepfather in the green shirt, another brother and his wife to the right, and a neighbor kid behind David. This photograph is the result of a miracle. After having encountered Evelyn in the street and photographed her I have been trying to find a way to get an invitation to follow her to her house. She is a little girl so I couldn’t just follow her, and because of her age asking her to ask her family for an invitation for me did not register with her, so I just waited and hoped for a miracle. Last night it happened. I keep trying to locate Evelyn and it has been difficult. Last evening I was standing out in front of our house when one of the translators said, hey there is Evelyn. There she was perched on an abandoned for the day market stall table and looking forlornly out to the street. I approached her and could see she was crying. I tried to find out why but she was shy and scared. I was confused and felt helpless. I gave up trying and just sat and waited, wondering why of all the places she could choose to sit and cry she would sit in front of where she knows I live. It turned out she was with her brother and she was crying because she had failed to sell her tortillas and she was clearly fearing some repercussion for this failure. Her burden of work and tension had just become my opportunity. Having learned her brother was there and was older I introduced myself to him and did not release him until I had both earned a rapport with him and also an invitation to visit his home. After a lengthy discussion the invite came and I excitedly agreed to arrange the visit for the very next day, today.

So we went. One day I encounter some strange girl in the street in a yellow dress and selling tortillas and the next thing I know I am climbing through mud and trees on the side of the mountain and going to this girl’s home. The house is in what is known as the most dangerous neighborhood of Jinotega. Evelyn’s house is literally the last house up the side of the mountain. It is a flimsy bent structure with dirt floor and drainage trenches cutting across the floor for the mountain rains to escape underfoot. No matter the simplicity, Evelyn’s family received me with deep joy and gratefulness. Her stepfather kept saying how happy he was that I had come to his house. He said that when his friends get a little money or power they go away and never visit, but I visited him. He said no one comes so far as where his house is on the mountain to provide aid. We talked about a lot of things and the family asked me a lot of questions. It wasn’t all the words and conversations that were important though and all of us were aware of this fact. What was important was that someone had cared enough to make a journey and someone else cared enough to receive them.

at my doorstep

daniella IMG_2396

Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

6 a.m. on front stoop. I like to have my coffee on the stoop because I get fresh air and a broad view. It is a good thing to escape the confines of the compound first thing in the day.

Smoke begins from street stalls, which is the market pushed onto the curbs by a construction project that seems to have no end. No smoke rises any longer from inside the new makeshift market because there they have all received new gas cookers. The trash basket was just used by a passerby. Last night in the dark I watched a woman pick from the basket and eat. Also last night I heard many sirens and wondered if something serious occurred in the city. This morning the little Russian made fire engine has pulled into the bus station for some unseen purpose. The winds have blown hard for two days and now a third morning and the skies have been hazy. Maybe the strong winds indicate this kind of cloud cover which is not good for our time-lapse filming we must redo.

The crazy man who chased a boy last week for some perceived abuse is on the street now idle at an empty stall just watching the world wake with me. Across the street my market buddy has hung his radio and set out his fruits and vegetables and what looks like a cache of plastic canvas-like shopping bags. He is now playing air guitar, strumming to a Mexican song. It is chilly enough to be wearing a sweater. Now my buddy is listening to his radio.

I have made a pot of coffee and sit independent of the desperate economy of my buddy that likely does not afford him so much of a hot luxury.

When I first arrive with my coffee and journal I see a man organizing goods for sale frantically chase two plastic bags blown from him by the wind. He is tall and dressed in button up shirt and brown pants and dress shoes, and he is awkward in apparent frustration trying to grab the seemingly worthless bags. Worthless to a North American who accumulates a mess of bags from visits to Wal-Mart. The busses are arriving and he gathers two other bags of goods dangling from two fingers, lifts a platter of packaged goods onto hand and wrist of other hand and grips a third item in the hand carrying the bags and make way to the market and the bus station. The bus station being a dirt field in front of a gaping building for the market.

A woman and a boy pass the other direction, she with three large thermoses and the boy with a wooden backless chair and a plastic stool. Neither smile at me when I nod at them. Jimmy arrives with his baby girl, a clean-shaven father in clean jeans who oversees the building projects of Mision Para Cristo, smiling, practicing his English. Good morning Felip. He arrived in a white taxi. A short drunk guy in filthy jeans and oversized clothes stumbles by complaining to other men on the street. He may be in his mid twenties. The man who thinks my name is Felix arrives on his bike and dressed in a stars and stripes polo shirt. Buenos dias Felix! His shirt is tucked in, shoes clean, black slacks clean even though he has arrived from who knows where over dirty streets. He immediately stoops to wipe the mud from his bike’s morning journey, wiping first the chrome fenders, then dull rims, then the frame. Then he sets up his dvd stand on the street corner. Everyone has their space.

My friend at the vegetable stand is drinking coffee, maybe, from a styrofoam cup and eating a mango and talking now to two teen boys who chatter a moment and feign to box each other then part ways. Meanwhile a pretty girl comes by then and my friend is captivated and says something to the boys and follows the girl dramatically with his eyes and then they all laugh. Four honking retired school busses now have come. It is 6:30 and the boys down the street at the cd/dvd stand have turned on their speakers and p.a. and a mariachi song floods the filthy world waking beneath the low, thick shroud of dense clouds hemmed in by the surrounding mountains.

A short dog erupts and briefly chases a man at the busses and the man hop skips away then walks and laughs along with all the people at the market and busses who have stopped to watch the commotion. In the sky dozens of vultures circle high above the market, move like a black chaos in intertwining loops moving jointly if not confusingly overhead and then are gone. The quality of light is changing even though the cloud cover is not. Another bus–a short one. Two busses have left.

It is 6:45. A man, woman and three small children amble brisk and nervous down the street, the man with a huge sack on his shoulders, one of the little boys with large bag in hand struggling to keep it off the street. A tiny child with some hammock and brace on shoulders is chased by a tinier child in a dirty dress, both struggling with loads. The mother is carrying many goods and they all look like they have come from some earthy place, too rural even from our rural city. I am nervous they will miss their bus. I don’t know how they even find the right bus in what looks like madness and chaos. Thousands will pass through this dirt world this morning.

The market grows more crowded. More people, more busses, more music. Now the cd boys are blasting some operatic romance music in Spanish.

Later in the day the market will swell even more and eventually Daniella will arrive, the little sister of my market buddy. If it is chilly or rainy she will be wearing her thread-bare red and blue knit cardigan. Every day she comes to greet me. When I am photographing near the mission she somehow finds me in the street and sticks with me like she is assisting me. One day I gave her one of my cameras and just said for her to shoot whatever. For two years of visits now I have photographed Daniella and her whole family at the market, her mother, brother, sisters, cousins and friends, so we know one another well enough for strangers.

Yesterday Daniella came over to greet me. She wore her same sweater. She had a piece of bling in her hair, a hair holder of some sort with fake diamonds. It was rusty and missing about two-thirds of its bling. She lingered and then when we parted ways and I said adios, she said bye and then giggled and said bye, bye. She knew she surprised me by speaking a word in English.

This is what life is like at my doorstep.

clarity

girl plays in rain IMG_2960

Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

Clarity. I’m not interested in clarity. It is not how I see the world, but dimly as if through a fogged glass. I do not want to try and force order on a disordered world in a fiction of my camera lens, to push crystal clear sharpness into the world I dwell in. My world is smoke and ashes and in smoke and ashes for me to find sharpness and clarity would seem absurd. I do not seek clarity of image, but honesty of sight.

I look at the girl in this picture, this girl in the rain, and it speaks to me. It is not a clear picture. This is a poor photo by clarity’s standards. The composition is bad, the light too bright. The girl should be closer to me and the muddle of geometry on the left seems pointless. For me this photo is exactly what it should be, which is what it is… what she is and what I am. This girl IS far from me… and running farther away. The picture becomes a metaphor not in its clarity of composition but in its awkward quality and composition. Her shadow is small and not well defined. The world is a contradiction with storm cloud and sunshine.

A guy showed me photos by a photographer he works with in Africa and he defined his enthusiasm for her images with the single word, clarity. He said for me to look at what a genius she is with Photoshop and to note how crystal clear and well lit are her photos. I looked at her pictures with their Hollywood lighting splashed on the water-starved plate of land in Rwanda and thought, how interesting her light and how striking the unnatural sharpness. What I did not find myself thinking however was that I had entered the world of the people in the photos because from her photos I really had little idea what that world looks like.

I know what this girl’s world looks like. I got wet in the rain taking the shot. The rain and light and everything swirled together and blinded me as I tried to track the girl to capture some fleeting moment of youth or haste or who knows what and the reality is that it simply is not clear. This is what this world looks like with human eyes. Someone called me a purist, this same guy who showed me the girl’s photographs. He said so because I said I did not use a tripod or flash for my shooting, that I rely on available light and my own hands. Simple. I am not a purist, I only want to know what is and to share what is with others. I leave the utopia stuff to the philosophers and commercial artists.

Through a short lens I am changed, she is changed, we are changed, the world has hope of change… This is transformational journalism:An email conversation with my good friend, Professor Mike Wood.

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Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

Mike: Where are you?

Me: Nicaragua. Where r u?

Mike: Piggott, Arkansas! Are any of your photos online from Nicaraqua?

Me: there are some here on facebook. there are some on a blog flipholsinger.wordpress.com. some are duplicated on a mission website http://misionparacristo.com/

Mike: Great photos. God has given you great talent in pictures and writing. Your words make me feel like I’m actually there.

Me: Thanks, Mike. I am trying to find ways to continue to be involved in the world with my talent without being involved in the world of mainstream media. Thanks for the encouragement

Mike: Keep up the good work. Do you use a special lens for many of your photos? Like a wide angle.

Me: I shoot almost exclusively with a short lens. Much of what you see in my recent shots are with a wide angle lens (12-24) with curve correction (not perfect correction unfortunately). Otherwise I shoot with a 24-35, which is also considered wide angle, but without distortion. On a second camera body I keep a 35-135 for some shots. I don’t even own a long lens–or a flash (though I have a little built-in on one of my cameras for emergencies). I try to shoot intimately and with available light so that what I see is what you see. Also, shooting this way enables and actually requires I be involved in the world I shoot. I am developing a philosophy of journalism I call “transformational journalism.” It is journalism that is a “witness” and a “testimony.” A witness to either the work and presence of God in the world, or the lack thereof, and a testimony to this witness. It is transformational in that the “story” is not just a “report,” but is a narrative rendition that reflects at least a triad of transformations if not more–I am transformed by my experience of the subject of the photographs, the subjects are transformed in the interchange of the moment, and the viewer is provoked to response to the experience of the photographer and the subject. I find this model in the Bible, that the “word” is living and not just symbols to be interpreted. That you respond to the images coming out of this missionary enterprise of my camera is exciting to me not because I feel you respond to my artistic creation, but because I have confidence that Jesus is entering my journalistic endeavor and speaking in the story of the images and words. So thank you. The tool of my short lenses is important to this enterprise of intimacy and transformation, which I suppose makes for a good metaphor for how we understand all the creative tools God gives us as the “body” of believers who are the church who are the vehicle for the living waters of Jesus to remain in this world and serve people toward salvation. Whew! Bet you didn’t expect that long-winded answer! I feel like I sensed these truths when I was in that wicked and profit-serving enterprise of the mainstream media news, but I had no language to understand the problem, and without Jesus and love I had no language for understanding an alternative purpose for why we communicate. I am very excited about these subjects because I believe these discussions must enter our Christian university classrooms so that we can begin to be intentional with how we use our language not to “tell” about jesus, but to let Jesus be in the world through us and our efforts. Artists (painters and classical composers especially) have understood these things for as long as their arts have been discussed. How wonderful will it be to equip physicians and engineers and nurses and elementary school teachers with the same sense of transformational serving? That really excites me. You are truly in a wonderful profession. God bless you. And God bless you for not recoiling from my cynicism and questioning that night at the fireside. Your kindness that night was an essential moment in God softening my heart to bow my obstinate will to His love.

In this photo is my friend Charlene in Haiti. She took me to this spot in March 2008 by her home near Gonaives. She stood me on the rice dike just so in order to get the sunlight right on her in the diminishing day. These are my father’s fields, she told me proudly then struck this pose. This photo exists not just because my lens is short but because I got involved. I didn’t come to know Charlene because I was “reporting” her. I came to know her because I took a walk with her by her house and just lingered.

On the street

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Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

Walking back from a cafe tonight I encountered a mariachi band walking along the street and fell in with them. We went from bar to bar as they searched for customers. There were a lot of people drinking, and not a few drunk on this Sunday evening, but no one was interested in paying for music. Finally one bar maid agreed to purchase a song and the mariachis went to work. After their one song they were handed a few cordobas and I bought them a round of colas (no drinky, the lead singer said. Me either, I said… because the stuff makes me nuts. They laughed).

Earlier at the cafe that looks out onto the street through two broad doorways I encountered three American girls with a young Nicaraguan guy. They fauned over him, touching his arms and shoulders, each claiming some kind of territory it seemed, laughing too loudly and speaking their poor Spanish too loudly. I tried and tried to make eye contact with the girls (part of an ongoing anthropological experiment I am conducting to see if I can discover why American tourists–especially girls–in these more remote areas of the world almost exclusively ignore other foreigners and seem to play the role of having “gone off the map” and maybe don’t want to admit they have not really ) and none of them would acknowledge that a pale white dude with a bunch of camera equipment was having a cafe less than four feet from them. I laughed at their pretension and instead entertained the beggar boys who had gathered at the doors for the five o’clock rush. I continued my experiment and managed to get every single person in the establishment to make eye contact with me, including the beggar boys and the cake delivery guy and the bread gypsy, but never the Americans. I laughed and bought two bags of my fav cookies and dropped one of the bags into the hands of my amigos the beggar boys and headed back out onto the street.

After the mariachis I headed back to my present dwelling and went next door to the church youth gathering. As usual I stood through the service at the doors so I could watch the street while listening to the teacher. On the street the bus station had shuttered the doors, the market ladies had turned over the baskets and left the street and the sun had set and left behind only trash and darkness and strong winds. As I stood in the door I watched a figure move through the darkness, a woman it was I think, and the figure stopped by what I knew to be a large woven basket for trash and bent over into the three foot diameter basket and lifted something from it and put it to their mouth then kept on walking. It was just a little action, but how telling. Inside the church the foreign volunteers played a silly game assimilating body parts to personalities while the world outside blew in winds like spirits descending lost and lonesome and I stood in the doorway between.

david and the dog

david and the dog IMG_2499

Originally uploaded by flip holsinger

David hopped on our truck as we passed through the barbed wire gate by his hovel of a house deep in the mountains of northern Nicaragua. He road with us for a while and it annoyed me because when he hopped on the truck uninvited he also shifted the seating arrangement and it meant I had to ride on the back bumper, which I was not pleased with. I barked at the other passengers (foreigners like me) I was traveling with, said not to let another soul grab a free ride on this truck. I looked at David and wanted nothing to do with him, thinking he was an abrasive boy for ignoring us and not a kid I wanted to share my time with (the abrasive boys tend to be the bullies and the ones who hurt people).

We got to the rural school we were coming to observe and David hopped out of the truck and started his way down the mucky cow/child path from the rugged path of a road to the little painted school house below a slope. I stopped him and handed him my camera bag and had him walk with me so I could navigate the path and get some shots of the volunteers descending. He obliged and I warmed up a bit to him, but not too much.

At the school the children were waiting. The children had activities and songs they sang and I began to photograph. It seemed everywhere I began to photograph David appeared and troubled my shooting by his being in the way. The light was difficult and I needed the doorways free to allow maximum sunlight to enter and David kept blocking the light and standing in the doorway.

I gave up and went outside. On the concrete stoop at the door there was a puppy so emaciated and lethargic I immediately welled-up with compassion. I began to photograph the mutt and I was struck by a deep emotional response and thinking how unfair it is that this animal is brought into this world without choice and is left to die like the animal it is without the love and care of nourishment. David stepped outside where I was shooting the dog and then I saw what I had been missing the whole morning since David imposed himself on our company. I saw David and the dog, saw David and the dog in the same sympathy, saw David’s screwed up shoes and dirty pants and thin body and crooked eyes and realized how alike these two creatures are.

So I asked about David’s story, why he was not a student, why since he lived in this region he did not attend school. David’s mother was there and she came and joined the conversation. David’s eyes are bad and he cannot read, so earlier this year he had to quit attending school. Is there a procedure he can receive to fix his eyes? Yes, said his mother, but it costs the equivalent of fifty U.S. dollars, an amount they do not have. They are trying to save it for him, she said.

One of the activities during our visit was the foreign volunteers brought spanish language children’s books for them to read as part of the Mision Para Cristo mobile library. How incredible it was to see the hunger of these children for books. They all scrambled for books and sat reading aloud at their busy desks like a chorus of happy children that they were. All except David who by this time had crept back inside the door and knelt beside a desk of a boy and, with face close to a large picture book, watched as the boy read through the pages.

I asked David if it made him sad that he couldn’t read. He sad yes. I was sad that I almost allowed my self-interest to get in the way of encountering one of my brothers in this world.