Rafael

Rafael lives in the bE house in Managua. His job is to stay in the house whenever no one else is there to ensure that robbers don’t come. It’s especially difficult to watch Rafael go about his day because he’s 19 years old, and there is absolutely NO stimulation for him at the house. The television has one channel, the internet doesn’t work 99% of the time, the phone costs so much to use he can’t even call his friends, and leaving the house for the 5 minutes it would take to rent a movie is prohibited. Maya and I gave him a present of some drawing paper, pens, and a how-to book on sketching since he’d expressed some interest in drawing, and we wanted to encourage him to try doing something productive with his endless days of boredom.

We also made a point of spending some time with him in the evenings. We figured he couldn’t possibly mind the company, and later discovered that he too, had plans to marry one of us. Well… actually his plan was to have one of us “older women” teach him how to kiss, but when that plan fell to pieces, he changed his tactics and made public his desire to marry one of us. Oh the joys of Nicaraguan men. Heh.

Anyway, one of our nights of hanging out and chatting resulted in us having an interesting conversation about religion, our beliefs, God, and that which we hold sacred. Rafael was spellbound by the fact that not one, but BOTH of us didn’t believe in God. We were absolutely astonished by the fact that evolution was such a ridiculous theory to him. We engaged in a heated conversation about what it is to believe in something, and the differences between our experiences in the States versus the exposure people in Nicaragua apparently get. Maya and I realized how little variation there is between religions here. They range anywhere from Evangelist to Advantist to Baptist to Catholic, but all are somehow related to Christianity and Jesus Christ. Rafael had to disagree with us vehemently, mentioning the differences between praying to God, the Virgin Mary, or to Jesus Christ, and pointed out how ridiculous the beliefs of some Nicaraguans were. Somehow this didn’t convince either one of us, as we pointed out our exposure to all the world religions as varied as Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, and Buddhism. In a way it feels like there just less exposure to be had here, and as a result the people are not encouraged to think as critically about what it is they hear and read.

There was another volunteer here before I arrived that was deeply Evangelist and went to church every week in Bluefields. What she noticed was how literally the stories of the bible were interpreted here. She pointed out that despite her rooted beliefs in her religion, she had the perspective to understand that the stories of the Bible were simply ways to explain the world; metaphors to act as a navigating compass. And yet, the people here, never having been taught to think critically or articulate what a metaphor is, are left truly believing Adam and Eve were the first human beings, and Moses split the Red Sea.

Anyway, the conversations we had with Rafael were interesting. And, PS, we did it all in Spanish.