time

after my africa study abroad trip, i spent 3 weeks on campus (at furman university), finishing up classes, doing projects, writing papers, and taking tests. amidst all this academic chaos, i did my best to catch up with people i hadn't seen in months, fill out more applications for internships this summer, meet with my advisor, and squeeze in a couple concerts, plenty of coffee, and contra dancing, all the while still trying to readjust to life in the states. i was back to sleeping in a bed, inside, with no more wild animal noises echoing in the darkness and no need to pee in a 'pee-pot' inside my tent. i was back in the land of 'efficiency,' where time matters-- where, when someone says something will happen at a certain time, they mean that time at not 30 minutes to 4 hours later; where schedules, calendars, and planners have our lives sectioned off into 15-minute segments; where there is no time to just be, to explore nature, to sit around the dinner table for hours telling stories and playing cards, to gaze up at the most beautiful starry sky you've ever seen...

now, a couple weeks out of school, i am back in a place where time is a bit more fluid, where i have the time to reflect, to ponder, to imagine. i have left my 'time-conscious' country once again for the more flexible, always tentative, pace of nicaragua. i am here with a group of about 14 from furman to study the connections among the environment, poverty, and the health of communities.

echoing thoreau, i came to nicaragua 'because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach... i want to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life ... to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proves to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it is sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it...'