Between Worlds

Under the shelter of protecting rain clouds, on the very edge of Canada, lies our metropolis of glass. Vancouver, our young, up-and-coming city, achieving success beyond its wildest dreams. The city is illuminated under a dull gray gleam, the shine from the ominous clouds, which warn us that, yet again, there is to be rain. The trees, rising up above everything else, offer us some kind of protection, and a way to remember who we once were, before we became flickering shadows of businessmen. Such a sweetly broken city, we sit beside the expanses of the Pacific, knowing that we are lost, but not knowing quite where we went wrong. There seems to be something missing, something more that would make us whole…But such thoughts quickly slip from our minds, and we realize how lucky we are, living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, rich and elated. We have succeeded; we have done well, our little western colony. And isn’t that all that matters?
The girl is a Vancouverite born and raised, wealthy and well-traveled, at least to tourist resorts all around the globe. That has been her world all her life.
She sits in the plane. She has absolutely no idea which country they are crossing over. Somewhere in Central America, she knows that much, at least. She stares out the window, willing this hell to be over. How could she have let her parents convince her to come here? They are going to a Spanish-speaking, third world country, of which she has only a vague idea of its location. I’ll hate this, she promises herself. She has never been anywhere like this. Nicaragua! They could have at least chosen somewhere politically stable…

         How do they do it? How do they keep on singing? In Nicaragua, they live on two dollars a day. Dark, sweaty skin, all day long, they swing to the beat of an unheard rhythm. They work, they laugh, they drink, they sing. They are so happy, so full of life that they can’t even contain it. Happiness, joy, life squeezes out through their pores, they drink elation, they are ecstasy. In their shanties by the ocean, they sit, accepting life as it comes to them. When all fate has left them with are bits of metal and wood out of which to construct their homes, they have made themselves whole. But, they do this all in extreme poverty, never once enjoying the lavish comforts of wealth. At night, their world stays alive with the sound of singing. Musicians play in bars in the busy streets of Managua, and they dance and sing and laugh. Of course, like anyone, they have their hardships. They shed their own tears about life; they sit in their own darkness, morbidly contemplating where they are, thinking that everything they’ve done has brought them nowhere…just like anyone else. They are happy, they are whole, but they have nothing. Is it enough, what they have? Is happiness enough?

         The plane is landing now. The passengers wait for the seatbelt sign to turn off and the girl gathers up her things, frantically checking off everything on a mental list. Disembarking, she realizes she is nervous, apprehensive of what she may find in this country.
         As they search for their luggage, she finds herself surrounded by church groups, benevolent volunteers coming to help the people of this country. She doesn’t understand – why have her parents brought their family for a holiday in a place that can barely sustain itself? The sound of her brothers, who are exhausted to the point of giddiness, wrestling on the airport floor, brings her back to reality. She realizes that they only have five suitcases – one is missing. Sighing, she sits down on the back of her suitcase and prepares to wait.
         Her movements become automatic and trance-like, as she slips into exhaustion. Outside, her parents try to communicate, in beginner’s Spanish, their destination to the taxi driver – the remote town of San Juan del Sur. 

Latitudes and longitudes; the invisible lines which separate us. 5324 kilometers bring our countries apart. They share only the coastlines of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. We live entirely different lives, and we don’t show signs of changing anytime soon. In Vancouver, in fact everywhere in Canada, we are too scared. We’ve lived one way all our lives – how do we change from that? We are so new, so infantile and frightened. There was a time not long ago that our province had absolutely nothing. We are balanced on a fine line, and our lives are as fragile as moths’ wings. One footstep in the wrong direction, and we think we could descend into chaos, into hellish bedlam. We know we are not whole; we are not truly living, in a way. But we look at the poverty of other countries, and that is all we see. We look away before we can see how joyful they really are. We look away; we hide from these words, we enclose ourselves in our ocean-view mansions and bury the truth.
         Two weeks. Merely two weeks in the beachside village of San Juan del Sur and her mind had changed completely. How could she possibly have been scared of this, of this beauty, of this entire culture? It had been…stunning. She feels enlightened somehow, although she can’t quite tell why. The weeks now were simply a blur of dilapidated metal shacks, lake-sized potholes, and haggling in hectic marketplaces. The faces stood out, though, the dark-skinned Nicaraguans who were always smiling. She had loved them, all of them. For a while, she had wanted to help them, but now she wondered would they really want help? Or was it possible that the possession of things, of money they didn’t need, would corrupt them? She shakes the thoughts from her head, thinking maybe an answer will come to her eventually.
I was so wrong about this place, she thinks to herself. She is walking along the beach, pausing here and there to write messages in the sand with her brothers. They write S.O.S!, and THE DONOVANS WERE HERE. She writes a tiny message onto a piece of driftwood, writing in the butchered, amateur Spanish she has learned in these two weeks. She writes and writes and writes, wanting to leave a piece of herself in this extraordinary place. There is a small, dark-skinned boy running along the beach. He is selling Chiclets to anyone who will buy them. She smiles at him, but she has no money, and feels guilty as he runs off.  She has fallen for this place, she realizes as she fondly watches the boy take his business elsewhere, she has become amorous of every aspect. It is unfamiliar to her, wanting something far less than what she can get. Their strength, their courage, their optimism in the face of earthquakes, disasters, and revolution, has captured her indefinitely. And although all of this is contradictory to everything she knows, she wants what they have, even the poverty which comes hand in hand with it. Gazing off into the bay, she watches the fishing boats come in. 
……………………………………………………………………
Far below the planes wings, the girl sees Vancouver for the first time in weeks. She watches the doll-like figures below become real.
After the landing, everything is methodical. They find their luggage and count it twice. They try to remember where they parked. Her younger brothers ride the luggage cart along the parking lot. The family pulls sweaters tightly around freezing shoulders, having become acclimatized to Nicaraguan temperature. They drive home in silence, suddenly worn out from the trip.
At home, the girl watches the rain fall silently and the gray sky slowly becoming darker.
The girl is, as she never thought she would be, between worlds. Between happiness and success, she is trying to find a link, parallels, similarities between the countries, but only succeeding in perplexing herself further. She thought she knew where she wanted to be, she thought she knew what her life would be like. An attractive house, a family, working somewhere that brings in more money than they actually really need. She is in limbo, and she is her own god; she will decide her destiny.
  The dark, tempestuous ocean stretches out in front of her, and she remembers swimming in it not long ago, so faraway.  It is a link, among much dissimilarity, between their countries. She has no idea where she wants to be, what she wants to have; the Nicaraguan way of life, or the Vancouverite success. For now, though, with so much of her life ahead of her, she is content to be between these two worlds. It is enough to have gotten this far. To have realized there are many ways to live. At once euphoric and mournful upon reaching the first crossroads of her life, she smiles, and watches the beginning of a storm, right outside her window.