As we drove down the highway to Masaya, Nicaragua, a farmer with his oxcart was just ahead of us on the road. It was a May morning when most children back home in Los Angeles would be walking to school or carpooling. Here, two small boys were sitting in the back of the oxcart, brothers of about 11 and 9 years, staring out to the side of the road on their way to work. The distant look on those two faces has been on my mind since we returned to the U.S.

While in Esteli, north of Managua, not far from the Honduran border, we met two Salesian Sisters and the lay director of the Sor Maria Romero home and school for children at risk. During the day 250 children attend the school, around 50 of whom eat hot meals of beans and rice or beans and potatoes; 13 girls live at the school. "These girls will never be able to go home again," one of the sisters told us. The children of Nicaragua haunt me.

Many things are illegal in our world; poverty, unfortunately, is not among them. In reflecting on my time in Nicaragua, my heroes have become those who fight poverty and its causes, especially in often forgotten areas like Nicaragua. I would like you to meet some of them.

Fr. Rob Currie: 'The church is with the people'
In 1986 Jesuit Father Rob Currie traveled to Nicaragua as part of the Witness for Peace program. Falling in love with the people and the country, he went to Guatemala to study Spanish and came back the following year at the height of the Contra War.

With American arms support of the Contras and Vatican opposition to involvement of priests in the Sandinista movement, then-Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo of Managua told Father Currie that he could not work as a priest in Nicaragua. With ever-present humor and optimism, Father Currie notes, "It's the first time I've been kicked out of a place before I started working."

But, since Father Currie had worked as a priest and community organizer on the streets of Chicago in the 1970s, he felt he could at least be a community organizer in Nicaragua. So he worked developing an agricultural co-op, and then in 1997 went to Arenal in the south of Nicaragua; he has been there since.

A Jesuit priest for the past 40 years, he attends Mass and prays with his people, but he does not celebrate Mass for them. "The only way I could work was if I were to work as a lay minister without the pastoral services," he explains.

Still, his Jesuit confreres frequently visit him in Arenal and his people know he is a Jesuit. He works with 600 villagers in Arenal and more in six surrounding villages. Each week he comes back to Managua to his Jesuit community at the University of Central America to "regain" his strength and share community with his brother priests.

With time there has also been a change in the climate of the church in Nicaragua. More and more lay people have become involved in programs. In the Diocese of Esteli, there are only 38 active priests. Estimates vary as to the number of Evangelical Protestant conversions that take place each year, but most agree that these churches have made significant inroads in what was once considered a very Catholic country.

At 67, Father Currie is seeing the fruits of his hard work with his people in Arenal. In countless ways he has built community - developing youth groups, organizing services, establishing labor cooperatives, and training leaders in the Nicaraguan community.

"The church is with the people; it sides with the people," he says of the church in Nicaragua. "We've got to take seriously what [Archbishop Oscar] Romero did and said: 'If I die I will revive amongst my people.'"

Bill Schmitt: 'I feel kind of lucky'
Bill Schmitt seems to live the very words of Mahatma Ghandi: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

As a student at Marquette High in Wisconsin, Bill attended a presentation about students from another Jesuit high school who had gone to the Dominican Republic and built a schoolhouse. Inspired, Bill and some friends found faculty members at Marquette who would be their chaperone and go with them. For the next 14 years they returned every summer to the Dominican Republic to serve.

In college Bill studied international affairs, then volunteered as a teacher in Milwaukee. For a year he worked at a Jesuit-founded center for working boys in Quito, Ecuador. After completing his masters' degree in international public affairs, with an emphasis on economic development, at the University of Wisconsin, he joined CRS and went to Managua.

For most of this past year he served as project director with Catholic Relief Services in Nicaragua. His main responsibility was working with CRS' Fair Trade Coffee for export, especially organically grown.

The son of two Catholic school teachers, Bill also served as our guide as we traveled by jeep to Esteli in northwestern Nicaragua, to see the work being done in that diocese in cooperation with Caritas. As he drove us on the three-hour journey, he explained how CRS works through local partner agencies. "It helps to fulfill the subsidiarity principle," he noted, "so that programs have a greater chance of flourishing in the long run. They're sustainable and promote employment as well."

In late May, he left for Darfur where he will be a representative of Catholic Relief Services for the next year.

"I feel kind of lucky, because it's stuff I like to do personally and professionally," says Bill. "The thrust of CRS in Nicaragua is to sponsor sustainable development, helping people and communities develop skills, tap into markets, improve their production, learn new techniques - all with the hope that they will no longer need or rely upon Caritas and CRS."

Deacon Rolando Meneses: Far from 'retired'
A few years ago, Rolando Meneses retired from his regular job to study to become one of just five permanent deacons in the Diocese of Esteli. Now diocesan director of Caritas, he works with an all-Nicaraguan staff of eight department heads, 48 salaried workers, and 260 volunteers in Esteli.

For a "retired" man Deacon Meneses is very busy. The work he and his staff do reaches out to all areas of the diocese that includes most of northern Nicaragua, an area that was once a Sandinista stronghold. During a meeting his department heads told us, with great emotion, how they address the needs of their people.

In some areas of the diocese the number of women dying in childbirth has been cut in half due to their efforts, and infant mortality has consistently been reduced especially in the area directly around the city of Esteli (it remains a major problem in rural areas). Each month 500 come to the clinic in Esteli to receive medical care.

Still, the number of children who receive U.S.-donated food (oil, beans, rice) is very small compared to the need. Only 3,300 small children receive food at this time; U.S. budget cuts for aid to children in impoverished foreign countries has greatly affected their services. This last year cereal was cut from the approved list of food donations for children.

About 5,000 in Esteli died during Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and many more lost their homes and livelihood, especially those living in lean-to and scrap-wood homes, as squatters. The extreme poverty of the region, still felt from the Contra War, was exacerbated by the landmines that washed out of the earth and into the mudslides and rivers of the area.

Rebuilding has yet to take place for most. Small, low-interest loans for housing may be obtained from Casitas/Esteli, but the cost of land is higher than most could ever afford in a lifetime of work - $3,000 to purchase a small parcel of land and another $3,000 to construct a brick and mortar home. Bread-winners often earn $20 a week or less.

The frustration evident on the faces of Caritas department heads became very clear during our meeting with Deacon Rolando and his staff. One of their great hopes is to be able to partner with parishes in the United States and obtain their support and assistance.

Sr. Julie Marciacq and Br. Joseph Barnett: 'Teaching others'
Panama-born, U.S.-educated and a former high school science teacher, Sister Julie Marciacq came to Nicaragua during the height of the Contra War to teach school. She worked in Jalapa in the north during the conflict and quickly learned that her skills could help train others.

In 1992, she began working with Cantera, one of Nicaragua's oldest non-governmental organizations. Supported internationally by Trocaire of Ireland, Catholic Women of Austria, the Religious of the Sacred Heart, the Teresian Sisters and Assumption Sisters, Cantera educates and trains people to give service and provides traditional services used in ancient times.

That includes teaching women to use natural medicine. "Part of their responsibility," Sister Julie says, "is to teach others to begin using the medicines."

She describes her job as "collaborating so that young women who have a vocation for healing will have opportunities for training." She also facilitates training for alternative methods of health and thus provides services in the poorer barrios.

Those trained by Cantera learn how to treat basic health needs - arthritis, burns, back problems, childhood illnesses and pregnancies --- using traditional herbal treatments. These are far less expensive and, in many ways, safer than the non-USFDA approved pharmaceuticals sometimes sent to Nicaragua and sold to the poor. The government does not interfere with the services of homeopathic or alternative medicine providers and they are more familiar to the people.

Sister Julie also works with Little Brother of the Gospel Joseph Barnett --- known as "Chepe" --- on Cantera's beekeeper project. "Chepe" was born in the United States and has worked in Nicaragua for 20 years training women as beekeepers so that they can be more entrepreneurial and self-sustaining. The cost is high --- close to $300 U.S. for necessary protective clothing, gloves and equipment --- but it is also a business for which there is great potential.

Cantera also offers programs to assist 200 families of small farms near a Cantera farming center. Brother Joseph showed us his California red earthworm project, honey processing tanks, and cultivation of Taiwan grass for reforestation. He also helps farmers build latrines, and raise small livestock including North African short-haired sheep more suited to Nicaragua's climate.

Salesian Sisters at Sor Maria Romero School: Fostering hope
"Children at-risk," a sadly familiar term in the United States, seems even more pervasive in Nicaragua. When children grow up hungry and uneducated, hope is missing. And it shows on their faces.

The children we visited in the Sor Maria Romero School in Esteli broke our hearts. A high number of children in Esteli have never or barely attended school. An estimated 44,000 children in Nicaragua between ages six and nine do not know how to read or write. A large majority of those children live near Esteli.

Many children at Sor Maria Romero have been made to work at an early age; often they are referred to as "ninos y ninas de la calle," or boys and girls of the street. Some have been turned out onto the streets to steal or to live on their own, or they have been orphaned and have raised themselves. Many have been abused physically or sexually, by family members or on the streets, often since they were infants.

At Sor Maria Romero School approximately 250 children receive food, medicine, psychological help, spiritual guidance and academic assistance, as do some parents. Hot meals --- rice and beans, or beans and potatoes --- are prepared for more than 50. Thirteen young girls, who because of situations at home will never be able to return there, live permanently at the school.

We met with two Salesian Sisters and one of their lay directors as we toured their school and the children's multi-purpose room where they ate their meals. Then we were treated to lemonade and saltine crackers in the convent, as we talked about the children's needs. The poor share what they have.

As we left Sor Maria Romero and thanked the Salesian Sisters for their kindness and hospitality, I felt very poor indeed.