The boy’s MA school had a special guest this morning. His name is Master David Sgro. From his linked bio, he’s an accomplished martial artist with high ranking dans in Tang Soo Do and Japanese Jujitsu. He was a contemporary and competitor of the head of our school Master Bogdanski.
He was there for 2 purpose this morning. One was to teach what he calls “Combative Techniques.” Simply put, these are jujitsu techniques that are real world techniques for quickly defeating and incapacitating an opponent. The techniques he taught this morning are all ones he has taught to soldiers at Fort Bragg as a fighting expert. The techniques consist of short, violent blows to soft tissue areas combined with joint locks. It was a fascinating class in it’s own right.
The more fascinating thing is that this man had given up (he sold it) his MA school in North Carolina to go and serve a mission in Guatemala. He lives there now with the majority of his family helping to improve the community he lives in down there. He lives alongside the people he helps as they do, which means none of the creature comforts we have here. He lives with 6 hours of running water per day, builds chicken coups, installs stoves, builds gardens and teaches karate as part of his mission.
Augmenting the community wide stuff above, he also procures gifts for the community. The gifts typically consist of things like toothbrushes or toothpaste and other things we take for granted. Once, he passed out several thousand of those plastic balls we have in the bins at Walmart. Those were a huge hit.
The karate lesson was free, all he asked was that people consider giving donations to his mission so that he can provide some improvements for the lives of the people he now lives with. The stove I mentioned before is not a stove like we would think it. It’s a firebox with a metal top and a pipe that extends up through the roof (typically straw thatched) of the house they put the stove in. The “big” improvement is the pipe- families there typically cook over an open fire inside their home, made of some kind of stalk.
On the way home, the boy asked a question about the slide show and video Master Sgro had presented after the class. He wanted to know why “everything was dirty” and why there was dirt in their homes. I had to try and explain to him: that’s their life down there. That there was no grocery store to go to; no restaurants to go to for dinner or lunch; no Game Stops from which to get video games; they don’t know what DS’s are. I’m not sure he gets it. I’m not sure I get it. Living on $2 a day, with 6 hours of running water and cooking over an open fire is barely camping in this country. I don’t know if I could do it.
But Master Sgro does and he makes a difference to these people. He has a web site for his mission here.