Sunday morning, I am with the "Pueblo de Dios en Camino," a base eclesial community in San Ramón, just minutes from my house. It´s a Catholic group, yet there´s no priest present because a very conservative pastor arrived to the parish several years ago and didn´t accept the group´s participatory nature. Determined to listen, reflect, and act together, the "pueblo" continue on.
The centre is full of murals and posters. Many of Monseñor Romero of course. A breathtakingly detailed jungle scene. And a depiction of significant massacres on painted map, with little pictorals in each area of the country.
The person convening us welcomes me, saying I may participate for as long as I´m here.
The songs are lively and concrete, expressing the desires of the disenfranchised. Their version of the creed calls Jesus their "compañero" and "obrero"(worker).
The homily is a group reflection the gospel they´ve heard, with even a 13-year-old girl speaking eloquently. Everyone hugs absolutely everyone else at the sign of peace.
The petition prayers are also participatory. Most moving to me was the last I heard, "thank you for bringing us here, so we can share what we have with each other."
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Taller, Soya, Río
I´ve been in CentroAmerica for almost a month now. In San Salvador, I enjoy both my rhythmic daily patterns and my freedom for spontaneity. On the former, language learning dominates most of my days. Since so much of the morning classes involves free conversation, I spend a few hours in the afternoon on grammar. Or reading the newspaper (still not quite there with Romero..) and in evenings listening to the UCA radio station. This week, the school coordinator bumped me up into the next class level, and I appreciate the teachers´ confidence even if I don´t feel close to "intermediate." Yikes. Yet, I suppose you´re not really "in class" if you understand everything presented... This week´s challenge is scratching the surface of subjunctive.
My confidence rolls in waves: feeling great about my breakfast conversation and then near frustration-tears when I got lost on a rainy busride home yesterday evening, fumbling my way through direction questions.
Spontaneous excursions over the last week:
*Karaoke bar. I sang English this time, but Spanish ballads may be forthcoming...
*Sitting in on a "taller" (workshop) on Friday, people from various communities around the country coming monthly to CIS to discuss common experiences and plan both local trainings and broader activism, like the campaign against enironmentally-catastrophic mining rights that Pacific Rim and other companies are pushing for from the government(more info: http://luterano.blogspot.com/). I talked to one young man who came from 3 hours away to this taller. He works as a walk-through candy vender on regional buses. Wow.
*Visiting the Soy project on Saturday, run by a Maryknoll lay missioner. The effort has made measurably significant differences in child nutritional status around here. Helped make vanilla and chocolate soy milk using their new "cow" machine. Yum.
*Traveling to San Antonio de Ranchos, a small village in the northen department of Chaletenango, on Monday with the entire MK crew. Every year, a service is held in memory of Maryknoll Sister Carla, who died in 1980 crossing a flooding riverbed. She had just picked up a campesino released on stern "warning" from a nearby prison, accused on being a guerilla informant. She was taking him home to try to avoid probable torture. Also in the car were two young men and Sr Ita Ford. All were quickly pushed out of the inundated car by Sr. Carla, but she couldn´t make it in time. (Sr. Ita was martyred just 4 months later with the three other missioner women). We started by the river, with speeches from the townspeople who fondly remembered Carla. Then we processed with singing and candles to the actual service, and (predicably) ended with generously shared food.
My confidence rolls in waves: feeling great about my breakfast conversation and then near frustration-tears when I got lost on a rainy busride home yesterday evening, fumbling my way through direction questions.
Spontaneous excursions over the last week:
*Karaoke bar. I sang English this time, but Spanish ballads may be forthcoming...
*Sitting in on a "taller" (workshop) on Friday, people from various communities around the country coming monthly to CIS to discuss common experiences and plan both local trainings and broader activism, like the campaign against enironmentally-catastrophic mining rights that Pacific Rim and other companies are pushing for from the government(more info: http://luterano.blogspot.com/). I talked to one young man who came from 3 hours away to this taller. He works as a walk-through candy vender on regional buses. Wow.
*Visiting the Soy project on Saturday, run by a Maryknoll lay missioner. The effort has made measurably significant differences in child nutritional status around here. Helped make vanilla and chocolate soy milk using their new "cow" machine. Yum.
*Traveling to San Antonio de Ranchos, a small village in the northen department of Chaletenango, on Monday with the entire MK crew. Every year, a service is held in memory of Maryknoll Sister Carla, who died in 1980 crossing a flooding riverbed. She had just picked up a campesino released on stern "warning" from a nearby prison, accused on being a guerilla informant. She was taking him home to try to avoid probable torture. Also in the car were two young men and Sr Ita Ford. All were quickly pushed out of the inundated car by Sr. Carla, but she couldn´t make it in time. (Sr. Ita was martyred just 4 months later with the three other missioner women). We started by the river, with speeches from the townspeople who fondly remembered Carla. Then we processed with singing and candles to the actual service, and (predicably) ended with generously shared food.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Lugares de Peregrinación
Lunes 16 de Agosto - 8:30pm
[Doña is sitting next to me on the couch, telling me stories of her many other ´hijos´ or host students. A bit earlier, Don found it howl-aloud hilarious to call my new cellphone from the kitchen. Though full from cena, I couldn´t resist a minute ago when mi hermana (who lives with us during the working week and goes to her husband´s coffee farm on weekends) literally tossed me a sizzling tortilla.]
This past week certainly opened a fire hydrant for learning (my fellow med students know the metaphor all too well). I have class at CIS in the mornings, with every word in Spanish. My placement test predictably started me in "Basic," with one other student (who has been here two months) and our maestro. Everything floods in together--trying to grasp the 8 parts of speech, fairly complex syntactical construction, regular & irregular (and reflexive) verb conjugation in four tenses...and of course a completely new vocabulary. I love it. I much enjoy the challenge of constantly thinking foreign words in foreign ways. It´s so unlike Kreyòl--which I´m trying to keep near, in a distinct brain compartment, though now realizing how limited my vocabularly is in that language. Spanish brings me back to Latin, reminding me how much I used to enjoy translating Aeneid,Ovid,Catullus...like code-breaking. Hearing and speaking the complexity is a new dimension, however, and I usually have to pause before answering Doña´s questions as my mind clicks to the right verb conjugation. Based on her often cocked eyebrows, I still fumble a ton.
Miercoles 18 de Agosto:
Last week also convinced me I want to be here, in El Salvador. I´ve questioned, wondering whether I should have landed in a more popular language school destination like Xela, Guatemala. Yet, CIS (cis-elsalvador.org) uses the Paulo Freire / popular education method, with lessons growing from our conscientization of the Salvadoran reality. In just the first week, we ve discussed some idigenous history as well as the formation of FMLN, and read a tribute to the diaspora by Salvadoran poet & revolutionary, Roque Dalton. I bought one of Roque´s books, along with a compilation of Romero homily passages, at the national University bookstore yesterday. Just this morning--based on my probably over-frequent cross references during class--my teacher brought in an article about Haiti. I am learning to listen, learning to speak. I think El Salvador has a lot to teach.
Someone told me that one should visit places here not just as tourism--though the country is promoting its tourist spots--but as "Lugares de Peregrinación," pilgrimage sites. Last week, I visited the UCA and heard the full story of the 6 Jesuit martyrs, for the first time; I will definitely return there. Also went to the war memorial in Parque Cuscatlán and Romero´s tomb in the Cathedral. I spent the weekend away, on a CIS-led trip to the towns of Cinquera and Suchitoto farther north in the country. They were both major war areas. Cinquera now has a forested national park where 30 years ago there was farmland, abandoned during the fighting. We hiked up the small mountain and swam in a waterfall. In Suchitoto, we spent the night at a wonderful centre run by a sister who has been here since 1987 (http://capsuchitoto.org). Heard live music at a local restaurant, and the next day explored the charming cobblestone streets and Sunday fair. [For latinoamerican-phytes, the place is often described as a smaller Antigua,Guate.] Climbed rocks around another waterfall. Visited two incredible projects: the Concertación de las Mujeres, and the Permaculture Institute [www.permacultura.com.sv is worth checking out, awesome example of supporting people´s natural problem solving skills and ability to "read the land" to counter the very real & worsening effects of climate change. Plus, foreign guests are welcome to learn the methods!]
Concertación is a collaboration among 5 local women´s groups that do...everything in the 45 nearby small communities. Literally everything. Training birth attendants, family planning, PAP smears, co-op style health insurance pool. Support for victims of gender violence--including a campaign in which families stamped a pledge outside their houses "en esta casa queremos un vida libre de violencia hacia las mujeres." Microfinance projects like a successful indigo-dyed clothing store and a creative cow-exchange cycle. Promotion of women in municipal politics. All of it...started and fully sustained by Salvadoreña´s. Local desire and effort far more important than any concrete accomplishment.
My highlight of the weekend, and time here so far, was a conversation in Cinquera with a man called Don Pablo. He started by saying he had to "leave in two hours for a meeting of the Communidad Eclesia de Base..." And then followed a flooring testimony in Spanish of the period leading up to the war, decades of economic and physical abuse which he emphasized as equally as (or more than) the war itself. The propaganda they were fed by the political and church authorities...
..The arrival of a new priest who asked them, "why don´t you have enough to eat?" and when they responded with the "God´s-will" fallacy they´d been taught, he promptly gave a Bible to each formerly illiterate campesino...and taught them to read with it. Then he gave them copies of El Salvador´s Constitution. Don Pablo explained, "Our resistance grew because the people saw connections between the Bible and the Constituion, realizing our oppression was ´pecado social´ and that through solidarity as a group, we could work for justice."
Don Pablo was captured multiple times and tortured; four of his children died in the fighting, and the fifth took his own life the year after it ended. Ending simply, Don Pablo passed around his copies of the Bible, Constitution, and Medillín and said "we´re still applying this to our life." And then he left for his meeting.
[Doña is sitting next to me on the couch, telling me stories of her many other ´hijos´ or host students. A bit earlier, Don found it howl-aloud hilarious to call my new cellphone from the kitchen. Though full from cena, I couldn´t resist a minute ago when mi hermana (who lives with us during the working week and goes to her husband´s coffee farm on weekends) literally tossed me a sizzling tortilla.]
This past week certainly opened a fire hydrant for learning (my fellow med students know the metaphor all too well). I have class at CIS in the mornings, with every word in Spanish. My placement test predictably started me in "Basic," with one other student (who has been here two months) and our maestro. Everything floods in together--trying to grasp the 8 parts of speech, fairly complex syntactical construction, regular & irregular (and reflexive) verb conjugation in four tenses...and of course a completely new vocabulary. I love it. I much enjoy the challenge of constantly thinking foreign words in foreign ways. It´s so unlike Kreyòl--which I´m trying to keep near, in a distinct brain compartment, though now realizing how limited my vocabularly is in that language. Spanish brings me back to Latin, reminding me how much I used to enjoy translating Aeneid,Ovid,Catullus...like code-breaking. Hearing and speaking the complexity is a new dimension, however, and I usually have to pause before answering Doña´s questions as my mind clicks to the right verb conjugation. Based on her often cocked eyebrows, I still fumble a ton.
Miercoles 18 de Agosto:
Last week also convinced me I want to be here, in El Salvador. I´ve questioned, wondering whether I should have landed in a more popular language school destination like Xela, Guatemala. Yet, CIS (cis-elsalvador.org) uses the Paulo Freire / popular education method, with lessons growing from our conscientization of the Salvadoran reality. In just the first week, we ve discussed some idigenous history as well as the formation of FMLN, and read a tribute to the diaspora by Salvadoran poet & revolutionary, Roque Dalton. I bought one of Roque´s books, along with a compilation of Romero homily passages, at the national University bookstore yesterday. Just this morning--based on my probably over-frequent cross references during class--my teacher brought in an article about Haiti. I am learning to listen, learning to speak. I think El Salvador has a lot to teach.
Someone told me that one should visit places here not just as tourism--though the country is promoting its tourist spots--but as "Lugares de Peregrinación," pilgrimage sites. Last week, I visited the UCA and heard the full story of the 6 Jesuit martyrs, for the first time; I will definitely return there. Also went to the war memorial in Parque Cuscatlán and Romero´s tomb in the Cathedral. I spent the weekend away, on a CIS-led trip to the towns of Cinquera and Suchitoto farther north in the country. They were both major war areas. Cinquera now has a forested national park where 30 years ago there was farmland, abandoned during the fighting. We hiked up the small mountain and swam in a waterfall. In Suchitoto, we spent the night at a wonderful centre run by a sister who has been here since 1987 (http://capsuchitoto.org). Heard live music at a local restaurant, and the next day explored the charming cobblestone streets and Sunday fair. [For latinoamerican-phytes, the place is often described as a smaller Antigua,Guate.] Climbed rocks around another waterfall. Visited two incredible projects: the Concertación de las Mujeres, and the Permaculture Institute [www.permacultura.com.sv is worth checking out, awesome example of supporting people´s natural problem solving skills and ability to "read the land" to counter the very real & worsening effects of climate change. Plus, foreign guests are welcome to learn the methods!]
Concertación is a collaboration among 5 local women´s groups that do...everything in the 45 nearby small communities. Literally everything. Training birth attendants, family planning, PAP smears, co-op style health insurance pool. Support for victims of gender violence--including a campaign in which families stamped a pledge outside their houses "en esta casa queremos un vida libre de violencia hacia las mujeres." Microfinance projects like a successful indigo-dyed clothing store and a creative cow-exchange cycle. Promotion of women in municipal politics. All of it...started and fully sustained by Salvadoreña´s. Local desire and effort far more important than any concrete accomplishment.
My highlight of the weekend, and time here so far, was a conversation in Cinquera with a man called Don Pablo. He started by saying he had to "leave in two hours for a meeting of the Communidad Eclesia de Base..." And then followed a flooring testimony in Spanish of the period leading up to the war, decades of economic and physical abuse which he emphasized as equally as (or more than) the war itself. The propaganda they were fed by the political and church authorities...
..The arrival of a new priest who asked them, "why don´t you have enough to eat?" and when they responded with the "God´s-will" fallacy they´d been taught, he promptly gave a Bible to each formerly illiterate campesino...and taught them to read with it. Then he gave them copies of El Salvador´s Constitution. Don Pablo explained, "Our resistance grew because the people saw connections between the Bible and the Constituion, realizing our oppression was ´pecado social´ and that through solidarity as a group, we could work for justice."
Don Pablo was captured multiple times and tortured; four of his children died in the fighting, and the fifth took his own life the year after it ended. Ending simply, Don Pablo passed around his copies of the Bible, Constitution, and Medillín and said "we´re still applying this to our life." And then he left for his meeting.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Update on Haiti
I'm a little out of on news of Haiti, but this came to me from a friend involved in the Haiti Response Coalition. So much injustice is flooding over the most courageous...
For Immediate Release: 11 August, 2010
Haiti Earthquake Survivors Peacefully Demonstrate to Call Attention to the Forced Expulsions and Horrific Conditions in Camps
Seven Months After Catastrophe: No Solutions and No Assistance
Port-au-Prince, Haiti - Thursday, August 12, 10AM Sit-in in front of the National Palace.
Force for Reflection and Action on the Housing Cause (FRAKKA), Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), Batay Ouvrière (B.O), KOOTK, OVS, COSEM, Immaculé, Deplace, CUSLG, Camp Mezyan, Babankou and other Internally displaced people under threat of expulsion, invite the international and national press and community to their sit-in in front of Haiti’s National Palace 11am EST on August 12. Seven months after the tragic earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and left more than one and half million survivors homeless, the most vulnerable are organizing to demand a moratorium on forced evictions, which are happening in violation of Haitian and international law. The government must immediately provide humane alternatives to the muddy, dangerous, unsanitary and simply brutal living conditions by verifying ownership titles, and nationalizing by decree all empty and idle lands in the hands of large landowners. The thousands who cannot leave their camps for fear of expulsion or lack of transport funds will participate in the protest by banging pots at noon (1pm EST) within the tent cities throughout Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns.
While international aid agencies and the United Nations readily admit that the camps do not meet international standards for internally displaced people, at the same time non-governmental organizations, charities and the Haitian Government are unwilling to provide basic services to these victims.
Food distributions have come to a halt and many aid agencies are intentionally withholding necessary and fundamental services such as latrines, water, food and medical aid, in order to force earthquake victims to abandon the camps that currently exist in former parks, school grounds and churchyards. However, no feasible plans exist to relocate these families.
Through the generosity of people throughout the world, more than one billion dollars has already been donated to charities. “Haitians who lost loved ones, homes and all their belongings are now out in the merciless summer sun all day, then soaked to the bone by rains each night,” explains Melinda Miles, director of Let Haiti Live and Coordinator of the Haiti Response Coalition. “They are deprived of fundamental human rights – access to food, water, shelter – and have no other place to go.”
The U.S. government and UN agencies all point to the Haitian Government’s inability to provide land for resettlement, referring to controversies around land tenure and eminent domain. However in the past, eminent domain has not been an issue when the government has needed to appropriate land for building roads or factories. The current situation is illustrative of a historical precedent of private property being more important than the rights of the poor.
“The law is perfectly clear,” according to prominent human rights attorney Mario Joseph. “There is a problem of political will and a problem of exclusion. The poor have been excluded from their land for years, and are now excluded from the process determining their rights to lodgings.”
In addition to demanding immediate solutions for the internally displaced people such as viable land for relocation and resumption of basic services without further delay, demonstrators are demanding that forced evictions and violent expulsions cease, and the Haitian Government and Haitian National Police enforce a mandatory moratorium on forced removals until suitable alternatives are in place.
Contacts: Melinda Miles 011-509-3855-8861 and Attorney Mario Joseph 3701-9879
For Immediate Release: 11 August, 2010
Haiti Earthquake Survivors Peacefully Demonstrate to Call Attention to the Forced Expulsions and Horrific Conditions in Camps
Seven Months After Catastrophe: No Solutions and No Assistance
Port-au-Prince, Haiti - Thursday, August 12, 10AM Sit-in in front of the National Palace.
Force for Reflection and Action on the Housing Cause (FRAKKA), Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), Batay Ouvrière (B.O), KOOTK, OVS, COSEM, Immaculé, Deplace, CUSLG, Camp Mezyan, Babankou and other Internally displaced people under threat of expulsion, invite the international and national press and community to their sit-in in front of Haiti’s National Palace 11am EST on August 12. Seven months after the tragic earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and left more than one and half million survivors homeless, the most vulnerable are organizing to demand a moratorium on forced evictions, which are happening in violation of Haitian and international law. The government must immediately provide humane alternatives to the muddy, dangerous, unsanitary and simply brutal living conditions by verifying ownership titles, and nationalizing by decree all empty and idle lands in the hands of large landowners. The thousands who cannot leave their camps for fear of expulsion or lack of transport funds will participate in the protest by banging pots at noon (1pm EST) within the tent cities throughout Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns.
While international aid agencies and the United Nations readily admit that the camps do not meet international standards for internally displaced people, at the same time non-governmental organizations, charities and the Haitian Government are unwilling to provide basic services to these victims.
Food distributions have come to a halt and many aid agencies are intentionally withholding necessary and fundamental services such as latrines, water, food and medical aid, in order to force earthquake victims to abandon the camps that currently exist in former parks, school grounds and churchyards. However, no feasible plans exist to relocate these families.
Through the generosity of people throughout the world, more than one billion dollars has already been donated to charities. “Haitians who lost loved ones, homes and all their belongings are now out in the merciless summer sun all day, then soaked to the bone by rains each night,” explains Melinda Miles, director of Let Haiti Live and Coordinator of the Haiti Response Coalition. “They are deprived of fundamental human rights – access to food, water, shelter – and have no other place to go.”
The U.S. government and UN agencies all point to the Haitian Government’s inability to provide land for resettlement, referring to controversies around land tenure and eminent domain. However in the past, eminent domain has not been an issue when the government has needed to appropriate land for building roads or factories. The current situation is illustrative of a historical precedent of private property being more important than the rights of the poor.
“The law is perfectly clear,” according to prominent human rights attorney Mario Joseph. “There is a problem of political will and a problem of exclusion. The poor have been excluded from their land for years, and are now excluded from the process determining their rights to lodgings.”
In addition to demanding immediate solutions for the internally displaced people such as viable land for relocation and resumption of basic services without further delay, demonstrators are demanding that forced evictions and violent expulsions cease, and the Haitian Government and Haitian National Police enforce a mandatory moratorium on forced removals until suitable alternatives are in place.
Contacts: Melinda Miles 011-509-3855-8861 and Attorney Mario Joseph 3701-9879
Monday, August 9, 2010
mi Casa y mi Familia
Domingo 8 Agosto:
Already gained comfort & rhythm in my new (transient) home. I live with an older couple, who I still mostly call "Don" and "Doña" out of respect, rather than use names. Both are retired schoolteachers. They have four grown children, but only one still in the country. I met her at Mass today, and she promptly exclamed, "Ah, not sister, my daughter!"
Mi casa is in a quaint middle-class neighborhood, guarded by friendly "vigilantes." Passing from the living room to kitchen goes through an outdoor hallway / clothesline space, which is where I wash my clothes on the pila. The front door is also often open to a little patio space before the iron gate, my favorite reading spot in a hammock chair by the cage for our two "pajaros"(birds) and in view of the basketball court across the street. It all gives a feeling of peaceful, natural comfort.
Don and Doña are very friendly, though our relationship remains superficial given my language limitations; they patiently guide me through simple conversations. I couldn´t be more eager to finally start language school tomorrow. Have been making decent attempts, but I still regularly mix in Kreyol words, frequently refer to myself in the masculine, and more often than not, omit the verb in my sentences altogether because it´s not one of the three I know. When I don´t understand a comment directed at me, I automatically give a couple quick nods, "Oh...si!" I remember that faked comprehension as an impossible bane of teaching in Cambodia, so now can finally empathize with my former students. Just smile and pretend. Will figure it out eventually, I hope.
I spend time with Doña mainly as she sits at the kitchen table, watching me eat. (Don is apparently on his own schedule). We seem to converse with steady pace, given that I don´t know how to say anything. Easy repeats. It will rain today. This fruit is grown in El Salvador, but not in Michigan. Yes, I like beans very much. She works on her "bordado" embroidered placemattes as we talk, and pretty much all day, too.
Now it´s 7:30, and my dear parents have gone to bed. I´ll likely folow suit in two hours. A 9-to-5 sleep schedule? Unbelievable.
Already gained comfort & rhythm in my new (transient) home. I live with an older couple, who I still mostly call "Don" and "Doña" out of respect, rather than use names. Both are retired schoolteachers. They have four grown children, but only one still in the country. I met her at Mass today, and she promptly exclamed, "Ah, not sister, my daughter!"
Mi casa is in a quaint middle-class neighborhood, guarded by friendly "vigilantes." Passing from the living room to kitchen goes through an outdoor hallway / clothesline space, which is where I wash my clothes on the pila. The front door is also often open to a little patio space before the iron gate, my favorite reading spot in a hammock chair by the cage for our two "pajaros"(birds) and in view of the basketball court across the street. It all gives a feeling of peaceful, natural comfort.
Don and Doña are very friendly, though our relationship remains superficial given my language limitations; they patiently guide me through simple conversations. I couldn´t be more eager to finally start language school tomorrow. Have been making decent attempts, but I still regularly mix in Kreyol words, frequently refer to myself in the masculine, and more often than not, omit the verb in my sentences altogether because it´s not one of the three I know. When I don´t understand a comment directed at me, I automatically give a couple quick nods, "Oh...si!" I remember that faked comprehension as an impossible bane of teaching in Cambodia, so now can finally empathize with my former students. Just smile and pretend. Will figure it out eventually, I hope.
I spend time with Doña mainly as she sits at the kitchen table, watching me eat. (Don is apparently on his own schedule). We seem to converse with steady pace, given that I don´t know how to say anything. Easy repeats. It will rain today. This fruit is grown in El Salvador, but not in Michigan. Yes, I like beans very much. She works on her "bordado" embroidered placemattes as we talk, and pretty much all day, too.
Now it´s 7:30, and my dear parents have gone to bed. I´ll likely folow suit in two hours. A 9-to-5 sleep schedule? Unbelievable.
Que le vaya bien
I already love being here. San Salvador seems such a lively place, with solemn history and collective memory, as well as hilarious quirks--some of these analogous to things I´ve encountered before, but always aspects unique and special to this place. Something most unexpected, however, is an added layer of development beyond what I expected for a country only recently recovering from a most brutal war. For instance, my host parents are both retired and actually receive social security money, from the government. Fast food chains and relatively upscale stores line the city boulevards. The "consuma" fair was full of people making middle-class purchases, home electronics and appliances and such.
Of course, I only so far see the decorative icing. I realize this is city life, where the relatively small middle-class has opportunities for advancing livelihood (with tongue-in-cheek consideration of electronics purchases as "advancement" a la USA). The pueblo, the campo are different and live the same structural violence faced by rural poor everywhere. Even in the city, I´ve not yet found the disparities and oppressions I know exist.
Still, this is not Haiti.
No security, social or otherwise, exists there.
Over the last couple days, I´ve had moments of subconsciously trying to place my mind´s image of crumbled Port au Prince side-by-side with San Salvador. But I can´t, for Haiti seems so distant now, like a toddler who keeps tugging at my skirt and then running away before I can turn to look. News of the field hospital closing hit painfully 10 days ago, as I Skyped with Roosevelt only minutes before departing for the airport. Everyone did everything they could. My Haitian friend--he´s the one suffering, not I--told me to "kenbe la," hang in there. I hope they can.
I need to accept the tugging, for there´s so much I want to learn here: the lived history, base ecclesial community, local work for change... I learned my first local phrase the other day, which people say on the street as I pass, after buenos dias, "que le vaya bien" meaning "(hope) that it goes well (for you)." So far, it certainly is.
Of course, I only so far see the decorative icing. I realize this is city life, where the relatively small middle-class has opportunities for advancing livelihood (with tongue-in-cheek consideration of electronics purchases as "advancement" a la USA). The pueblo, the campo are different and live the same structural violence faced by rural poor everywhere. Even in the city, I´ve not yet found the disparities and oppressions I know exist.
Still, this is not Haiti.
No security, social or otherwise, exists there.
Over the last couple days, I´ve had moments of subconsciously trying to place my mind´s image of crumbled Port au Prince side-by-side with San Salvador. But I can´t, for Haiti seems so distant now, like a toddler who keeps tugging at my skirt and then running away before I can turn to look. News of the field hospital closing hit painfully 10 days ago, as I Skyped with Roosevelt only minutes before departing for the airport. Everyone did everything they could. My Haitian friend--he´s the one suffering, not I--told me to "kenbe la," hang in there. I hope they can.
I need to accept the tugging, for there´s so much I want to learn here: the lived history, base ecclesial community, local work for change... I learned my first local phrase the other day, which people say on the street as I pass, after buenos dias, "que le vaya bien" meaning "(hope) that it goes well (for you)." So far, it certainly is.
El Salvador del Mundo
Fiestas Agostinas, the August Festivals, is a week of vacation in El Salvador leading up to the Church feast of the Transfiguration of El Salvador, for which this country is named (obviously a big deal). I arrived just at the culmination to experience the amusingly poignant mixing of elements, secular and spiritual.
Hours after meeting my host family, we watched the country´s Catholic TV station broadcast the slow procession of Christ´s statue carried on a bed by a score of men, toward the national Cathedral in the central square. Absolute hoards of people surrounding it, for hours. It was dark when they reached the cathedral, where the Archbishop gave a brief homily, and then the statue was somehow descended "el bajar" into a huge globe resting on pillars, two stories high above the crowd. Minutes later, Christ reappears transfigured from a purple robe to shining white...at which point the people burst into ecstatic cheering and singing. Doña follows along from our living room view.
The next day, attended the solemn feast day Mass, also in front of the Cathedral with 10s of thousands standing in the balmy sun. I may have been imagining it, but I think I miraculously understood a good bit of the Archbishop´s homily, which focused on our need to concretely transfigure the world from one of oppression to one of peace. (Fist-pump to the land of lib theo) At communion, the congregation was instructed to stay in their place. "We (the ministers) will come to you." Beautiful.
Final day of feasting was a repeat of old experiences at my county fair. Except churros in place of elephant ears. The Salvadorans call it a "consuma," which seems an appropriate name for the enormous variety of "things" pawned off there. Fair games and rides naturally included, and a good once-a-year time for all.
One of the nights included fireworks, lit above a monument to El Salvador del Mundo at one of the city´s main traffic roundabouts. Far surpassing SJ´s Venetian display, this was the most elaborate showing I´ve ever seen. Yet, we seemed among only a small group of spectators. Personally, I´m not a huge fan of fireworks, and here, I cannot help but think how other explosions were so recently here...the bombs bursting in air.
Hours after meeting my host family, we watched the country´s Catholic TV station broadcast the slow procession of Christ´s statue carried on a bed by a score of men, toward the national Cathedral in the central square. Absolute hoards of people surrounding it, for hours. It was dark when they reached the cathedral, where the Archbishop gave a brief homily, and then the statue was somehow descended "el bajar" into a huge globe resting on pillars, two stories high above the crowd. Minutes later, Christ reappears transfigured from a purple robe to shining white...at which point the people burst into ecstatic cheering and singing. Doña follows along from our living room view.
The next day, attended the solemn feast day Mass, also in front of the Cathedral with 10s of thousands standing in the balmy sun. I may have been imagining it, but I think I miraculously understood a good bit of the Archbishop´s homily, which focused on our need to concretely transfigure the world from one of oppression to one of peace. (Fist-pump to the land of lib theo) At communion, the congregation was instructed to stay in their place. "We (the ministers) will come to you." Beautiful.
Final day of feasting was a repeat of old experiences at my county fair. Except churros in place of elephant ears. The Salvadorans call it a "consuma," which seems an appropriate name for the enormous variety of "things" pawned off there. Fair games and rides naturally included, and a good once-a-year time for all.
One of the nights included fireworks, lit above a monument to El Salvador del Mundo at one of the city´s main traffic roundabouts. Far surpassing SJ´s Venetian display, this was the most elaborate showing I´ve ever seen. Yet, we seemed among only a small group of spectators. Personally, I´m not a huge fan of fireworks, and here, I cannot help but think how other explosions were so recently here...the bombs bursting in air.
And Now, For Something Completely Different*
*a la Monty Python
I am not in Haiti anymore, which is stating the obvious to the four readers of this blog (hola, madre). I spent just four days in Port au Prince at the General Hospital, and June 1 onward, was home wrestling with interminable questions: "Why did I leave?" "What should I do now?" "Am I useful to Haiti?" "Is usefulness anywhere even possible for me, right now?"...It was quite the pity party.
The only response, not even an answer, came from writing a little narrative of my last six months. I wanted to tell the story to myself, so its complexity never leaves my memory and so the admiration & affection for my Haitian and American partners never dims in my heart. I´m happy to share this narrative (shoot me an email or fb msg), once I have a chance to fix the typos & such.
I have a few months free until I must reaquaint myself with Gray´s Anatomy and the insulin/glucagon pathways. In the space between now and then, I hunger for another journey; that brings me here, to El Salvador, where I am currently living with a host family and begin language school this week. When I arrived in San Pedro Sula, Honduras 11 days ago, my Spanish vocabulary was 0, nada. An attempt to spend that first night at a convent didn´t work out, and led to some amusing mishap with my automatic recession into Kreyol as I fruitlessly struggled communicate with my taxi driver. The next day, however, I took a bus along the northern coast to Trujillo. Outside this town sits the Finca del Niño, where my dear friends Alisha, Erin, Kate, and Francesca live and work.
I spent a lovely 5 days with them: a privilege to witness the rhythms of the Finca´s school and home-style orphanage, the active love Honduran & American staff give the children, the generous simplicity with which the volunteers approach rural communal life. They offered me joyous hospitality. I spent the days walking the serene boundary between coastline and jungle, sharing bunks with Erin and Alisha, playing Settlers of Catan, dancing to Spanish World Cup songs with the Casa 2 girls, kayaking in the bay, running the red dirt hilly roads with Erin, watching over multiplication tables in Kate´s 4th grade class and marveling at her teaching abilities, playing tag at recess, following Alisha´s guidance as we cooked fried chicken & mashed potatoes & mango cobbler over an outdoor wood-burning fogon, enjoying plain beans and slurpy mangoes straight from the trees. Also time in the chapel, with its stained glass window as a proud symbol of the Finca´s serendipitous history, "El que in mi nombre recibe a este niño, a mi me recibe." It is so good to be with friends.
I am not in Haiti anymore, which is stating the obvious to the four readers of this blog (hola, madre). I spent just four days in Port au Prince at the General Hospital, and June 1 onward, was home wrestling with interminable questions: "Why did I leave?" "What should I do now?" "Am I useful to Haiti?" "Is usefulness anywhere even possible for me, right now?"...It was quite the pity party.
The only response, not even an answer, came from writing a little narrative of my last six months. I wanted to tell the story to myself, so its complexity never leaves my memory and so the admiration & affection for my Haitian and American partners never dims in my heart. I´m happy to share this narrative (shoot me an email or fb msg), once I have a chance to fix the typos & such.
I have a few months free until I must reaquaint myself with Gray´s Anatomy and the insulin/glucagon pathways. In the space between now and then, I hunger for another journey; that brings me here, to El Salvador, where I am currently living with a host family and begin language school this week. When I arrived in San Pedro Sula, Honduras 11 days ago, my Spanish vocabulary was 0, nada. An attempt to spend that first night at a convent didn´t work out, and led to some amusing mishap with my automatic recession into Kreyol as I fruitlessly struggled communicate with my taxi driver. The next day, however, I took a bus along the northern coast to Trujillo. Outside this town sits the Finca del Niño, where my dear friends Alisha, Erin, Kate, and Francesca live and work.
I spent a lovely 5 days with them: a privilege to witness the rhythms of the Finca´s school and home-style orphanage, the active love Honduran & American staff give the children, the generous simplicity with which the volunteers approach rural communal life. They offered me joyous hospitality. I spent the days walking the serene boundary between coastline and jungle, sharing bunks with Erin and Alisha, playing Settlers of Catan, dancing to Spanish World Cup songs with the Casa 2 girls, kayaking in the bay, running the red dirt hilly roads with Erin, watching over multiplication tables in Kate´s 4th grade class and marveling at her teaching abilities, playing tag at recess, following Alisha´s guidance as we cooked fried chicken & mashed potatoes & mango cobbler over an outdoor wood-burning fogon, enjoying plain beans and slurpy mangoes straight from the trees. Also time in the chapel, with its stained glass window as a proud symbol of the Finca´s serendipitous history, "El que in mi nombre recibe a este niño, a mi me recibe." It is so good to be with friends.
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