The warmth of presence

Well it has been a busy past couple of weeks. Although I have written a couple of reflections I have not had a chance to publish any blogs, but today I want to at least express a couple of things. It is going to be somewhat disjointed, but I hope you enjoy the following snippets.

For one, as busy as the last couple weeks have been, it has been an excellent time of growth and opportunity. We started computer and English classes two weeks ago to take advantage of the kids' vacation time. During the school year they won't have as much time to come to the Center, so almost every volunteer has either a computer class, an English class, or both. Korla for instance has computer class almost every minute of the day as far as I can tell, and also manages to lead an English conversation class. I am still giving Yoga classes twice weekly, and a few poetry students, so I have taken on biweekly English conversation and computer classes.

One of my computacion students, Rosa, has been a joy and a struggle to work with. She is only 13 years old but, as I discovered in a moment of truly horrifying reality, she is nevertheless victim to the cat-calling harassment of men two and three times her age. Well, Rosa has little confidence in her abilities as a computer student. After our third class she told me she wouldn't come anymore and vaguely indicated that it had something to do with having 'pena' (fear or shame) around the boys in the class.
I was pretty firm with her. At first the explanation for Rosa's desire to drop-out consisted only of the exclamation, "porque no!" (it's just... no!) and an embarrassed aversion of attention. I patiently insisted that we talk about whatever her predicament was in order to find out how we could make the environment feel safer. And I told her that it wasn't fair for her to drop the class since there is a whole list of students who would have taken advantage of the opportunity had it not been given to her. She was pretty disappointed I wasn't going to just let her go- at least it seemed that way to me at the time. So I asked her if she thought I was mean. She said no, and told me timidly that she'd see me next class.

Well next class came around and little miss Rosa had a present for me. She approached me shyly- actually she lured me outside the center so nobody could see the exchange- and then she gave me a stuffed, whistling gorilla wearing red sunglasses. I was touched. Rose had really appreciated my thoughtful- but firm- attention. After a conversation that must have been pretty difficult for her, and which did not convince me she was even going to come back, Rosa returned with a sincere expression of thanks.

This past weekend was full of life. Alicia's sister, cousin and friend were in town for Thanksgiving, so I visited the gang in the capital on Friday, and then we all came back to Suchitoto on Saturday. The whole weekend was fantastic. I got to play tour guide and translater, we had reflections with Alicia's praxis site in the capital, we went on a way-too-long excursion in my campo community to a river, to eat sugar cane, and to visit an indigenous cave... AND our generous visitors treated us to the nicest hotel room I have ever seen (with a fantastic view of Lake Suchitlan). Eileen, Beth, Brian, if you are readying this, I echo the words of all our Salvadoran hosts: thank you for your presence!


Yesterday Korla and I spent the morning out in El Bario picking up trash in the first-ever trash collection in El Bario. Just imagine that: it's 2010 and the funds and motivation to remove garbage from homes is just finding its way into the community. I am no expert on economy, civil war, or the contemporary climate of social progress in El Salvador, but I'd say that fact can serve as part of a powerful snapshot of where many Salvadorans stand- socially, environmentally, psychologically...

I finally received a postcard and package that my mom sent probably weeks ago. (THANK YOU MOM!). In the package was a Philadelphia Art Museum postcard with a BEAUTIFUL poem, several fancy soaps I would never buy for myself but will certainly use, and a present for my campo abuelita. This present, as I'm sure my mother intended, was the best, most life-giving part.
My mom had sent along an aquamarine pashmina scarf for Dona Carmen, thus demonstrating my mother's instinctual ability to discern (without background research as far as I can tell) just what a particular person in a particular physical and emotional space could use. And my mom enclosed a note which, much to my delight, she intended for me to translate for my abuelita.
In the note was a beautiful poem about warmth and care. It expressed gratitude to Dona Carmen for hosting me and sharing with me so much love. You should have seen abuelita... She was genuinely shocked at the gesture, which lasted only moments before she welled up with good ol' fashion Salvadoran excitement and thanks.
She threw the scarf right on with minor assistance from me, and then just kept saying, "Que chula!" (how cute!). After reading her the note from my mom she asked if I could show her a picture of my mother sometime, so instead of delaying I grabbed my family pictures from my room and showed her a couple right away. "Bien joven!" she said, "how young!".

I then asked Abuelita if she wanted to say a couple words to my mom in a video. And this is where you'll just have to witness to believe the power of abuelita's love...



Me: Decirle algunas palabras
Abuelita: hm? Y que le puedo decir alli?

Me: Es un video, usted puede decir algunas palabras para mandar a mi madre

A: Le mando miles de saludos- miles de saludos. Y que la felicito, que aqui tengo su hijo. Y es bien portado, cabal. Educado, y galan.
Me: Como usted.
A: Que la felicito digale.
...La mama verdad? es un tesoro... Y que yo estoy alegre porque aqui lo tengo. Eso. Bien bonito, va. Mire?

(my translation:)
Me: Say a few words to her
Abuelita: Hm? … How do I do that with the camera?

Me: It’s a video. You can say some words on it to send to my mother.
A: I send her my love (literally: thousands of warm greetings). And congratulations and thanks to her, for I have her son with me here. And he is well-refined. Educated and gallant.
Me: just like you…
A: Tell her that I congratulate and thank her.

A: Ahh your mother… What a treasure it is to have a mother who loves… And I’m happy because I have you here. Yes!
(admiring the scarf): how beautiful, do you see? Look?


Thank you for taking the time to share... Have a great day.

What is holy

The soundtrack to this post is Ray Lamontagne - Hold You in my Arms. If you have a few quiet moments, it would be better to sit down and listen to this song before or while reading these words...

So in case I haven't said it explicitly up til now, I am living in the countryside of El Salvador, outside of the city of Suchitoto. The name of my community is El Bario. It is a poor rural community full of trash because there is no collection service, and full of smiles and "que le vaya biens" because there is no other richer resource in El Bario than humans and humanism.
The community has seen some of the harshest days of the civil war that raged in El Salvador through the 80's. Many of El Bario's inhabitants lived previously in a zone called Chaparral which lies further "abajo" (below) present-day El Bario, closer to lake Suchitlan and farther from the main road that runs between Suchitoto and the western rural communities. During the war this zone disbanded, its inhabitants fleeing to the mountains, to Suchitoto Centro, or remaining in their houses to brave the air and foot-soldier raids of the military.
One day David took my friend Guillermo and I for a walk up the rough piedra-filled road up to Chaparral, where we took in corn fields, rice fields, former sites of houses and finally the now defunct community school building of Chaparral. This school lies in the thick dusty jungle that abounds in the region surrounding El Bario. It is now a somewhat haunted place. There is one house down a rough shady path of crunchy leaves lying about 40 meters away, where one imagines the inhabitants are quite old- the hombre probably wears a cowboy hat to the milpa and walks very slowly, he is actually probably living there alone- and still living in the days of the war. Otherwise nothing marks the landscape but the small river that trickles through the woods and the roofless school which was both erected and destroyed by the Salvadoran government.
Toward the end of the war, when the resettlement of Suchitoto slowly began to take place with the aid of church support and individuals like Sister Peggy, El Bario was the first community formed. Erected closer to the road running between Aguilares and Suchitoto, it was organized more close and compact than had been Chaparral, a fact which, along with the urgency and necessity of the war, makes El Bario to the present day a very close-knit community. Not all the inhabitants are from Chaparral of course, but all of them lived on Volcan Guazapa at some point, or in Suchitoto, or in Honduras, fleeing or fighting one way or another.

I live in El Bario with two brothers named David (25) and Juan "Chomingo" Domingo (29), and their abuelita (grandmother) Dona Carmen (80?), all featured in pictures and writing in previous blogs. As Dona Carmen likes to tell me often in her cheerful leather voice: David and Juan were abandoned by their mother (Dona Carmen's daughter) during the war, and left to Dona Carmen to be raised. "Los puse a estudiar", she proudly tells me. She put them to study! "Y usted ha hecho un buen trabajo," I tell her in return. You've done a great job. Your boys are good boys, and they have welcomed me warmly to your wonderful community. Which is very true.
David has taken me for a couple excursions on the mountain side, to the "family" milpa (which is basically just for him and Dona Carmen to pick and eat from), as well as to the site of "Escuelita", another school built and destroyed by the military. (This is another very feo building, very haunted, as it bears the marks of both Guerilla forces and military occupants who held the high-ground of the school in alternation throughout the war. On one wall you see FARN and FMLN right below a military symbol of a Lion, and across from the horrid ATLACATL- the name of the most ruthless and bloodthirsty American-trained death squad in Salvadoran history.)
David has traveled extensively in this world, to Ireland and various other parts of Europe for a year as part of a study-abroad scholarship he was awarded, and again this past year to visit Denmark, Scotland, France, Spain, England and Ireland for another year. His experience traveling and studying economics and culture among other things makes him both incredibly aware of the poor poor reality in which he and his traveled Abuela are living, and also pointedly hopeless. He walks the dirt street of El Bario with "chacos", a num-chuck like armament that he has no doubt used on various angry muts or hostile humans. David has killed things, dogs for sure, maybe more. He speaks powerfully always, he says hello to everyone. Kids from the community come to our house to upload "cool" foreign music from David's laptop onto their phones. (Coldplay and U2 seem to be David's favorites, but he has a lot of different music gathered no doubt from his travels.) My "campo brother" David works for uncles and aunts, friends in the community, doing construction, digging graves, whatever the work may be. And I think he is starting work this week with a govermental education program aimed at ending illiteracy by 2015 in El Salvador.
One of my favorite things about living in El Bario is seeing the relationship between David and his dog, "Forr" (Alcanfor, or sometimes "Afortunado"). According to David, Forr is an Indio dog, a Mayan dog. He is slender brown, with pointy ears and sharp eyes, and he reminds me of Egypt. A couple days ago David was cutting some cow parts apart on the pila (the same stone surface we use to wash plates, clothes, etc.). Every once in a while he would slice off a piece of fat or ligament. "Mira, el no come todo. Es listo. Otros chuchos comerian todo, pero el es listo. El lo va a esconder donde puede encontrar luego."
Forr seizes the piece of fat and gets a good hold of it in his canines. He darts off behind the house, out of sight. "Ahh you're right! He is so smart!" I tell David. A moment later I hear light paw steps on dry leaves toward the front garden. There is Forr, head down, searching out a good spot. He digs a little with his front paws, piece of cow fat still clutched in his slender jaws. This spot's no good, he moves on. "Mira, necesita conseguir un sitio donde no va a descrubrir el Olaf. El sabe. El sabe". Forr needs to find a spot where the neighbor's dog Olaf (Forr's cousin I think) won't find the fat.
Finally he finds a good spot, digs in with his front paws. "Ha-ha ya lo hace!". David's face lights up even more full of cheer. Forr completes the job by replacing the tierra with his snout, and then patters away. David swaggers back to the pila, mini-machete in hand, and cuts back into the carne.

Chomingo is my other campo brother. He is the older of the two, but more reserved, more tranquilo. With David I talk politics and economics, and he gets passionate and a little bitter and then says "oh well, we try and maybe one day". But with Chomingo one experiences pure presence. He is more slender, a little taller, and he wears very worn clothing, long hair and a trucker hat on which he painted a colorful design. Chomingo studies art in the capital so he is gone Sunday through Thursday usually. One must see our home to believe it, but the place is strewn with Chomingo's artwork. A painting of children playing war on one wall. A "navi" mural on the back of the house. A painting of the virgin Mary, plump round breast at the center with baby Jesus in her arms. Further inside, in the room in which I sleep, the walls are painted blue and green, hand prints adorn the upper parts near the terracota-tile ceiling. One knows within a couple minutes of arriving to this house that it is graced with a certain special energy. If you haven't already learned of the heroics of Abuelita raising two toddlers by herself in the mountains during the war, or if you hadn't met the impressive personage of David and wondered what thoughts run through his mind, you'd still, just upon entering into the cement floored covered porch (the living and dining room), that special people live here, all around here...

The abuelita has been sick now for about two weeks. She is still her bright cheerful self with me whenever I am around. (Lately she has taken to calling me "el tesoro", treasure.) "Ya viene el Tesoro! El es galan. Bien educado el," she tells anyone who is around. But with David and Chomingo it is sometimes a different story. She is cranky with them. They hide the coffee because she drinks too much of it. David sleeps up the street at his girlfriend's house (he needs SOME relief from caring for his 'mother'). And Chomingo is just gone a lot of the time, studying and working, or painting murals for people.
The last couple nights there have been a lot of people present in El Bario and in the home of David, Chomingo and Dona Carmen because there was a death in the community. A man who lives just across the street, with whose sons David and Chomingo grew up, running around with their fleeing fighting parents during the war. Don Guillermo is the man's name. He had a "derrame del cerebro", a seizure of some sort, and he spent a night alone in a coma out in the corn field, to be discovered the next day by his family.
So hundreds of people flock to the house at all hours, bringing coffee, cups and sugar, or just their presence to let the family and Don Guillermo know they are important and loved. It is literally a celebration- that is the word used by some- and even the son who arrived from the states yesterday (he is about 24) seemed to be "tranquilo" and well composed.
So yesterday when I arrived home Chomingo stood by the street smoking a cigarrette, huddled into his old leather jacket (record setting lows lately- 65 degrees maybe). We caught up on the day's activities, I told him what was going on at the Center, etc., and then he told me that the abuelita, Dona Carmen, is doing better. I said I was so happy to hear that, and told him how nice it was to see her the past couple nights full of joy at all the visitors eating, hanging out and sleeping over at her home (with a wake comes a sort of community sleep over it seems- friends, family, relatives of whichever person). Chomingo, in his gentle composed manner told me that the "ingeniera" (the engineer they call their grandmother) woke up happy this morning. "Creo que es porque en la noche, como no hay mucho espacio y hizo tanto frio, le pidio lugar en la cama. Le dije permiso," said Chomingo, gesturing with his arm how he had carefully addressed his grandmother as he snuggled in beside her in the bed. There was not much sleeping room for Chomingo in his own house, and it was freezing, so he went to keep his grandmother company, paying her back some perhaps for her years of perseverence and duty. "Y ella amanecio feliz hoy." And she woke up happy today.

Metamorphosis

There is no redemption for suffering. The ability to see light in the world does not make rape ok, does not liberate an abused sole from their pain. However, in a world where pain and suffering are inevitable, the ability to transform suffering into life is a vital skill. As much as we might try to isolate ourselves in safe communities, or safe hobbies, diets, and jobs, suffering will always find us: the loss of loved ones, self-doubt, dissatisfaction, and sheer confusion as to why things must happen as they do. As my friend Olivia reflected last week, in the realm of a reality of suffering, it is the ability to turn such suffering into something that gives you life that is the redemptive factor. (in the picture from the left: my "campo brothers" Chomingo and David taking a break from painting a mural for the local radio)

For example, if an individual were to lose a family member, a very close one, and be thrust into a deep depression, where might she find redemption? She cannot bring anyone back to life, nor pretend it does not hurt. The plain fact is a loved one is now gone. In order to find life in such a tragic incident, one must consider their capacity for life and love, and consider the other people affected by such tragedy. For instance, our friend here could recognize the shock-wave of suffering caused by the death of her family member, and seek to bring comfort and love to the others affected. Notice there is nothing special or magical about such a response. It simply takes into consideration the reality facing a given human community and seeks to respond in a manner that integrates suffering into a life that can nevertheless be marked by liberation. Death does not go away, pain and loss continue to be felt. However the human person faced with such difficulty finds new wings in her ability to step forward in community with others and reach toward greater love and greater solidarity.

For those familiar with Father Mark Ravizza's "3 movements", I am more or less referring to the third movement (after the breaking of a heart) where one decides not to retreat from life but instead to invest oneself further, as a whole part of the human community.

(left: Luis Felipe contemplating during a yoga class, and rocking a sweet Che shirt)

These are just some thoughts that are on my mind. Perhaps more to come later.

Coming Soon

Hey everyone. So it has been a while since I posted and I have many images and stories to relate. However, since returning from my Honduras/NW El Salvador trip on Sunday I have been quite sick. If you ever travel to central america I would advise you to heed the following advice: DO NOT EAT THE CURTIDO. Curtido, by the way, is the chopped cabbage, pepper and carrot mixture one finds at a pupuseria (restuarante or street vendor that sells the stuffed-tortilla food called pupusas). Now I already knew that the large plastic jars they keep curtido in are pretty unsanitary (the same jar is used over and over again, and if a batch of curtido doesn't go eaten for several weeks, well it just stays in the jar); but I just couldn't resist slopping a little curtido on the old pupusa.
Thank God Alicia didn't eat any... Another bright spot related to my sickness is simply that it is a very humbling experience. To live several days where one is so tired and sick that resting and doing the basic duties of living is the sole objective is a pretty enlightening experience. In order to take care of our wider life in humanity on this planet, we need also and from the beginning to take care of ourselves. So goodbye curtido, my strange semi-pickled friend.

Coming soon:
-pictures and stories from the ruins at Copan, Honduras
-reflection on spirituality and the movie No Country for Old Men

For now, I am going to make some pasta and watch "Donde viven los monstruos", or Where the Wild Things Are.

Love,
Alex