Amber en El Salvador

I'm here!

2007-05-30T23:04:00.000-06:00

Hi! Just wanted to let people know that I am in fact alive and in the U.S., and have been for three weeks. I have yet to write a final reflection, nor have I written up the stuff that I did since my last entry... I will, but that may not go online for another couple weeks because I'm going to the east coast to visit people and be a tourist.

To give a brief summary, my transition back to the U.S. hasn't been as hard as I was afraid it might be, but that doesn't mean everything's been just dandy either. I'll write more later. I'm supposed to be packing right now because we leave for Boston in about five and a half hours. Whoops. Sleep would be nice.

Buenas noches...

vaya, pues

2007-04-30T17:55:00.000-06:00

Hello world! Sorry it's been forever, and I don't have the time or energy to write a substantial entry right now. I've been insane with schoolwork, and am still semi-insane. I'll be done with classes on Friday, and I come home on Wednesday. Four months is not a long time. It's been amazing though.

I gotta run, but I'll write more... perhaps after I get back to the U.S.

Any fluent Spanish speakers want to help me with translation for a video we're making?

I heard about the Bay Bridge insanity. Getting across the Bay will be super fun now, huh. It's kind of impressive that the steel melted...

Campo entry 1

2007-04-15T15:50:00.000-06:00

Sorry I haven't written in so long. This past week has been very crazy with school stuff. I survived the week in the campo without incident. One student got dengue fever (though not necessarily from the campo), but for the most part everyone else came out in one piece.

It was a good experience overall. It wasn't incredible, but it was an opportunity to get a much better picture of Salvadoran life. The best part of the time was the first weekend. Monique and I went with Lupita to her house in Carasque, a community in the department of Chalatenango, close to the (very small) town of Nueva Trinidad. I loved her house. As Lupita said, it's very poor, but it was beautiful to me. Her parents live there, and Lupita lives there when she's not in San Salvador at the UCA (living with us). She originally had two brothers and three sisters. One of her sisters lives and works in the city of Chalatenango, a couple hour bus ride away. Another sister lives in Carasque, just up the road from her parents, and her third sister lives in Denver, Colorado. She's undocumented, but I guess she got a temporary work permit or something (I haven't been keeping up with immigration policy) that allows her to travel, so she's coming back to visit in May for the first time in six years. Lupita and her family found out on the Saturday while we were there, and they were so excited. She has two kids who were born in the U.S., and she's bringing them with her. Both of Lupita's brothers have died. One of the brothers, Nicolas, died in the war as a guerrilla in 1990. He was only 16 years old. Her other brother, Ismael, died three years ago, March 26, 2004. How he died is a little fuzzy to me, and I wasn't comfortable asking a lot of questions, but from what I gathered, he was on a bus in San Salvador, apparently on the 44 line, which runs close to our houses and the UCA, when a group of men, some with guns and some with knives, got on the bus. I think they were robbing the passengers, and Ismael was shot and killed. Every night we were there, people from the community came over to the house and prayed the rosary. They did it for nine days, starting on the 26th, the anniversary of his death. I got good at saying the Hail Mary in Spanish really really fast. It was really neat to be a part of that with Lupita and her family and their community.

One evening we went to a community assembly, which was interesting. We had been told beforehand that they have a lot of problems with mining companies trying to get into the area, but I didn't know any details. At this meeting, they were talking some about the issue of mining, saying fortunately their community is very organized against it, but other communities are having more trouble. Lupita explained to us later that mining companies discovered there is gold and other precious metals in the mountains there, and they want to come in and extract it. The problem is it would basically displace entire communities, and the people living there refuse to leave their land. They would not be able to survive without it.

I have so much to write about and so little time, that I think this is going to have to be a multi-entry series. I'll try to get it all written sooner rather than later because I know I'll forget stuff, but we have insane amounts of schoolwork due until the end of the semester. Vamos a ver.

Random note: On Wednesday at praxis I saw a guy with giant MS-13 tattoos in his chest and arms. He was right by Angelica's house. (MS-13 is one of the two main gangs here.) No wonder she's always scared to talk about gangs. Amilcar, who teaches the computer classes, said "Buenos dias" to him as we walked by. I can't even fathom what it would be like to live under the fear that so many people live under here. There's a place called Mariona, one of the praxis sites, where people can't leave their houses after 8 p.m. because it's too dangerous.

Three Month Reflection

2007-04-15T15:49:00.000-06:00

Over the past month I don't feel like I've had any personal breakthroughs or major challenges. I'm becoming more comfortable, with my Spanish in particular. I'm continuing to learn more and more about what life is like here. I successfully ate a couple meals without using a fork (in the campo they use tortillas and fingers as their utensils). Now that we only have one month left (less because I'm writing this late), I'm scared both about returning to the U.S. and about all the schoolwork I have to do in the next three weeks. I want to go home because I miss my family and my friends, but I will be very sad to leave my Salvadoran friends. I'll also be sad to leave my new U.S. friends, but at least I know I'll have opportunities to see them again. I don't have any concrete plans to return to El Salvador after this. I'd like to, but I don't know if it's something that will happen. It's possible that these are people I will never see again. I know that's the way life is - you meet new people, lose touch with them, meet more new people, and so on, but it's especially hard knowing how much the Salvadorans will need to struggle for the rest of their lives.

Something I've been reflecting on lately is how it must feel to be from a country like El Salvador. I think I would either have a major inferiority complex, or I would be very angry. El Salvador is completely dominated by the U.S. In essence, they are constantly being told they are not as good as the U.S. Their country isn't as good, their culture isn't as good, their lives aren't as good. I am continuing to realize more and more what privilege U.S. citizens have. I already knew about how difficult it is for immigrants to cross the border into the U.S. from Mexico, either legally or illegally, but it turns out Central Americans can't even get into Mexico legally without great difficulty. If I can travel to practically any country in the world I want because of where I happened to be born, and a Salvadoran has practically zero chance of getting into countries like the U.S. and Mexico, and many others, I would imagine, isn't that basically the world saying Salvadorans are not as good as U.S. citizens? Poor people are treated as if they are worth less than rich people, and people from poor countries are treated as if they're worth less than people from rich countries. As I type this, Teresita, one of the scholarship students I live with, is laying on the floor next to me studying. It breaks my heart how many privileges I have over her. She has worked so much harder in her life than I probably ever will, yet I am the one who is able to get on a plane and fly to the U.S. in a few weeks, safely and quickly, to a house with more computers than people and a university that costs nearly $40,000 a year. Tom, one of the staff people for the Casa program, recently traveled the route that immigrants take from El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, up to the U.S. He said that nearly every woman he met along the way had gotten a shot that keeps you from getting pregnant for six months. There's an almost 100% chance of sexual abuse if you try to make this journey. Fortunately, I don't think Teresita has any plans to try to go to the U.S., but it is not fair that I can go there and she can't. She would probably contribute much more to society if she had the opportunities I had. It was just a matter of chance that she was born to a poor family in El Salvador and I was born to a middle class family in the United States. I really don't like borders. I don't like nationalism. I don't like patriotism. I wish we could all just respect each other's dignity. I wish we could just love one another.

Probably everyone reading this is from the United States. Imagine being from a country where you are told you're not good enough to get into another country unless you're really really rich. The two obvious responses to me are internalizing this inferiority or becoming very angry. It always pains me to hear Salvadorans who talk about how grateful or honored they are to have us here. I always want to tell them "No, we're not that great." Maybe they're just being nice, but I think it has to do with how glorified the U.S. is here. I don't want U.S. culture to spread to other countries. To me, it consists of individualism, competition, money, greed, consumerism, killing terrorists (and Communists), instant gratification, constant entertainment, glamor, and fame. I know the U.S. has many redeeming qualities, but it seems like they're always overshadowed by the bad ones. Money always controls and decides everything. I don't think Salvadorans glorify the U.S. for its values - it's the money. The remittances from Salvadorans in the U.S. bring in more money to the country than coffee, one of the country's primary crops. The economy is completely dependent on the U.S. Is that why people are so nice to us here? We have power over them. In a few years, we could be the powerful ones in the U.S. We're college educated, mostly middle and upper class, almost entirely white (among 24 students, there's one African American, one Asian American, two Latin Americans, and 20 very white people) U.S. citizens. We are potentially the ones who will be making decisions that affect the lives of Salvadorans in very big ways. That's why we're here: so we'll make the right decisions, based on what we've learned from our experience here. The structure of power in the world is so distorted. It has everything to do with money and nothing to do with merit.

I ran across a Bible verse the other day that I thought would be good to end on: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21). Whether I like it or not, I (and you) have a lot of power over a lot of people. Let's use it for some good.

Universidad Nacional, Robert White, Romero, la Boda del Siglo, y Hijo Desaparecido

2007-03-27T12:23:00.000-06:00

Long entry warning! I have had a pretty interesting last few days. On Thursday I went with my Spanish class to visit the National University. The National and the UCA are the two most prestigious universities here, but the big difference is that the National is public. It costs between $5 and $35 a month to go to the National, depending on how much money you have. I don't remember the exact range for the UCA, but I think the bottom end is around $35, up to maybe a couple hundred a month. The National also has to accept everyone who passes an entrance exam. There are about 35,000 students. Even though the money comes from the government, it's retained its autonomy, and during the war it was very very far left, among faculty and administration as well as students. The major guerrilla groups came out of the National. The government keeps funding it because it's in the Constitution, and the FMLN (leftist party) members in the Congress are mainly graduates of the National and make sure it keeps its funding. We visited to look at the murals on campus. They were fascinating. I don't have time to post pictures today, but there were a whole bunch of hammers and sickles (is that how you spell that?) and a bunch of Marxist and Leninist stuff. Pictures of Che and Farabundo Martí, a famous Salvadoran Communist, etc. If someone proposed murals like these at USF, people would just laugh. There is no way murals this political would make it on a university campus in the U.S. I'm no Marxist-Leninist, but I would love to have murals like those on campus, just to get people thinking and debating. But it would never happen. People don't care enough to put forth the effort. At the National there are very strong student organizations. Classes didn't start till a couple weeks after they were supposed to because students took over the school until the school figured out a way to let everybody in. Technically they have to let everyone in, but they have space and time restraints, so they can't admit everyone. But when they do that, the students organize and make them admit everyone. Again, I would never see that sort of organization at USF, and they don't have that sort of organization at the UCA either. The UCA is a private, Jesuit school, and while it is active in human rights stuff, the student body tends to be wealthier people and the focus is academics, not political activism. It was all really interesting.

On Friday Robert White, former ambassador to El Salvador from the U.S., came and spoke to my history class. It was very interesting and pretty awesome that our teacher is good enough friends with him to get him to talk to our class on his lunch break. He was speaking at a conference at the UCA. He was fired from being ambassador when he refused to lie when the U.S. government wanted him to sign something saying the Salvadoran government was working hard to solve the killings of the four U.S. churchwomen (I think that was December 1980). He was like "Dude, you and I both know it was the Salvadoran military that killed them, and they are not going to investigate themselves." Maybe he didn't say dude, but it was something like that. So he got fired because Reagan was like KILL THE COMMIES! GIVE LOTS OF MONEY TO THE SALVADORAN GOVERNMENT! But the Congress wanted to be told that they weren't financing human rights abuses and the government was making progress, doing things like investigating the deaths of the churchwomen. White wouldn't lie, so he got fired. As he and other people have told us, if the U.S. had not funded the war here, there is no way it would have gone on 12 years. If the U.S. had wanted, the peace accords that were signed in 1992 probably could have been signed in 1981 or '82. Yay Reagan.

Saturday was the 27th anniversary of Monseñor Oscar Romero's death. If you want to learn about Romero, I suggest the movie Romero. It's very good and I've heard it's pretty accurate. Oscar Romero was archbishop of San Salvador in the late '70s. When he was appointed, the Church thought he was a safe choice because he was relatively conservative and liked his books and didn't make waves. However, after the killing of his friend Fr. Rutilio Grando, a Jesuit priest who was advocating rights for the poor, and after spending more time with the poor and seeing their situation, Romero became a voice for the voiceless, a prominent figure who spoke out against all the violence that was going on at that time, especially the violence against the poor coming from the military/government. His homilies were broadcast by radio and he was hugely popular. He was killed March 24, 1980, as he was giving Mass in the chapel at the Hospital Divina Providencia, a hospital for terminal cancer patients, where he chose to live instead of having a fancy bishop house. The U.N. Truth Commission which investigated human rights abuses during the war, said that Roberto D'Aubisson, founder of Salvadoran death squads and the ARENA party (the party in power now, modeled on the U.S. Republican Party), was responsible for the killing of Romero. I think Romero knew it was only a matter of time before he was killed, but he kept on speaking out. He said "Se me matan, resucitaré en el pueblo Salvadoreño." If they kill me, I will rise up in the Salvadoran people. And he has. His memory lives on very strong in this country, and he is very much a source of inspiration. He's not canonized, not yet at least, but he is often called San Romero de las Americas. There was a march, a Mass, and a vigil (more like a concert, actually) in celebration on Saturday. It was pretty cool, and the music was great.

Sunday was the boda del siglo (wedding of the century), between Eugene (Eugenio) Palumbo and Guadalupe Montalvo, a.k.a. Gene and Lupita, our history teacher and one of the women who cooks for us. A group of students formed a decorating committee and we all went early and set up for the reception. It looked beautiful and it was a wonderful wedding. Gene is a journalist and is friends with everybody. Fr. Dean Brackley presided, Horizontes, who did the music for the giant Romero celebration, did the music, and Robert White was there too. It was lovely.

Yesterday, Patrick (my praxis partner) and I started doing interviews for a video we're making as a project for our praxis class. I was nervous about it, but it went really well, especially our first interview. We talked to a woman named Rosa Edit. Her son, who is/was 20 or 21, disappeared about a month ago. She doesn't know what happened. He could be dead or alive. He worked and helped provide for the family. They are very poor and she has four other children. Her husband works when he can find work, but work is very hard to get here, especially for people without an education. Angelica (our praxis site coordinator) said his disappearance could have to do with gangs, but Rosa didn't say anything about that. However, a lot of people are afraid to talk about gangs. Angelica always gets very quiet when she talks about them. Rosa said the family could get some money, I think some kind of social security, if they had a death certificate for him, but they don't even know if he's dead or not. Before she told us about her son (though we already knew because Angelica told us), we asked her what a typical day is for a mother, and she started to cry and talked about the tristeza, the sadness. Please pray for her and her son and all her family.

And now I have a ton of schoolwork to do. And today is my birthday (happy birthday to me), and no, I will not be going out and getting trashed for my 21st birthday. Even if I wanted to I wouldn't have time. :) On Thursday we have a midterm for sociology, which we have to read a 30-ish page article for (an article written by Stuart Hall, who is British and wrote in ENGLISH, yet our professor gave us the Spanish translation), and I have to read a short book and write two short essays for Spanish. By Friday I have to read an entire book (in English) and write a reflection for theology. And this afternoon I'm meeting with Patrick to work on our video.

Next week we're spending in the campo (rural area) near Arcatao in Chalatenango, in the very north of the country. A few of the becari@s are from communities around Arcatao, including Lupita, one of the students I live with. Monique and I are going up on Friday to spend the weekend with her and her family, then we'll join up with the other students on Monday and stay in pairs with families who are part of the Jesuit parish in Arcatao. Some of the houses have running water and electricity, some don't. Some are about a two hour walk away from the town. Some will have had American students stay with them before, and some won't. It's pretty scary, but it will probably be amazing. Let's hope.

Okay, I think this entry is long enough. Adiós.

Prayer for Peace in Iraq

2007-03-18T16:19:00.000-06:00

Hola! First, I was alerted to the fact the the links to my Voces Inocentes response and my liberation theology paper didn't work. They should work now. I also wanted to note that you should not take my liberation theology paper as serious academic work because I didn't cite my sources (gasp). That was because it was a timed essay and because my teacher knew exactly what sources I was working from. So thank Clodovis Boff for a bunch of the information in there.

The second thing is I was reminded today that the four-year anniversary of the war in Iraq is tomorrow. One of my roommates, Amy, said she would like us to do some sort of prayer service for the anniversary. I was looking through a book of prayers I have, but I didn't find anything that seemed like what I was looking for, so I decided to write something myself. Here it is:

God of Life, we pray for peace.
Let us be makers of peace
in ourselves,
in our communities,
in our country,
and in the world.
We pray for all people suffering from war,
especially the people of Iraq,
today, on the four-year anniversary of the war in that country.
We pray for all those who have died: the tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, the soldiers of Iraq, the United States, El Salvador, and all other countries.
We pray for those who have died trying to make peace,
and we pray for those who are still alive, trying to make peace.
We pray for the politicians of the U.S. and Iraq,
that they see the injustice of war,
put an end to the violence,
and prioritize peace and true justice,
leaving behind selfish motivations,
and giving preference to the poor.
We pray that everyone understand that "collateral damage" and "casualties" means real people, killed unnecessarily:
Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, best friends.
We pray for an end to religious conflict and civil war,
that the world may hear your call to nonviolent resolutions,
to beat our swords into plowshares,
and to love our enemies.
We pray that we learn from history,
that we do not repeat war, violence, and injustice,
that we always remember the tragedy of war.
We pray for hope and strength in the struggle for peace.

Amen.

Back from Guatemala!

2007-03-17T16:16:00.000-06:00

Hola! Stephanie and I safely made it back to El Salvador on Thursday. We had a nice time. On Monday we went to a nature reserve where there were supposed to be spider monkeys, but we didn't see any. We also went to see the lake, which was gorgeous. On Tuesday we went on a boat to visit three towns around the lake. We also did some shopping for pretty Guatemalan stuff. On Wednesday we had been planning to do a hike through a cloud forest, but we discovered that the place our Lonely Planet book said to go to arrange a guide no longer exists, and when we talked to someone else, they said it isn't safe where we wanted to go. We decided to just relax on Wednesday, and we sat by the lake and read for a good part of the day. It was fun. I got to watch TV for the first time in two months, and was able to take hot showers for the second time in two months. It was a nice little vacation. At first I was really enjoying being a tourist, but then it disturbed me a bit how I was just one of those Americans who came to Guatemala to see some pretty sites and buy pretty fabrics. My role was to spend money, which I did. I wasn't doing anything but seeing pretty sites and buying pretty things, and I understood that and intended to do that. I guess the fact that I know I was not seeing Guatemalan reality makes it a lot better than it could be. Also, I'd rather be giving my money to Guatemalan textile makers than to some corporation in the U.S. And guess what? I uploaded pictures!

Everybody should read Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. It's highly disturbing and educational and very good.

One of the major continuing news stories here has been a bunch of loans that the ARENA party (the primary conservative party, in power currently) wants and which the FMLN (the primary liberal party) opposes. ARENA is presenting it as the FMLN is against poor people and doesn't want to help education and the health care system, etc. I don't really know the specific reasons the FMLN is opposing the loans because the papers are pretty biased and I haven't seen their side represented (that could also be because I'm too lazy to read very many articles in Spanish). They just voted on $197 million of loans, which the country will not get because of the FMLN's opposition. I was talking about this a bit with Teresita, one of the Salvadoran students who lives in my house, and when I said that loans to poor countries aren't always a good thing, she asked why. I was kind of taken aback. I forgot that just because someone suffers from the poverty that these loans often create doesn't mean that they know about it. Being poor doesn't mean that you're super educated, and is more likely to mean that you're not educated. It reminded me of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (another book you should read, but a whole lot harder than Confessions of an Economic Hitman) and the need to raise consciousness in order to make change. I explained to Teresita that the loans often just put poor countries into more debt which makes them dependent on the loaning countries or institutions, and allows the rich people to exploit the poor countries and requires the poor countries to institute programs that benefit the rich countries (e.g. we'll give you this money if you grow this crop). When I explained it, she completely understood. Even if she hasn't been taught this stuff in school, she will always have a different and deeper understanding of what all that stuff means than I ever will.

Okay, I said forever ago that I was going to post my reflection on Voces Inocentes and my liberation theology paper. Here they are: Liberation Theology, Voces Inocentes.

Two Month Reflection

2007-03-17T15:39:00.000-06:00

I'm writing this March 10, my two month anniversary being here in El Salvador. I just finished listening to an mp3 of a forum at Grace Cathedral (in SF) with David Batstone, talking about his new book, Not For Sale, and the campaign against human trafficking and modern slavery that is going along with it (the forum was about a month ago, so I don't know if the file is still available, but I would recommend listening to it if you can). Dave was my professor last year and is amazing. He mentioned in the forum how in the 1980's he formed an organization of people with U.S. passports to come down to El Salvador to be with people who were at risk of being targeted by the death squads. They wouldn't dare kill a U.S. citizen, so it was a way to protect the Salvadorans. He used his gifts, one of them being a U.S. passport, to save people's lives.

Over the last month, since I wrote my one month reflection, I've become more comfortable with all those questions I was asking. I haven't figured out the answers, but I think I've gotten closer. The big thing I was struggling with was how do I fit my privilege into a commitment to justice and service to the poor. I said last month "I am the oppressor," which a number of people took exception to. I said it because I am an active part of an economic system that is based on exploitation of the poor and the world's natural resources, and I am on the top end of that, receiving the benefits. By participating in that system, I am helping to keep people down. That's why I called myself an oppressor. It doesn't mean I'm trying to or wanting to, but that's the way it is, and it's not something I can easily escape from. What I can do is acknowledge where I fall in the system and see what I can do to stop perpetuating oppression and change the system that creates and maintains poverty. I have to acknowledge my context and work with it.

So what are my gifts and what is my calling? While I do have a U.S. passport, I don't have Dave Batstone's daring to go to a war-torn country and accompany people likely to be assassinated. One great gift I have is my experience here. Few people who have the privilege (and potential power) that I have get the experience of spending time with people in very real poverty. One of the biggest problems with the world, I believe, is that we dehumanize people who are distant from us - economically, geographically, socially, or whatever. If we recognize that an undocumented immigrant is not just one of those "illegals" but my friend Lupita's sister or my friend Amilcar's parents, it gives us a different perspective. If we recognize that the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people devastated by two major earthquakes here in 2001 are the people I'm spending my days with every Monday and Wednesday, it gives a face to the number. I've been given the gift of humanizing people who are poor. The scholarship students who are my friends and the wonderful children at my praxis site are very real people.

At a retreat we had a couple weekends ago, I experienced something I don't really know how to describe, at least not without writing a lot more than I want to, but basically I realized how strongly I hear myself being called to serve the poor, to work with the poor, to live the Beatitudes, but I'm scared of what that means concretely in my life. I think that even though I keep saying I don't know what I want to do with my life, the answer is right in front of me, it's just that I don't want to see it because it won't be easy, and I love easy things. At this retreat I was faced with figuring out what sort of poverty I am called to - kind of that same question I asked last month, about whether it's socially and morally responsible to live a middle class life. Spiritual direction with one of the leaders helped me some. He talked about working within your own context and what's really important is to not value material things more than people. That sounds simple, but in practice we very often do put the material above the person. All this is a real challenge, but I take this seriously, and I don't want it to be one of those "Oh, wouldn't that be nice" things, and just go on living my life.

I also recognized something I've noticed a number of times through this experience, that I feel a lot of hopelessness. I look at all the world's problems and how deeply rooted and interconnected they are, and I feel like it just won't change, at least not before it gets a whole lot worse. And if/when it does change, whatever replaces it will still have problems because people are not perfect. People will always be greedy and uncaring. My problem is, can I truly commit myself to working for justice if I think total justice can never be achieved? Will my whole heart be in something that I believe isn't going to happen? Yes, maybe we can get food into a community, but we have to change the entire global economic structure to eliminate the root problems. How do I balance being realistic and being hopeful? With some reflection and discussion, I've been able to restore some hope and some faith in humanity that at least some change is possible, and even though there will always be problems, they don't have to be nearly as bad as they are now. Vamos a ver.

This doesn't really go along with the rest of what I'm writing, but I hate the fact that I'm so afraid here. I don't like walking down the street, and I'm uncomfortable especially around men I don't know because of the blatent machismo. I feel like I don't belong here and I stick out like crazy. The machismo has made me so much more aware that sexism still exists in very real ways. I guess I've grown up pretty sheltered from sexism, and even though I knew it existed, of course, I've never seen it like this before. It's shocking and inexcusable and I feel like I can't do anything to change it. I can't really. An American college student is not going to change a deeply ingrained part of a foreign culture. Still, this experience has made me a lot more aware of women's issues, which will stay with me when I return to the U.S.

This last month has been a really good one, overall. I have mixed feelings about this experience being halfway over. On the one hand I have so much more to learn and my Spanish is far from where I'd like it to be, but on the other hand I miss home, and I think of how much I've learned over the past two months and I know there's a lot more to come.

Arrived in Guatemala

2007-03-12T16:09:00.000-06:00

Stephanie and I arrived successfully in Panajachel, Guatemala yesterday afternoon. We had a lovely very comfortable (because it was primera clase) bus ride from San Salvador to Guatemala City, then an incredibly overpriced taxi ride to a shady looking bus place with the buses to Panajachel. As soon as the bus pulled away, the guy told us we had to lie down for a couple minutes as he drove, but we couldn't really figure out why. Perhaps safety? There were three other white people leaving with us, and I'd imagine a bus with five gringos might be a nice target for robbery. But nothing happened, and we got to sit up a little while later. The bus got very crowded, but we made it fine. We successfully found a hotel to stay at, and we are spending far too much money on everything. Yay. And there's tofu here! Yum.

Belize

2007-03-08T15:37:00.000-06:00

Hola tod@s.

Sorry for the lack of an online presence recently - I was in Belize, and then the wireless has been not working at the UCA and I'm really lazy when it comes to going to the internet cafe.

I survived the Belizian rainforest! I didn't see any snakes, which was kind of a disappointment, but overall the trip was a lot of fun. We had a long journey starting at 6:00 a.m. on Thursday. We drove up through El Salvador, through part of Guatemala to the eastern coast, and took a boat from Puento Barrios in Guatemala to Punto Gorda in Belize. I have now been splashed with water from the Caribbean! The boat ride actually reminded me of a Disneyland ride because of the bumpiness and splashiness. It was fun though. When we got to immigration, or whatever it's called, it consisted of us walking up to a desk where they looked at our passport and hand-wrote our names, countries, and passport numbers in a binder. We left to go back to El Salvador on Sunday, early in the morning, and the office isn't open then, so Kevin, our leader, collected our passports and took them to be stamped on Saturday (with the stamp post-dated to say March 4). We just walked through an open gate to leave on Sunday. Craziness. Anyway, we took a bus from Punto Gorda to Blue Creek, where we stayed. It is in the rainforest, and the place we stayed is right on a lake, where we could swim. It was incredibly hot and humid there. I can stand heat okay, but the humidity was terrible. It felt very good to get in the river, though there were a ton of fish and it was pretty creepy to feel them brushing against you. The fish nibbled on some people, but they left me alone.

Friday morning some people did the jungle climb, which I could tell by the word "climb" was not for me, so I just relaxed. In the afternoon, a couple friends of Kevin who have spent a lot of time in Belize came and talked to us for a little while, then we went to a cave that the river runs out of, and we swam in the cave. That was very cool. No one got attacked by a cave monster. The cave also made me think of Disneyland. Friday night we did the night hike. We didn't see any particularly interesting animals, but we saw a couple toads and scorpions and a tarantula. We didn't see any snakes or 40-pound rodents, which apparently do exist and live there. Oh well. Ooooh, but there was a really cool bug that we saw (not on the night hike) that has two lights that look like eyes (though they're not). It has two glowing spots. SO cool!

Saturday morning we went to the house of one of our guides, William, and he and his wife showed us how to make tortillas (they do it differently than in El Salvador), chocolate, and woven fans made from palm fronds. That was fun. In the afternoon some people went back to the cave we went to the day before, this time with a guide so they could go far into the darkness to where there's a waterfall. I decided to just stay and chill (a.k.a. take a nap).

Sunday we traveled back to El Salvador, and I will now be able to stay here legally for the rest of the trip. Hooray. And I have now been to a total of eight countries (including the U.S.). I'm planning to go to Guatemala for spring break (next week!), going to Lago de Atitlán. We're leaving Saturday and coming back on Thursday. I'm going with one other student, Stephanie. It should be fun.

In other exciting travel news, one of my roommates, Monique, and I are planning to spend the weekend before our campo week with one of the Salvadoran students and her family. We're spending the first week of April in the campo (rural area) in or near Arcatao in the department of Chalatenango. Lupita, one of the students who lives in my casa, lives in one of the communities around Arcatao, so we're going to go up early and stay with her family a couple days, then meet up with the rest of the group in Arcatao. I'm really excited. Lupita is amazing.

I was going to post my Voces Inocentes response and a paper I wrote for Liberation Theology, but once again I'm out of time, and USFfiles isn't working for me to upload them (they're not that special to get into the blog entry), so I'll post them another time.

By the way, sorry I haven't posted photos yet. I really want to, but I never seem to have time to upload. Soon!

volcanos, falling through roofs, etc.

2007-02-27T15:34:00.000-06:00

Our group survived the Ignatian Silent Retreat, though not without injuries. Now who could get hurt on a silent retreat based on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius? You guessed it: Ryan E. He's fine now, but he and a couple others decided to go on the roof over a walkway at the retreat center, and he proceeded to fall through the roof, probably about ten feet, onto concrete floor. He didn't break any bones (which impressed the doctors), but he got a pretty bad cut on his head and needed ten stitches. He's fine though, and he recognizes that he got lucky and I think he's going to cut down on the risk-taking for the rest of the semester. Oh, Ryan.

So, a little review of what I've been up to... It looks like the last "what I've been doing" entry was about praxis weekend. The weekend after that I went with a couple other students and a staff person (Elizabeth Looney, for the USF people who know her) to a place called Puerta del Diablo. It's a few short hikes to see really pretty views. Over all it was a great time, except for being reminded how out of shape I am, and for a group of guys that was kind of harassing us ("Hey baby I love you!"). After a little but Elizabeth asked them if they would please stop bothering us and go away, so then they were like "Sorry, baby, we didn't mean to bother you" and went a ways from us, but still yelled some stuff. Ugh. Machismo here is a huge problem, and other girls have experienced it a lot more than me. It ranges from whistles and calls walking down the street to being groped at a soccer game to a man and woman talking to one of our highly educated, very intelligent professors, and him only looking at the man when he talks. It's a difficult issue to deal with because it's deeply ingrained in the culture, and going up to someone and saying "Don't do that, you're objectifying me and that's not acceptable" isn't going to make much of an impact. A lot of the girls here have been very deeply bothered by it, and it's made me a lot more aware and sensitive to gender issues. It's hard, because gender and male dominance is even an essential part of the language - if there's a group of six kids, four of them girls and two boys, and you want to say "Are you ready?" the proper way is "Están listos?" That is, the masculine ending. The only way to get around it is saying "Listos y listas?" It's long and clunky, but a lot of people try to be more inclusive in their language. If you're writing you can use the @ symbol, which I think is awesome. List@s?

Every Thursday evening we have community night, which is usually a meeting for the individual houses. It's a time to have household discussions, if necessary, or just do community-building sorts of things. On the 15th we watched Voces Inocentes. It was the second time I'd seen it, but it was at least as powerful as the first time, now that I've spent time here. It's about a boy named Chava and his experience in the civil war here, based on a true story. He is eleven years old, and the army "recruits" boys when they turn twelve. It's about his struggle and his family's struggle and his friends' struggles. It's incredible. I wrote a response after watching it to post here, but I ended up not posting it because I didn't have time when I was online, then I thought maybe it was too emotional, but reading it over, I do want to post it. I want to put it on a separate page, and I'm short on time now, but I'll post it soon.

Moving on to that Saturday, I climbed a volcano! We went as a group, along with the Salvadoran students who live with us, to Izalco. I hope to never ever climb a volcano again. It was really really hard. Thank goodness there were a few other slow people and people kind enough to stay with us really slow people. It's wasn't just a hike, it was actually climbing, using our arms to keep us from sliding down. There were a lot of really small rocks and dirt/volcano dust, and when you would take a step, your foot slid back to where it started out. Ugh. It was terrible. And then when I finally got to the top I barely had any time there because most of the people had been up there a long time and were ready to leave. It's true that the view was gorgeous and now I can say that I climbed a volcano in El Salvador, but I won't do it again. Then to get down, we basically skied down the rocks. It was kind of fun, but only because one of the guides held my hand for the most slippery part of it. Our bus dropped us off a ways up a mountain right next to the volcano, so we had to go down a whole bunch of stairs to get to the base of Izalco. After we slid down Izalco, we had to climb up all those stairs again. That was the hardest part of all. But I survived. It reminded me of how after every single hike I've done I promise myself I'll never go on a hike again.

This last weekend, as I mentioned, we had a silent retreat. It was great, though it wasn't quite as silent as the other silent retreat I've been on. I think it's a lot harder to keep silent when everyone is friends with each other. It was really good though, and helped me clarify a little what my role is and what I am being called to do, kind of like I was rambling about in my one month reflection. Saturday evening was really powerful. We did Adoration, with the consecrated host sitting on the altar, and along with that a slide show of images from our praxis sites and of other Salvadorans who are involved with this program. The idea was to see God's presence both in the consecrated host and in the faces of the poor. It was awesome. In the beginning, the leaders read something called the Lord's Prayer for Justice. It's pretty cool, so I thought I'd share it.

Padre nuestro ... who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who, by victim of circumstances, bear the heat of the day.

que estás en el cielo ... where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last arid the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being will be well.

Santificado sea tu nombre ... may we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting your ways and not our ways, your standards and not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbor.

Venga tu reino ... help us to create a world where, beyond our own needs and hurts, we will do justice, love tenderly, and walk humbly with you and each other.

Hágase tu voluntad ... open our freedom to let you in so that the complete mutuality that characterizes your life might flow through our veins and thus the life that we help generate may radiate your equal love for all and your special love for the poor.

en la tierra como en el cielo ... may the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and the structure of your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all of our structures on earth.

Da ... life and love to us and help us to see always everything as gift. Help us to know that nothing comes to us by right arid that we must give because we have been given to. Help us realize that we must give to the poor, not because they need it, but 'because our own health depends upon our giving to them.

nos ... the truly plural us. Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different from the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.

hoy ... not tomorrow. Do not let us push things off into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justified lives in the face of injustice because we can make good excuses for our inactivity.

nuestro pan de cada día ... so that each person in the world may have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care, and sufficient access to education so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus.

Perdona nuestras ofensas ... forgive us our blindness toward our neighbor, our own self pre-occupation, our racism, our sexism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it.

como también nosotros perdonamos a los que nos ofenden ... help us to forgive those who victimize us. Help us to mellow out in spirit, to not grow bitter with age, to forgive the imperfect parents and systems that wounded, cursed and ignored us.

No nos dejes caer en tentación ... do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothing to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor. Spare us this test for none of us can stand before your Gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems.

líbranos del mal ... that is, from the blindness that lets us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more. Amen.

On Thursday we're leaving for Belize. We have to leave to get our passports re-stamped. It's just going to be a fun weekend. There's going to be an optional night hike (yeah, I know, hike) through the jungle and we can see SNAKES! I think I might do that, even though it's a hike. It's going to be mostly outdoorsy stuff, which is not my style, but we're not required to do anything, so it should be fun. Don't expect to hear anything from me Thursday-Sunday because I will be wandering caves and battling snakes.

caminando, caminando

2007-02-23T17:17:00.000-06:00

Hola. I don't have much time online, but I realized it's been a little while since I've written, so I thought I'd make a brief entry, and I'll write a longer one soon. I'm still doing well and having a really good experience here. I feel like my praxis is getting easier, though still challenging. Classes are interesting. I just got out of history, where a woman named Olga Serrano came to talk to us. She and her family joined the FMLN when she was 13 years old, and she told her story. It was really interesting. The last two people who spoke to us have been from the right and center-right, and they emphasized communism and Russia so much, but she said they never thought of themselves as communists, and they weren't trying to create a communist government. People can see the same thing very differently. Perhaps the most exciting thing about her talk was that she was amazingly easy to understand. Everyone thought that, so I didn't magically get a lot better at Spanish. It was good though.

In other news, congratulations to Gene Palumbo (our history teacher) and Lupita (one of the women who cook for us) who are getting married!

Don't expect to hear anything from me in the next couple days because we have an Ignatian silent retreat this weekend. I'm soooo excited. And, those who know Ryan E. will get a kick out of the fact that he, the agnostic "If I did believe in God I wouldn't like him" loud loves-to-hear-his-own-voice Ryan, is doing this retreat. That'll be interesting.

One Month Reflection

2007-02-13T15:31:00.000-06:00

I've now been in El Salvador for one month. I'm happy and confused and my Spanish abilities seem to come and go. I have faced and am facing some challenges, but for the most part they're positive or easy to look at as learning opportunities. Coming into this experience I didn't have very specific expectations, though I had the broad expectation of "It's going to be amazing." After a month I'm realizing that for me this experience will be a process of personal examination. How do I deal with my privilege? How can I understand poverty that I will probably never experience? What sort of responsibilities do I have as a result of my privilege? How can I live in a consumerist, capitalist, individualistic society and maintain the values of putting people before money? Should I give as much as I can? Is it morally irresponsible to live a middle class life? What does the preferential option for the poor mean for me? How can I keep from dehumanizing people who are distanced from me, geographically, socially, or economically? What should I do with my life?

In theology class a couple weeks ago, I think we were talking about a reading by Jon Sobrino where he talks about our complicity in putting up crosses and crucifying the poor. He said our job is to take people down off those crosses. It was this or something Sister Peggy (our teacher) said that filled me with this desire and passion and feeling of God's presence to do something, to take people off their crosses, or even better, to keep the crosses from going up in the first place. Then I thought about it and realized I had no idea what I could do or how I could do it. As we've been learning in sociology, as I've thought about in Smart Activism workshops, as I've read in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and as I have discovered personally, I don't have a clue what's going on, let alone how to fix it. A movement for change has to come from the people who are being oppressed. Where do I come into that then? I'm not oppressed. I am the oppressor, though I try not to be. It's pretty hard to avoid when oppression is built into the social and economic structure you live in. I can never know the poverty and limitations that the woman in my praxis site who can't afford the uniforms and school supplies to send her children to high school feels. I will never know the hunger of the kids who have to walk an hour to get to school so they have to skip lunch because they can't go home. The structures that are keeping them down are keeping me up. That's terrible.

I guess I'm just here to learn what I can, to gain as deep an understanding I can of la realidad, and to understand both my abilities and limitations. Hopefully I'll get a hint of what I can do to keep the poor off the crosses. They told us in orientation that most people leave with far more questions than answers, and to me that's clearly true.

praxis weekend

2007-02-06T15:23:00.000-06:00

Hola tod@s. My arms are peeling off (rather, my skin, due to the sunburn from the beach) and I'm recovering from a cold, but otherwise I'm super. Mainly because I just finished an essay and that always feels nice. I'm writing this late Monday night/early Tuesday morning because I still feel awake and I'm sure I'll be short on time tomorrow because I always am.

Praxis weekend went well. I was talking to another student, Colin, on the bus on the way there, and he said what you want is to be outside your comfort zone but not in your panic zone. Throughout the weekend I kept thinking how that was a perfect description for the experience. I was definitely out of my comfort zone much of the time, but I never got to the point where I felt I couldn't handle it. Part of the discomfort was not knowing what was going on most of the time and not being able to communicate well, and part of the discomfort was being faced with the reality of how these people have to live, and the discomfort of feeling my own privilege and having to deal with that. The only way to bathe is standing outside and using the pila. It's like a big thing that holds water in the middle and has shallower spaces on either side where you can do your clothes-washing, etc. We use our pila to wash our clothes, but at Angelica's house in Tepecoyo, that's where all the water comes from. (Clothes, dishes, bathing, etc.) They have running water, but I'm pretty sure it's a single faucet which they use to fill the pila. The toilet is basically just an outhouse. Angelica has a stove and oven, but I think that's pretty unusual. At other houses we visited, people were doing their cooking on wood fires built on an outside structure. When we made pupusas at Angelica's (which was AWESOME), we did it over a fire. Making tortillas and pupusas was probably my favorite part of the weekend. That and little Angelica, grown-up Angelica's niece, who truly is an angel. She is full of love and her presence made the experience ten times better than it would have been otherwise. Also little Brayan (a nephew), who is one and a half and always running around, making funny noises, and falling over. He's a constant source of amusement. The family unit is very large here. At Angelica's house, there is very little distinction between immediate families, and all the aunts and uncles and cousins basically live together.

Praxis has definitely been a challenge for me, especially my lack of control over the situation and my usually not knowing what's going on, and most of all my inability to understand people. The accents can be really really strong and it's a major challenge. I know some of these challenges will get easier with time, but it can be frustrating.

Classes are going pretty well but my habit of procrastination hasn't changed, and even though I thought I would have lots of free time this semester, I definitely don't, so I'm behind on my reading, as usual. Ah well, that's life as a college student.

chivo

2007-02-01T15:58:00.000-06:00

It's been practically forever since I've written here! Unfortunately I only have a few minutes before class, so I can't write one of my super-long entries. I'll write more in depth another time, but for now I'll just briefly summarize.I think I last wrote the Sunday before last. That Sunday night I got sick, as did a bunch of other students, and I could barely get out of bed Monday, so I missed my first praxis day. Tuesday I was basically better though still exhausted, but by Wednesday I was fine, and I went to my first day at my praxis site. We taught English in the morning, which was a bit of a challenge because we didn't know ahead of time, but it went fine. In the afternoon we helped out with a computer class (basically I just looked over kids' shoulders to make sure they were doing stuff right). It was a good day. Saturday we went to the beach, which was awesome except I got a really bad sunburn and my shoulders are just starting to recover. It was beautiful and the water was so warm. Sunday a few of us went to Mass at La Chacra, which is one of the praxis sites that a couple students are at. They spend their afternoons with the priest there, Padre Luis. La Chacra is urban and very poor. I loved the Mass there. Padre Luis is really nice and the parish seemed to have a great sense of community. I think I'll try to go there regularly if other people are. Monday was praxis again, and it was more frustrating because we did home visits to people in the community, and I had a really hard time understanding anything people were saying. I just sat there, clueless. It's frustrating because it's a lot harder to learn about the community and people's lives if I can't figure out what they're talking about. I need to have more patience. Yesterday's praxis was a little better because Wednesdays are our class days (English in the morning, computers in the afternoon). The kids learned how to use the application Paint, which was a lot of fun. This weekend is a praxis weekend, so we leave Friday afternoon and come back Sunday afternoon. I'm going to learn how to make pupusas! Yay.

stuff and things

2007-01-21T17:25:00.000-06:00

¡Hola! I wrote a blog entry on my laptop, but I think maybe my thumb drive wasn't all the way ejected when I pulled it out, so it didn't show up when I opened it in the internet cafe. Està bien. It wasn't spectacular. Classes were good last week. I was able to understand the Spanish in my sociology class because the teacher spoke really slowly. Theology and history seem cool too.

Saturday we went to the last two praxis sites, which were fun. Lots of adorable children.

Today I went to a service at a Christian Base Community we visited last week in San Ramon. It was neat, but it would have been a lot better if I could understand what they were talking about.

Tomorrow is our first praxis day. It's exciting, but I'm nervous. I think it'll be good though.

In general, I'm happy and doing well. Eek, I think maybe the internet cafe is closing down. Hasta Luego...

más y más

2007-01-18T15:27:00.000-06:00

Hola tod@s.

Long entry today.

On Monday we visited a couple more praxis sites. In San Ramon, first we visited a school, then a Christian Base Community, and a soy project. This Christian Base Community was originally affiliated with the local parish. However, when the supportive Maryknoll priests left and a new conservative Salvadoran Diocesan priest was installed in the parish, he wanted to keep the laity, especially the women, from being so involved as they had been. He wanted to be treated like Jesus, they told us. The community had a theology based on justice and peace, and de did not support them, so they split off from the parish, and they now hold their own church services, without a priest. They still call themselves Catholic, but they don't attend the masses at their parish. They do have priest friends who consecrate the Eucharist for them, but because they feel the consecrated Eucharist leaves some people out (those who haven't received first communion, those who aren't baptised, etc.), they also like to have something else, like fruit or a pupusa, that they split and share, that all can take part in, because to them the point Jesus was making at the last supper was not just about the bread and wine being his body and blood, it was also about sharing food in his memory. I can't explain it very well - they did it a lot better. It's hard for me to capture their theology, especially since I'm writing this a while after being there, but it was very interesting. We're going to one of their services on Sunday (it's optional, but I'm going to go). I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like.

We also went to Mariona, the site of the women's artisan cooperative. I loved it there. They told us about the organization, and they told us about Silvia Arriola, after whom the cooperative is named (as is Casa Silvia, one of the houses the Casa students live in). Basically all I know about her is from what they told us on Monday, but she was a nun and she was devoted to working with the poor. She made the decision to go and minister to the people in the mountains, many of whom were the guerrillas - the leftist forces in the civil war. She was also a nurse, so she was a religious presence and was able to take care of people medically. She wasn't doing it with political motivations, but with a desire to serve people who needed help. She was killed January 17, 1981, in an offensive by the military. She was in a hospital, and they came to the hospital, killed everyone inside, poured gasoline on them, and lit them on fire. The woman who told us this story lived in a small community with Silvia, and Silvia was her mentor. She started crying as she told the story, and she said it's always difficult to share the memories. She and the others helping her talk about Silvia said when they remember these things it's like they're reliving them. They also said that when Silvia and so many others were killed, they weren't able to cry. Part of it was that there was almost no time, but the real reason was that if they were seen crying, they would become targets themselves because the military would say they were siding with the guerrillas. She said that's why she cries now, because she can now, and she couldn't then.

Tuesday we didn't go to any praxis sites, but it was an intense day. We started by watching Roses in December, a movie about the four American churchwomen (three nuns and a lay woman) who were murdered in 1980. I definitely cried when, at the end, they played the song Be Not Afraid, which we had sung in our prayer group the night before. That song is so beautiful.

Be not afraid
I go before you always
Come, follow me
And I will give you rest

We went to the place where the bodies of the women were found, and a woman who knew Jean Donovan and Dorothy Kazel spoke to us for a while.

In the afternoon we went to the Hospital Divina Providencia. It's a hospital for terminal cancer patients. Romero chose to live there and spend time with the Carmelite sisters there while he was Archbishop, and he was killed while he was saying Mass in the chapel there. They have converted the place he lived into a little museum, so while we were waiting for some people ahead of us to leave, one of the sisters (I think her name was Bernadeta) spoke to us. She spoke English (with a heavy accent), and she told us that she wasn't there when Romero was there, but it was thanks to him that she spoke English. She said she lived in the U.S. for a while, but she was moved to Guatemala for 10 years, where she spoke only Spanish, and then when she was moved back to El Salvador and started working at the hospital, she knew a lot of English vocabulary, but couldn't speak English, so she prayed to Romero to be able to speak English and it worked. She talked a lot more about Romero, but I'm not going to go into it here. (By the way, if you haven't seen the movie Romero, you definitely should.) One more thing to note though, is she told us that when they were embalming Romero after he was killed, they put his internal organs in a box and gave it to the sisters. They buried it, but three years later they dug it up again (I wasn't really clear why, but I think it was to make sure they knew where it was). His organs were in the same condition as when they buried them.

Tuesday evening Fr. Dean Brackley, an American Jesuit who came down to work at the UCA after the six Jesuits were killed in '89, came to speak with us. He is one of the founders of the Casa program. He gave some good advice, and one thing he said struck me in particular. He said that when we feel helplessness, to understand that that is probably the closest we'll get to solidarity with the poor, and understanding their feelings of helplessness.

On to Wednesday. We visited three praxis sites: La Chacra, Amatepec, and Colón. In La Chacra we visited a school called Fe y Alegria, and a nun spoke to us. She told us (in English - she's from Ireland) stories about the students and the community. Up to this point we've heard that the situation here is bad, but this was the first time we heard real details. It was intense. There was one story and quote in particular that I wrote down while she was talking to us. She said there's a big problem with alcoholism and drug use, and often the children have to go out to find their parents lying drunk in the street. One student always had to do this for his father, but he didn't get mad about it. He said, "I try to see in him the broken Jesus." How beautiful.

The other places we visited were good, but I'm short on time and they weren't that special, so I'll skim over them. In addition to Fe y Alegria, we went to the parish in La Chacra, which has a lot of programs for the community. In Amatepec we visited an Episcopalian parish that a couple students will be working with. It's in a neighborhood primarily populated by refugees from the war - people who were displaced from the countryside because of the fighting. Colón was a more rural area. The students will be spending a lot of time with members of the community, especially playing with a whole lot of kids. Everyone seemed really nice, and I think it will be a fun site.

Bueno. Classes started today (I think I told some people they started on Monday because I was confused before). I had Spanish this morning. We took a test to evaluate our level of Spanish. It went all right. The choices are Advanced Spanish or Conversational, which is super-advanced Spanish. I only tried for Advanced because I know I still need to work on grammar stuff. This afternoon I have my sociology class (in Spanish - eek!). I need to go now so I can get to class. Adiós.

La Javia, etc.

2007-01-14T12:09:00.000-06:00

Hola a todos y todas. I'm writing this on my computer rather than at the internet cafe so I'll have more time. It's weird to be on this computer and not have internet access. I looked at the clock and it said 7:42 AM, and I got confused, and then I realized I'm going to have to manually change the time. Ooh, I just opened up my system preferences and clicked on the map where I thought El Salvador was, and sure enough "Closest City: San Salvador, El Salvador" popped up. Yay for me and my geography skills.

Yesterday was a lot of fun. We visited two praxis sites: Tepecoyo (specifically La Javia - I'm not sure if it's part of Tepecoyo or just nearby, but it's a small rural community, and everyone just says Tepecoyo) and Jayaque. On our way to Tepecoyo I was a little nervous because it's my praxis site, and I'll be spending a lot of time there. Trena (one of the program coordinators) had told us ahead of time that our visit to Tepecoyo would be a little different because it was the inauguration of the new sala de computación (computer lab), so a lot of the community would be there. When we arrived I was struck by the natural beauty and all the trees. I knew this was in a relatively rural area, and my perception of rural is huge open fields, pero aquí es muy diferente. There were a fair number of people there, and we introduced ourselves and a group played some music, which was really good. In La Javia there used to be a comedor (soup kitchen) that fed 60 children and 10 adults, but for a number of reasons it got closed down, so the community worked with an organization called ConnectEd (run by two Casa alumni) and the Casa program to bring computers into the community. This is a very poor community, and as they told us, they don't have social mobility. One interesting thing is that very few people from the community go to the United States (one of our leaders told us that 700 Salvadorans leave El Salvador every day), which means that they don't get money sent back to them. Remesas are a huge part of the economy in El Salvador, so in La Javia their resources are especially limited. It's really exciting to have computers there. Patrick and I will help teach people, mostly kids I think, how to use the computers. We'll also be teaching English and doing home visits. I liked it there but when I tried to talk to people I had a really hard time, in part because I couldn´t understand them, and in part because I didn´t have much to say. Hopefully communication will get easier though.

Then we went to Jayaque, which is nearby. We visited the Martín-Baró Cooperative (for those of you who know Ryan E., that's his praxis site). I went there last time I was in El Salvador, and the people are so nice. They talked about what they do (there's a dental clinic, a natural medicine program, a sewing academy, and a bakery) and the development of the program. They also give scholarships, and the scholarship students help with the projects in the Cooperative.

For the next part my mom has to close her eyes: We got into the backs of two pick-up trucks (standing up, holding onto railing) and drove up into the mountains. We stopped at a finca (coffee farm) briefly and got to see a bunch of unroasted beans. We drove up really high and the view was gorgeous. For a stretch we could actually see the ocean in the distance. Except for the bugs and dirt in my face it was really really fun.

You can open your eyes now.

We drove back to the Cooperative and had a little birthday party for Amy, one of my roommates, whose birthday is today. Then we drove back to the Casa and had dinner and a reflection. There's a group of us who have started doing a prayer thing every night, so we did that after reflection. A student named Adam brought a missal with the daily readings in Spanish, so the way we've done it the last couple nights is we open with a song, we read the readings in Spanish and/or English, we read something short (last night it was by Mother Teresa, the night before it was by Oscar Romero) and have a little reflection, then we do petitions and have some sort of closing prayer. I love it, though I'm not sure how long it'll last once classes start. We'll probably shorten it, but I really like it the way it is. It's like mini-church.

Today is a free day. A bunch of us went to Mass in the morning, which was nice. I went early with another girl, and the priest talked to us for a little while. He's from Italy and speaks English. He spent 10 years in the U.S. He seems nice. During Mass I was able to follow along pretty well.

A lot of people are going to the beach today, but I decided to stay here, relax, go to the internet cafe and the store, and maybe do my laundry. We're going to the beach as a group in a couple weeks, so I'll have more opportunities.

Hasta luego...

¡Estoy aquí!

2007-01-12T13:50:00.000-06:00

Hola a todos. Aquí Blogger.com es en español. Y el... uh... keyboard es diferente. Still working on the Spanish here. I arrived safely and happily. I´m living in Casa Ita, which is the smallest Casa (there are three). I live with four other American students, Amy, Monique, Graham, and Zac, and two Salvadoran scholarship students from la UCA, Teresa and Lupita, as well as our Community Coordinator Linda. She did the Casa program a couple years ago, and she´s working with it now. I share a huge room with Amy and Monique. We have our own bathroom and a little balcony.

I´m very happy. The food is awesome. So far we´ve been doing orientation stuff. Our classes don´t start until the 22nd. Yesterday we visited the Romero Center at the UCA, which has a museum wth stuff about Romero, Rutilio Grande, the six Jesuits, and the American churchwomen. It´s in the building where the Jesuits lived. We also visited the rose garden, where the Jesuits were killed. I had been to both places before, but it was still pretty powerful.

The Spanish is a challenge, but I´m doing better than I was afraid of. There´s a guard that stands outside near our Casa, and last night a group of us spend about a half hour talking to him. His name is Esteban. He was very nice and very hard to understand, but we made it work. I had a nice conversation with a woman named Griselda who helps coordinate something called the Romero Program, which helps the scholarship students. Scholarships pay for tuition, but for most poor students that´s not very helpful because they still can´t afford books and transportation and other expenses, so the Romero Program helps with that. The becari@s (scholarship students) in our Casas are part of the Romero Program. Through orientation we´re doing a lot of stuff in English, but then we´ll have to speak a lot more Spanish.

We officially signed up for our classes today. I´m changing one of the classes I planned to take because there´s another one that sounds really really good. I´m taking the sociology class instead of the literature class. I hadn´t realized what the sociology class was like - turns out it´s basically a media studies class. I think it´s called Sociology of Public Communication. Apparently the teacher is amazing, though it is a hard class. I´m excited though. It means I´ll have to take a literature class at USF to finish my core, and I might have to take something else to finish my Latin American Studies minor, but I can manage that fine.

The weather has been gorgeous. It´s hot, but when you´re walking around or sitting in the shade it´s fine. It´s hot, but it´s not too uncomfortable. And it´s good that it´s hot because we don´t have hot water in my Casa, so a cold shower feels kind of nice once you get past the initial shock.

There´s an internet café really close to the Casa, so I´ll probably be able to access is pretty frequently. Yay.

Over the next week we´re visiting all the praxis sites, and we´re going to mine tomorrow. Exciting.

Praxis site

2007-01-06T18:18:00.000-06:00

Hola. We were e-mailed our praxis site placements a couple days ago. I got my first choice. Here's the description we were given before we selected our top choices:

La Javia (Located in Tepecoyo)

Tepecoyo is a rural community located about 1 hour from San Salvador in the department of La Libertad. The area of Tepecoyo historically has been a coffee growing area. Other crops that are grown are corn, maicillo (a small corn-substitute grain), beans and tabaco. There are some people who raise livestock such as cows, pigs, and chickens. Primarily, the people have dedicated themselves to the cultivation of coffee, brick making, and the production of milk products such as cheese. However, with the recent fall in coffee prices, many of the land owners are no longer producing coffee, leaving most people in the area without work or income. As a result, many families do not have means to survive and many children go without education because families cannot afford the basic costs (uniform, food, school supplies, transportation, etc.). Another challenge the people face is lack of water (especially in the countryside where many natural springs have dried up or are contaminated because of improper disposal of garbage). La Javia is a nearby rural village just outside of the small town of Tepecoyo and is made up of 3 zones.

Role of Casa Student: Students participate in several newly developed programs including teaching English classes for the youth of the community, offering computer classes for all members of the community (children to elderly), tutoring students, and getting to know members of the community in their own homes through conducting home visits. Also, students participate in a soy project where they have the opportunity to assist in the making of soy milk and also participate in the distribution of milk to children on a daily basis. These programs are all new to the community of La Javia.

I'm very excited about this. I'll be going to Tepecoyo twice a week with another student, Patrick, who also has an El Salvador blog.

¡Necesito repasar español!

What am I doing?

2007-01-04T01:32:00.000-06:00

I should be packing or studying Spanish or cleaning my room or something virtuous like that, but I thought writing another blog entry would be much more fun. I am the queen of procrastination. So here I am going to explain what I am doing with myself this coming semester and what this blog is going to be.

As you probably figured out by now, I am spending a semester studying abroad in El Salvador. I will be living in San Salvador and I'll be taking classes at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA). I'm doing a program called Casa de la Solidaridad, organized/coordinated by Santa Clara University. Here is the mission of the program, as laid out in a Pre-Departure Handbook we were given:

The mission of the Casa is the promotion of justice and solidarity through the creation of a meaningful academic experience by integrating rigorous academic study with direct immersion with the poor of El Salvador. The program draws inspiration from the lives of the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter who were murdered at the University of Central America (UCA) on November 16, 1989 and from all the people of El Salvador who suffered during the civil war, especially those who were killed in their struggle for solidarity and social justice.

We invite you to immerse yourself in the "classroom" of the people of El Salvador. Dedicated to fostering "men and women for others," Casa de la Solidaridad is a unique living and learning environment. Here you can develop your intellectual potential, strengthen your ethical and spiritual values, and learn to become a socially responsible global citizen.

OUR DAILY LIFE INCORPORATES:

Living in Community:
We choose to live in community in order to share with and learn from others.

Living Simply:
We choose a simple lifestyle, uncluttered by materialism, in solidarity with the marginalized of our world.

Focus on Learning with an Emphasis on Justice:
We choose to integrate rigorous academic study with the experience of the marginalized of El Salvador in the hopes of committing ourselves in the world to justice.

Cultural Sensitivity:
We choose to live in the context of another culture and context, honoring and learning from Salvadorans whom we are visiting.

Integrating Faith:
We choose to invite our spiritual journey into our daily experiences as we seek to understand the world with which we live.

Here is a brief description of my understanding of what it will be like. I won't be a regular student at the UCA. There are special classes for students doing the Casa program (some of which are in English, fortunately for me). We take five classes, including Spanish and a fieldwork course. The fieldwork is what I was describing in my entry on my top choices for praxis site. Two days a week and some weekends, I will go to my praxis site (I still don't know what that will be). I will help them in whatever ways I can, and I will learn from the people there. I've taken two "service-learning" classes at USF, and while they've been good experiences, this to me is the epitome of service-learning. This is what really drew me to the program. SCU describes it well: "Through this learning environment, you will become more aware of and sensitive to the realities of those who are struggling to end social injustices while working to promote human dignity. You will become part of the Salvadoran society not as a volunteer, but as a learner." In addition to Spanish and fieldwork, I'm planning to take Salvadoran Literature (in Spanish), Religion in Latin America (in English), and El Salvador's Civil War (in English).

There are a total of 24 American students (including me) doing the program. We'll live together in three houses (Casa Romero, Casa Silvia, and Casa Ita), all very near each other and near the UCA. Most of us are from Jesuit universities. In each house there will be a Community Facilitator, who lives there full-time and is usually a graduate of the Casa program. Also, two UCA scholarship students ("becarios") live in each house. That gives us a connection to the Salvadoran students at the UCA. I'm really happy to be living in community with the other students in the program. I was in living-learning communities my first two years at USF, and I like them because it gives me a chance to get to know people both social and academic arenas. It allows us to get really close. And assuming everyone is as nice as they seemed in their e-mail introductions, I'll be leaving El Salvador with at least 21 new friends (plus my two old friends who are going).

The purpose of this blog is for me to share my thoughts and experiences with my friends, family, and whoever feels like reading it. I'm giving this URL to a wide range of my contacts, so it may be more formal than if I were just writing for my close friends and family, but I hope I don't get too caught up in thinking about what people will think of me. I want what I learn to reach as many people as possible. I spent two weeks in El Salvador in 2005, and that was a very powerful experience, and I remember someone telling us that the best thing we could do to help them was share what we had learned. I want to do that. Speaking of which, I recently ran across a reflection I wrote after my time there in 2005. It's over six pages single-spaced in my word processor, so I'm not posting it in the blog, but you can read it here.

I think my main challenge in keeping up this blog (besides laziness and lack of commitment) will be that I won't have internet access at home. I'll have to go to an internet cafe, so I won't have as much time and flexibility to write as I would like. I am bringing my laptop with me though, so I might write entries on my own computer, put them on my shiny new thumb drive, and bring them to the internet cafe. Still, I don't know how often I'll have internet access, so entries may not be as frequent as I would like.

If you want to contact me in El Salvador, I'll be using my regular puella at pacbell dot net e-mail, which also receives my armcchesneyyoung at usfca dot edu e-mail. My mailing address will be:

Amber McChesney-Young
Casa de la Solidaridad
Apartado A-179
Antiguo Cuscatlan, El Salvador
Central America

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

-Archbishop Oscar Romero

Rufina Amaya

2007-01-01T18:25:00.000-06:00

Rufina
Originally uploaded by Bel Vezer.

I was browsing Flickr for pictures of El Salvador (thanks to Prof. Silver for revealing this goldmine of photos to me!), and in searching for El Mozote, I found this photo, which I thought was beautiful. Rufina Amaya was the only survivor of a massacre in 1981 in which the entire town of El Mozote was wiped out, with the exception of her. She went on to tell her story, but for a long time people refused to believe her. The U.S. was funding El Salvador's civil war, and it was our tax dollars that paid for this brutal massacre. The Massacre at El Mozote by Mark Danner is a very good book about this. You can also read the New Yorker piece by Mark Danner, which I believe is what the book was based on. It's because of things like this that I'm going to El Salvador.

choosing praxis sites

2006-12-22T02:12:00.000-06:00

As part of the Casa de la Solidaridad program, we students spend two days a week (and some weekends) with some organization or community (called praxis sites). We learn from them and help out in whatever ways we can (teaching English, tutoring, helping with the work, etc.). We were given a list of nine praxis sites and we had to choose our top three choices and explain why. I read through them and almost all of them looked like sites I'd like to work with. I allowed myself to be picky, which narrowed it down to five, then four, and finally my top three. Putting those in order of preference was very hard, and I switched my top two a few times. I found it more difficult than I expected to articulate my reasons for choosing those sites. I'm not sure why, but it's probably my general inarticulateness. It's hard not to sound cheesy and repetitive. I'm not posting what I wrote as my reasons, but here are my top three choices:

1. La Javia.
La Javia is a village just outside the rural community of Tepecoyo in the department of La Libertad (about an hour from San Salvador). It is very poor. I would be doing things like teaching English to youth, teaching computer clases, tutoring students, getting to know the community by doing home visits, and participating in a soy project.

2. Acosilva de R.L. Women's Artesania Cooperative
This is a women's artisan cooperative, whose full name is "Asociacion Cooperativa de Produccion Industrial, Artesanal Ahorro Credito y Consumo, Hermana Silvia Arriola, De Responsibilidad Limitada," abbreviated Acosilva de R.L. I would be helping with various activities, doing home visits, teaching English, and working with Salvador Craft, a coop of 21 cooperatives throughout the country.

3. Martín-Baró Cooperative.
The Martín-Baró Cooperative is a very cool organization that I visited when I was in El Salvador in 2005. The have a lot of programs, including a scholarship program, a dental clinic, a bakery, and a sewing program. I would be working with them helping them with the various projects, and I would be helping out at a local primary school.

I want to do all of them!

presente

2006-12-12T04:50:00.000-06:00

Aquí voy a escribir sobre mis experiencias en El Salvador. Que divertido. :)