Stories

I’ve been in El Salvador for a month now. We’ve done so many things—classes are in full swing, I’ve spent a few weeks consistently going to praxis in San Ramon, we went to the beach, last weekend we visited the cooks at their houses, this weekend I stayed with Ana Maria, one of the becarias, at her house, and I’ve eaten my weight in chocobananas and pupusas. It feels simultaneously like I’ve been here forever and for no time at all. I already feel overwhelmed trying to tell people about what I’ve been doing here—it just feels like there is so much to tell, and questions like, “Is it fun?” and “Do you love it?” don’t seem to fit my experience.

Stories are what tie everything together here. A huge part of accompaniment is listening to peoples’ stories in an effort understand where they’re coming from and how that has shaped who they are now. In the past month, I’ve spent a ton of time just sitting and listening to people tell me about their lives—the becarias, the Romero staff, the Casa staff, my fellow Casa students, and the Salvadorans at the praxis sites.

In the States, the phrase “he told me his life story” has a very negative connotation—something along the lines of “Wow, can you believe this guy wasted so much of my time talking about himself?” Here in Salvador, though, my days are filled with life stories. In the past few weeks I’ve spent so many hours sitting on porches, smelling the smoke from the wood fires and the cooking tortillas, watching the dogs and chickens and children run around in the dusty yards, inevitably being offered a banana because it might be the only material thing that our hosts have to share with us, and listening to people talk about their lives. At first it felt really strange. In the States, we rarely show up unannounced to people’s houses just to spend hours talking about life, but that’s exactly what I do at praxis every week. We spend each day stopping by different houses to say hello and sit, sometimes for hours at a time, and listen to whatever people want to share with us.

What a gift it is to receive these stories. Sometimes people will just give us little snapshots or stories about their lives. Niña Aulalia told us about giving birth to all six of her children completely on her own, without even the aid of a midwife. She told us she didn’t want anyone to see the funny faces she was making, so she shut the door and the windows and gave birth standing up in the dark. Holy cow. Niña Tancho usually talks about politics or about what she’s been doing since we last saw her. Don Adrian talked about the dollarization of the Salvadoran economy and the effect it had on him personally. The Santos kids talk about school. We’ve also had the opportunity to hear about peoples’ lives in more detail. We’ll sit down for hours and listen to peoples’ testimonies. I am constantly humbled and awed by the openness of the Salvadorans in sharing their stories with us.

In the US, we value multitasking. I have discovered here that I’m probably not a very good listener. When people are speaking in English, even if I have the best intentions, I often spend so much time thinking about my response to whatever they’re saying that I stop listening halfway through. Other times what they’re saying will remind me of something and my mind will start to wander until I’m unintentionally thinking about the homework I should do when I get back or what I’m having for dinner later.

In Spanish this is a hundred million times more difficult. If I zone out in a conversation in Spanish, the chances of rejoining the conversation are slim. It takes all of my concentration to translate and keep track of what people are talking about. As tiring and sometimes frustrating as this is, I also think it’s a really good opportunity to learn how to be a better listener. I want to be the kind of person who makes every person I talk to feel like the most important person in the world. My history professor told us last week that the greatest thing we can do with our time here is to listen, to take some of the burden from these brave people by listening to what they have had to suffer through. I think this is true across cultures. We all want to feel like we have something to share, like our experience and our struggles and the wisdom we’ve gained from them has been worthwhile. Listening to people’s stories validates that experience in a way. In order to give that gift to people, I need to practice being really present and engaged with what they’re saying.

In addition to simply paying attention, sometimes I find it hard not to let the peoples’ stories just blend together. This is especially difficult for stories about peoples’ experience during the war. So much of what we’ve heard is horrible and hard to hear. We’ve heard about young children being forced to watch their family members being raped and tortured and killed. Lupita, one of the cocineras, told us about how when she was ten years old, she and her younger brothers saved her father’s life by clinging to him to keep the guerillas from killing him like they had two of her uncles. We’ve heard about children being hit by stray bullets and dying in their parents’ arms. So many of the people we interact with lost family members in the war. And I know that as the weeks go on, we’ll hear more. I never want to get to the point where it’s all the same, where I’ve been desensitized to what I’m hearing. I think it’s important to recognize that each person’s story is uniquely their own, shaped not only by the events that happened, but by how they reacted and were formed by them.

And finally, all of the stories I’ve heard from other people have forced me to reflect on my own story. When people here ask about your life, they never ask about what you do. They always ask where you’re from, what your family is like, and what kind of communities you’re a part of. Here, who you are is largely determined by whose you are. To whom or what do you dedicate yourself? Who has shaped you and walked with you on your journey through life? Trena told us on one of our first days here that the Salvadorans don’t care about the degrees that we’re pursuing, the awards we’ve gotten, our GPA… none of that matters. Between all of the applications for college, scholarships, awards, and jobs, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking that I have to prove to everyone I come in contact with why I’m worth their time. Here, it’s enough to be with people and to listen, to share my dreams and what I believe in. It’s a good environment to start figuring out who I am, whose I am. What are the things that really make me who I am? What has shaped me to be who I am today? Maybe at the end of this crazy semester I’ll be a little closer to figuring that out.