About a month ago I spent a week in Las Nubes and San Ramon
for praxis week. It was simultaneously one of the most difficult and most
impactful experiences I have ever gone through. Rachel and I spent the first
two days together in San Ramon. The first day we spent with Gustavo at his art
center, and the second we spent in San Ramon going to the Celebration of the
Word, talking to people from the community, and then climbing the volcano to go
to one of the community meetings in Las Nubes. For the rest of the week, Rachel
and I separated to live with different families in Las Nubes. I spent the first
two nights at Delmi’s house with Delmi, her 10-year-old son, her 26-year-old
daughter Iberica, her husband, and their daughter Tatiana; and her daughter
Patti, her husband, and their kids Stanley and Daniela. Then I went to Ester’s
house with Ester’s husband and three kids as well as Ester’s sister, Marta
Elena, her husband, and their son.
So much happened during the week that it’s been difficult to
process, which is why it has taken me until now to write anything about it. These
are some of the events that have impacted me the most out of my time there. So
many other things have hit me, and I’m sure I’ll continue to process and write
about some of them, but here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.
One moment that sticks out to me is the second evening when
we were walking down the volcano with Gustavo at dusk after the community
meeting about the water tanks. The light was at the perfect dimness to
illuminate the flowers and the trees, and the air was crisp and cool. We never
have the opportunity to see Las Nubes at that time of day, and so we walked in
silence for a while, taking in the beauty of the scenery. In the middle of the
silence, Gustavo, casually dropping wisdom on us in his own peculiar way, took
a breath and breathed out, “Those meetings are Mass for me. That is the true
meaning of Communion. The work we do here is evangelization.”
What a beautiful way to look at this work. Sister Peggy, my
liberation theology professor, said in one of our first classes that we have
domesticated the sacraments—we have defined and regulated them to the point
where they are limited. There was something holy about seeing people from the
rural community of Las Nubes gathered together, lacking basic resources for so
long but finally believing that they have the ability and the right to advocate
for themselves. They’ve found their voices. It reminds me of a story told by
Greg Boyle, a Jesuit working with gang members in LA. He talks about the moment
when “the soul feels its worth.” The Base Community here is helping to
facilitate the souls of Las Nubes to feel their worth—to see that although they
live in extreme poverty and have constantly been oppressed, forgotten, and
looked down on, their voices and their lives are invaluable in the eyes of God.
How could that not be evangelization?
Another moment came from Delmi’s house. I was initially
really excited to go to Delmi’s. The women are really sweet, the two older
kids, Josué and Daniela, were really energetic and excited every time we had
visited them, and the two little babies, Tatiana and Stanley, are adorable. I
was excited to be with them and to get to know them better. The first day I
stayed down in San Ramon at Delmi’s daughter’s house waiting for Josué and
Daniela to finish school. Schools here don’t have enough resources to allow
kids to go for a full day, so half of the students go in the mornings and half
go in the afternoons. After we walked back up the volcano, Daniela asked me if
I wanted to go play house with her. We climbed up the hill a bit and got to a
place where two drain covers served as rudimentary tables, well balanced sticks
functioned as a make-believe stove, and someone had hung a rope from the tree
to make a swing. At first everything was fine. The game was simple. I was
Daniela’s third grade daughter, and every “morning” I would wake up, Daniela
would feed me breakfast, I would walk down the hill to school, walk straight
back up the hill, Daniela would feed me more of the rocks and dirt “soup” that
she had made, I would go back to bed, and we would do the whole thing over
again. As the hours passed, though, I started to get tired. Daniela speaks
incredibly fast Spanish, and although I had explained to her that Spanish
wasn’t my first language and I needed her to slow down, she would get mad at me
when I asked her to repeat things. At one point she even left me and told me
she wasn’t coming back until I could answer her correctly. She was just being
an 8-year-old, but after three hours of this it started to get to me. After a
while all I could think of was the scene from the movie Frozen when the guy
looks at the reindeer after he’s been making grumbly reindeer sounds and says,
“I can’t understand you when you talk like that.”
Something that we’ve talked about a lot at Casa has been the
idea of feeling useless, or allowing yourself to simply be and observe
difficult situations while understanding that you can’t fix them. Believe me, I
felt useless during my time at Delmi’s house. When the kids left on the second
day, Patti and Iverca watched the babies, washed dishes, cooked and cleaned,
but anytime I went out to the porch with them to try to make conversation, I
just felt awkward and in the way. I offered to help and they’d shoo me back
inside to go relax. I spent the morning reading and journaling, but mostly
sitting and thinking, “I am a useless lump.” By some miracle, Trena came to check
on Rachel and I that day. Almost as soon as I saw her I broke down into tears. Trena
is so good at connecting with people. She had no trouble at all making
conversation with these women that I had been awkwardly spending time near that
morning. That day I had started to feel like there was something wrong with me
because I couldn’t connect with them in the same way. Looking back, I realized
from that experience that I had to find a way to be okay with feeling useless while simultaneously
believing that I am not useless, and
recognizing the huge difference in those two ideas.
After Delmi’s house I moved next door to Ester’s house. I
was apprehensive at first. Marta Elena, Ester’s younger sister who lives with
her, is fifteen and has a one-year-old son named Angel. Her husband is
forty-five and unemployed, which means that he spends most of the day lying in
bed while Marta works to cook, clean, and care for their son. It was really
hard to be around him and understand that he was the husband of a girl who had
been thirteen when he impregnated her, barely older than my baby sister. I
think my brain just refused to accept the reality of the situation.
I had been struck by the poverty at Delmi’s house, but when
I came to Ester’s I realized that I had had no idea what poverty could look
like. Being at Ester’s house was physically difficult and overwhelming at
times. I had to continue to remind myself that as hard as it might be for me,
these were the conditions that they lived in every day. I got to go home at the
end of the week, but they might always live like this. They were so generous
while I was there, but their generosity often made me feel guilty. I felt
guilty for taking a whole bed to myself when the other beds each had three or
four people in them, for using the only eating utensil and the only table area
to eat my meals, and for all of the fruit that offered me when it was clear
that fruit was not something that they could eat often. I felt guilty in my
physical discomfort. Looking back, I’m trying to take that guilt and be
grateful instead, to learn from their incredible generosity and strength.
What breaks my heart is that this is normal for them. It’s
normal to have tarantulas in the house and to wake up with cockroaches on your
legs. It’s normal to fish insects out of your food and then continue eating it.
It’s normal to go to the bathroom in a hole in the front yard, to be kept awake
by the noises of the other eight people sleeping in the room, to not have the
water to bathe or brush your teeth, to have a roof that keeps nothing out, and
to be constantly surrounded by the smoke that floods through the single window
from the front porch. I want so badly for them to know that they deserve so
much more than this.
On the first night everyone was sitting around the little TV
watching soap operas and I was sitting close by reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed for my praxis class. Marta Elena came over
and asked me what I was reading. She asked me what it was about, and I told her
that it was about teaching the poor and oppressed about their own dignity and
about the knowledge that they gain from experiencing the world in their own
way, even if they haven’t had the opportunity to go to school. She was quiet
for a while, thinking, and then she said softly that she’d like to read it.
Marta Elena has the most education of anyone in the house, but after reaching
only second grade she had to drop out because she was pregnant. She is the only
person in the house who can read. Choking back tears, I told her I would find a
copy of the book for her in Spanish. What is heartbreaking is that I know the
book is about her situation and contains so many things that she needs to hear,
but after only second grade, it’s unlikely that she will ever be able to read
it.
Later on that night, Marta was making soup for Angel and her
husband. I asked her if she liked being a mother. She looked at me with a tired
expression and said, “It’s hard. It’s difficult working so hard every day, and
it’s even harder when Angel gets sick. Life is very hard as a mother.” Then she
got really serious and turned to me, waving her wooden spoon and said, “Do you
go to Church?” Before I could answer, she said, still waving the spoon, “Go to
church, read your Bible, and take other people to church with you. God puts you
exactly where he wants you, and only God can get you through the struggles
you’re up against.”
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment. On one hand, I
am so thankful that Marta Elena has her faith and the comfort of knowing that
God is with her in everything that she is facing. I am confident that God is
with her for every second of every day, and I’m inspired by her amazing faith
even in her horrible situation. However, I refuse to believe that it is God’s
will for a fifteen-year-old child to have a son with a forty-five year old man
and to live in absolute poverty. Marta Elena’s situation is the work of society
and of the choices of humans. I believe that God wants so much more for her,
and it’s hard to think that Marta Elena believes that a God who loves and cares
for her would want this life for her. I hope that someday she will know that
she deserves so much more than that. I hope that good people will continue to
do the work of God by trying to bring justice and prosperity to people while
they are living, rather than making some people feel like their time on Earth
must be spent waiting to earn those things in Heaven.
In the end, though, I connected much more with this family
than I had with the previous one. There was laughter and joy. I had wonderful
conversations about life and God with Marta Elena, Ester, Kevin (Ester’s oldest
son) and Nicolas (Ester’s husband). I played with the younger kids and helped
Marta take care of Angel. I experienced their generosity, strength and faith. I
love this family, and during the week and the weeks since them, they have shown
me time and again that they love me too.
As hard as praxis week was for me, I am so unbelievably
thankful for the opportunity. Since praxis week, I have felt so much more
connected to the community of Las Nubes. Last week I went to praxis to find
that Marta Elena, Angel, and her husband were able to move into one of the
small, unoccupied buildings on Marta’s brother Daniel’s property. Daniel found
a job for Marta’s husband at the hardware store where he works, and he is
making more money there than he had been at his old job in the coffee finca. The
change has brought good things for Ester’s family as well. The house looks
spacious and much cleaner now, and they were able to build a little pen for
their ducks and clean some of the trash and debris from the front yard. Ester’s
husband no longer has to support all eight of them, which allows them to buy
more water. Last time I went there, little Estercita had just gotten a bath.
They’re all little things, but I wanted to jump up and down with excitement for
them. It’s encouraging to know that life can improve for them, and hope that
things continue to get better.
