Home at last

Hey all -

I apologize for the delay (very sad, nearly a month) in making my last blog post. I started writing the blog below on the morning I left El Salvador a couple of weeks ago! I stayed up late writing it and was ready to post, when my internet connection failed! True story... It was nearly 5am at the time, so I opted for a few hours of sleep rather than anything else which might have rendered me insane. This comes to you relatively untouched since the time of its writing.

I hope to continue my blog since returning to Cleveland... another chapter and theme altogether! Though my posts might be sporadic, look for them from time to time. Your love and support this summer were very appreciated, much more than you may know.

Since I'm here, I might as well share what I will be up to now that I am home. I actually start my new job *tomorrow,* working with Knowledge College, Inc., a tutoring company offering tutoring services in Cleveland schools. My step-sister started the company a couple of years ago, and it's been doing great. First we're going to work on the "street team" recruiting kids to participate in the program, which should be neat. Spanish sounds like it will come in handy... then, tutoring starts in October! Our goal is to better prepare kids to take standardized tests come the Spring, and provide study skills and strategies for test-taking. A totally new venture for me, but one I'm looking forward to. I'm taking some classes in the evenings, as well -- biology and chemistry; yikes!! Wish me good luck, and much perseverance.

It has been good to come home, and just be here to reconnect with my family, enjoying the end of Cleveland summer. I've definitely had some days of feeling very lost, but I guess those too shall pass.

thanks for reading, and stay connected!

much peace to you all,
elizabeth

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This will be my last blog post from El Salvador. My flight leaves in just a few hours; so hard to believe. The summer has flown by, due mostly I think to the fact that I was really enjoying myself. I must admit that I've felt confused, and a little lost the past few days as I've been preparing to leave. I guess that is par for the course, though. I know without much of a doubt that it is time for me to return home (as in home home!) -- there is much waiting for me there -- and the mixed feelings of leaving are therefore welcomed. Whenever I go through transitions or hard discoveries, I always give myself (consciously) time to feel sad, or angry, or simply melancholy for a day or two. I actually say to myself, "This day is for you to feel sad about x, y or z." It helps so much! Of course the emotional residue can often linger much longer than that, but I've found it constructive to let myself simply be with hard feelings for a time before trying too hard to ward them off with other strategies. When children fall down, don't we give them time to cry? :)


It's not that note I want to end on, though. The reason I am anticipating these pending days of melancholy is because of how much joy I have experienced here over the last two months. After graduate school, it was needed. :) I feel like I've really reconnected with what is important to me -- namely community, God and being with people whose lives have been so different from my own. Through my time here this summer, I have watched a number of close relationships grow and change. That is very often a place that I find God, in relationship with others, in community. I feel like there has been a deepening of many of my friendships here, and that I really just want to be with people. As an introvert that is one of the last things I thought I would say, but it has come to be true. I still, of course, enjoy my alone time, but I've learned to enjoy myself much more in the company of others.


I think this may be just be beginning of my 'lessons learned'

mystic, beautiful, simple.

Sunday morning

As a child, there were three prayers that I learned:  the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Serenity Prayer.  It is the God that inspired the latter of the three that I identify with and pray to the most.  In case you don't know it, the words of the serenity prayer are 

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.

A lot to say in just one sentence.

For some reason, this prayer came to me the other day and I've repeated it at least a dozen times to myself since then.  It really comforts me, a prayer for wisdom to differentiate between what I have control over in life, or what I am responsible for, and what I'm not.  So many fears and anxieties, I feel like, come from a lack of vision in this area.  Sometimes I know I'm getting it wrong, but am not sure how to get it right -- do I let it go?  Do I try harder?  Sometimes I spend much time just trying to figure out if I should proceed in a given area, not to mention the question of how.  And that is where the wisdom piece comes in, the wisdom to know the difference. 

I don't have a whole lot to say at this point...  The students all left yesterday.   What a whirlwind month!  Our last couple of weeks were as jam-packed as ever (hence the lack of blog entries) including a weekend-long trip out to El Mozote in the eastern part of the country, and our re-entry retreat and despedida party this weekend.  Annie and I are, without a doubt, spent...  but accepting of that as part of the process.   A friend who works with delegations here calls this period the "hangover."  Ha!  That's certainly what it feels like sometimes!

I just wanted to write and say hi..  and hopefully I will have more time over these next two weeks to return to a more regular writing pattern.  

Peace be with all of you,

love,

elizabeth

 

P.S.:  For the YouTube fans out there....I've been enjoying this song, and can't seem to get enough of it lately: I Only Ask of God.  Interestingly enough, it is by a Middle-Eastern Hip Hop group called Outlandish, and is an English version of a song by Nicaraguan artist Leon Gieco.  (I first heard the song here in El Salvador years ago, as part of the popular music repertoire.)  Outlandish has a multitude of politically-conscious songs, most about the hard realities faced by youth of the Middle East.  The three artists in the group are collectively: Pakistani, Moroccan, Honduran, Muslim and Catholic, based out of Denmark.  Just a very neat blend of languages, culture, musical influence and global realities...  Check them out on YouTube.

Flor de Piedra (Flower in the Stone)

Hi everyone!

Recently, I visited an organization called "Flor de Piedra" (Flower in the Stone) that works with female sex workers in the country.  The objectives of Flor de Piedra are not to get women out of the sex worker industry (which for a small NGO, isn't financially possible) but rather to educate and empower women to make their own choices and protect themselves while doing it.

  

Both of the women who spoke with our group were themselves former sex workers, and were willing to share parts of their own stories with us.  One of the main reasons women enter into the sex industry, the informed us, is because they are single mothers.   This was the case for both women we met.  One's partner left her with a daughter when she was 15, and another's partner left her with five small children when she was 21.  (Her eldest child had been the result of a rape.)  Both women entered into the sex industry as a way to support their families.  "It is not the glamorous life some people say it is," one woman said.  (Given our surroundings in central San Salvador, which one companera referred to as "the pits of hell," I had to wonder who could hold such a belief.)  "The life is hard -- physical, mental, verbal abuse, and little pay."  ($12-$15 is the high end of the pay scale for a sexual act; $2-$3 the low end.)  Not to mention the social discrimination, guilt and low self-esteem that accompany the work, as well.   

As we were sitting there, a group of twenty-five students from some of the best universities in the country (Boston College, Marquette, etc.), it dawned on me: this is the consequence of our lifestyle.  This is the outcome of the goods we consume in the United States, the other end of the global digestive tract.  It is quite a different picture, following capitalism and globalization all the way through to their ends.  

A friend of mine here in El Salvador, Sam, returned recently from a trip around the world.  He was able to visit the red light district of one of island of Cebu in the Philippines.  Here is a link to his blog, and another perspective on female sex workers around the world:  http://theadventurecapitalists.blogspot.com/2008/09/father-to-hundreds-of-daughters.html.

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Another friend reminded me, after my last post, that there is another side to this coin.  In response to my rather cynical entry about the complacency poverty perpetuates, he asked if living without resources immediately on hand doesn't also create resiliency and patience, and he was right.  Thank you, Jay, for saying this!

I had a growing sense that this blog was becoming a venting chamber for me, and I want to balance that.  It's only fair to share the beauty, faith and hope that I get to experience every day here (alongside all the other things) with you all.  I apologize for not doing so sooner.

Something beautiful that I saw today, maybe for the thousandth time, was the San Salvador volcano.  It's huge, right in the middle of the city.  I was traveling to the other side of the volcano with a friend and both of us just let ourselves be in awe.  The sun was just beginning to set, and it was the time of day where everything is a little more graced.  For a few miles while driving along the "falda del volcan" (skirt of the volcano) we just watched the volcano and took it in in silence; it's massive slopes looming above our windows; it's grey-blue hues that rise, roll and fall, like you might imagine the ocean floor to do; a puff of white smoke coming from a fire somewhere.  The sheer size of this land mass is amazing to me, still.  Families that live on the volcano are vulnerable to landslides, especially now in the rainy season.  I see that, too, when I look at the volcano.  It's beauty and it's hardships, all in one.  Maybe there is no need to separate it all out...maybe doing so wouldn't do justice to either one.  Flowers in the stones.

... pues, I am calling it a night for now.  thank you for reading along and sharing, and I hope to have more for you soon.  For anyone that is wondering, the recent coup d'etat in Honduras, while calling the world's attention, hasn't had much of an (immediate) effect here in El Salvador.  It seems that travel to Honduras is unadvisable at the moment -- which may mean no trip to Nicaragua in a few weeks -- but other than that the general sense is that the social and political problems resulting from the coup are isolated in Tegucigalpa.  Hopefully the military junta will not last long.  Personally, I do not see how they can being economically, socially and politically cut off from most countries in the hemisphere, but one never knows.  Actually, the entire action to me seems rather short-sighted, and ironic.  Those who took over power did so in part to protect their business interests from suffering under the current populist president.  But who will their business partners be now that the world is refusing to recognize their government's legitimacy?  It seems as if they themselves tied the knot, and if they don't concede power soon, will likely hang.  

On another note about the coup though, please keep the country of Honduras in your prayers and thoughts.  At least two demonstraters have been killed and dozens injured thus far.

love for now,

elizabeth

p.s. I tried to upload a picture of the volcano to share with you, but could not get it off my camera...  maybe next time!

Ni modo...?

Hi everyone,

I realize it's been a little while since I last wrote, and I think that has been for two reasons:  I haven't had the time to do so, and I haven't known what to write about!  The latter is not for lack of material or experiences, just my ability to make sense of them.  (This situation is made worse, of course, by lack of time to stop, think and write.)  So today, hopefully I am breaking this vicious cycle and teasing out some experiences of the past week.

The students have been in their praxis site for almost two weeks now -- half of their time here!  The time goes by really quickly; one month is just enough time to get your feet on the ground.  The hospitals I think are really challenging the students..  There is an overarching lack of respect for human dignity, and the sites they see sometimes leave them reeling.  The hospitals are seriously underfunded (1.5% of El Salvador's GDP goes for health care), which translates into a serious lack of supplies and medication for patients.  During one of our site visits, for example, we saw a patient in need of a ventilator being kept alive by hand by a medical student pumping an oxygen bag.  Simply, there was no ventilator to use.  (Or, someone did not think it worth it to bring one to the patient's side.)  Another time, a friend who is a medical student here told us of a procedure to remove glass shards from a patient that, without tweezers available, had to be taken out by hand.  Her resident in charge that night, she said, had instructed the interns to do whatever they needed with the patient; he didn't want to have to deal with it.  Tweezers?  Needless to say, without these most basic instruments available, more sophisticated technology is mostly out of the question.  "Here," she said, "you learn to diagnose with your hands and your eyes."  This student is learning to gauge liver function by comparing the color of her skin to the color of patients' skin to test for jaundice.  Students another day were called over to a patient's bedside (who was "skin and bones") to help put is adult diaper on correctly; the nurses, he said, hadn't done it right and he couldn't wear it.  

In and of themselves, these examples seem....  bearable.  So you make do without tweezers, find someone to pump the oxygen bag, adapt your diagnosis skills...  But what is it to constantly concede the ideal for the mediocre, or worse?  To always go slightly without what you need, to always compromise, to wait and have your ambitions be derailed?  I feel like in the reality of El Salvador, this is what happens at every turn.  Annie and I were talking about this a few days ago; those seemingly benign and inevitable moments of resignation that we see every day.  What sparked the conversation was a friend traveling out to see his mom; there had been two assassinations that afternoon just feet from his family's front doorstep.  The bodies of two vendors had been left for the community to see.  It's a challenge for his family (who is raising five children) to live there, because now, to see or hear a crime is a danger.  Witnesses easily become victims.  In the conversation before he left, he said "Pues, ni modo.  Asi es la vida."  (It doesn't matter anyway; such is life.")  Ni modo...  Ni modo...  the expression is too common here, a bottom line.  

I stopped to think about this, and asked Annie later, after he had left, "Can you imagine if there were two murders outside your front door?  What would your family do?  How would you deal with it?"  Undoubtedly, for many of us, it would rock our world.  We might even move.  But in my friend's community, these were the second and third assassinations this week.  His family doesn't have the resources to move.  Ni modo. 

And I feel the need to clarify here: the friend I am speaking of is not an individual inclined to resignation.  On the contrary, he is one of the most hard-fighting, committed individuals in the country that I know.   I take his statement above therefore as a reflection of the powerlessness and vulnerability that characterize the matrix of poverty, and not his own sense of fatality.  More subtle than corpses in the street - and perhaps more insidious in its own right - the frame of mind that a chronic lack of resources creates is really one of the hardest monsters to fight.  In the field of psychology  this is called learned helplessness (one of the few terms I remember -- ha!).  The keyword here is learned.  When a lack of resources forces people to concede fulfillment of basic needs and rights  -- physical and mental safety, ample medical care, food, opportunity for growth -- at every turn, material poverty teaches the notion that what is in front of you, right here, right now, is all that there is, problems without solutions.  Don't ask, the answer is no.  There are no extra funds, no tools to make the diagnosis, no extra food, no other options.   How many chances are missed to make small improvements?  I think that this is the saddest type of violence - the one against the human spirit that teaches people not to fight for themselves, and others, to secure life.