Soon I will write more about Christmas in Ecuador, which blessed me fully and festively. For now, I simply wish you all a merry and holy Christmas. Celebrate!
Also, I want to note that I am blessed with an incredible family - a crew of parents, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, and a grandma that would make anyone grateful to be alive. Thanks to all of you for your unflinching love, support, and ridiculous stories. You light my days!
miércoles, 26 de diciembre de 2007
lunes, 24 de diciembre de 2007
Finding it anyways
A response from my dear friend and a particularly bright light, Erin Ramsey:
"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to the complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it"
- The Talmud
"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to the complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it"
- The Talmud
lunes, 17 de diciembre de 2007
Fotos
Pictures! It´s about time, eh? This is my house - a slice of the first-world amidst Arbolito´s poverty. On one hand, I am very uncomfortable living in this palace while my neighbors live in cane shacks. This hand is very heavy. On the other, much less believable hand, I understand Rostro´s philosophy that we´ll be no good out there if we´re not taking care of ourselves in here. It´s not exactly what I wanted, and was very hard to adjust after visiting the vol house at the Finca. Nonetheless, it´s my home so let´s run with it.
And my street. This is taken while standing in front of the gate (yes, it´s gated, and also guarded) around my house. If you follow this street down to the dead end that you see in the distance and turn left, you will see...
...the church, La Virgen del Perpetuo Socorro (look it up) where I sing on Sundays. You can also see the beginning of pavement in Arboito (exciting!). There are currently four-ish paved streets in our 5,000 person world. The rest are dirt and rocks. Rough on tires, but it creates amazing soccer players at a very young age.
The Arbolito community - my housemates. Another 5 live in a separate house a few miles away, but these are my Ecuadorian family. Top row: Christine Donovan (obvio), Santiago Bunce (my platonic Ecuadorian life partner and soccer star), Nate Radomski (Logistics Coordinator and surprisingly resilient victim of ambiguity), Marie Miano (gentle friend, biggest challenge, and probably our best cook), Scott Winkelmann (resident musican and reminder that life is a gift). Front row: Andrea Readhimer (house accountant and lover of lime), Patrick Cashio (Community Member Emeritus - he left on Tuesday to return to the States). I love them.
A tanquero (water truck). I´ve written about the water that gets trucked in to Arbolito. Trucks like these carry it in. In the foreground is Elkin, Nate´s adopted son who is chock full of personality, and Sonia, his mom.
The aformentioned Iris (the one who can´t do math) and me.
Some of our Semillas kids participating in a minga - a big cleaning party where we get them to pick up all the trash and give the winners bananas. Sound familiar, parents?
More to come - I love you!
jueves, 13 de diciembre de 2007
Find it anyways
Thursday. Our afternoon at Semillas began as any other. Halfway throught homework hour, I heard a loud noise and stuck my head out to investigate. Paul the guard is running over to me. ¨Get them inside!¨ We had 60 that day. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for - they knew what happened. The noise was a gunshot. Thankfully the shooter missed and the target took off running. All of this where another man was shot and killed on our second dy of work back inAugust. All of this outside the front entrance to Semillas.
Last Monday a little girl disappeared from a neighboring commuity and turned up in Arbolito the following morning. Many details remain fuzzy, but we do know that there is a man living in our sector who pays people to kidnap children, then sells them on the black market. I soften this story by telling myself the buyers are looking for young, hard-working maids and construction workers. Then my stomach turns when I remember the way Saturday-night drunks watch the little girls playing in the street.
Walk up a block from my house and you´ll find a house much nicer than the rest. Out front is a motorcycle (neighbors have bikes) and two large, metal soccer goals (neighbors use piles of rocks). Clearly business is good. The house´s owner is pimp. All the neighbors know - even the kids - but no one turns him in because he protects the neighborhood (by force, as noted by the bulge where his back meets his belt). He has made an implicit agreement not to ¨sell¨ in the neighborhood, which neighbors say he keeps. Besides, no one wants to get on a pimp´s bad side. Two weeks ago, he was killed. He was shot eight times. Thankfully for us, this murder occurred in Quevedo, about four hours from here. Death is death, murder is murder, and we mourn with his family, who keep coming in from the country. But its hard to be reverent when a pimp´s brother is checking you out during the wake. Business will continue. His cousin, who was second-in-command, has likely resumed their normal activity after this little bump in the road. The workforce and the clientele keep the market afloat, though I do wonder how long this next boss will last.
Over the last few years, the electric company has slowly made its rounds through many of the poor neighborhoods, installing locked meters on all the houses to keep people from stealing electricity. Seems fair. Right? And if you don´t pay your bill, they cut you off. That´s normal. Right? Sure it is. But it´s not just. Not when the family with two bare lightbulbs pays the same as the neighbor with two TVs, a refrigerator, a stereo, and exterior lighting. They pay the same flat fee - $33/mo. - and suffer the same consequences though their households show a stark difference in both income and consumption. Also, it´s worth mentioning that this is a public company, government-owned and -regulated.
At a local public school, Escuela Simon Bolivar, where classrooms are crude cane shacks, mothers of students have been gathering more and more frequently to discuss what´s happening. The director of this public (¨free¨) school has been charging some families for tuition. The school receives funding from Hogar de Cristo for students of HdC families, and is supposed to use them to expand the workforce to reduce the 60-1 student-teacher ratio that the government supports in its public schools. The director has failed and the new teacher, who is not receiving a paycheck, protests by simply not teaching. Kids are in the classroom, so it looks like they´re learning. But their rowdy noise travels easily through the cane walls and disturbs neighboring lessons. In the end, very few children are actually learning.
Yesterday after Semillas, I sent my kids home and walked out to find Belén, who is six, walking toward me tugging an enormous pink backpack. Bringing it to Semillas to sell to another girl. She couldn´t go home, she said matter-of-factly, because Mom had gone out and locked the door. This didn´t bother Belén nearly as much as it did me. What was she going to do? Wait for her brother and sister, she said. Clarita (9) and Winky (7) (yes, ¨Winky¨...I don´t get it either) came home, but without keys. Mom doesn´t give them keys. Eventually Belén wriggles her way through a hole near the floor and they tug on it to make it big enough for Clarita to enter. I left them there, with a hug and an offer to come to my house if they needed anything.
So what does all this mean? Neglect, embezzling, corruption, prostitution, kidnapping, gun violence. This is not small potatoes. This is very, very big, enormous, chemically-enhanced potatoes. Part of me wants to write you a nice resolution that leaves you feeling hopeful. But maybe it´s more fair to make you sit with this for a while, too. Be uncomfortable with ugliness. Find hope anyways. That´s my challenge every day. Now it´s yours.
Last Monday a little girl disappeared from a neighboring commuity and turned up in Arbolito the following morning. Many details remain fuzzy, but we do know that there is a man living in our sector who pays people to kidnap children, then sells them on the black market. I soften this story by telling myself the buyers are looking for young, hard-working maids and construction workers. Then my stomach turns when I remember the way Saturday-night drunks watch the little girls playing in the street.
Walk up a block from my house and you´ll find a house much nicer than the rest. Out front is a motorcycle (neighbors have bikes) and two large, metal soccer goals (neighbors use piles of rocks). Clearly business is good. The house´s owner is pimp. All the neighbors know - even the kids - but no one turns him in because he protects the neighborhood (by force, as noted by the bulge where his back meets his belt). He has made an implicit agreement not to ¨sell¨ in the neighborhood, which neighbors say he keeps. Besides, no one wants to get on a pimp´s bad side. Two weeks ago, he was killed. He was shot eight times. Thankfully for us, this murder occurred in Quevedo, about four hours from here. Death is death, murder is murder, and we mourn with his family, who keep coming in from the country. But its hard to be reverent when a pimp´s brother is checking you out during the wake. Business will continue. His cousin, who was second-in-command, has likely resumed their normal activity after this little bump in the road. The workforce and the clientele keep the market afloat, though I do wonder how long this next boss will last.
Over the last few years, the electric company has slowly made its rounds through many of the poor neighborhoods, installing locked meters on all the houses to keep people from stealing electricity. Seems fair. Right? And if you don´t pay your bill, they cut you off. That´s normal. Right? Sure it is. But it´s not just. Not when the family with two bare lightbulbs pays the same as the neighbor with two TVs, a refrigerator, a stereo, and exterior lighting. They pay the same flat fee - $33/mo. - and suffer the same consequences though their households show a stark difference in both income and consumption. Also, it´s worth mentioning that this is a public company, government-owned and -regulated.
At a local public school, Escuela Simon Bolivar, where classrooms are crude cane shacks, mothers of students have been gathering more and more frequently to discuss what´s happening. The director of this public (¨free¨) school has been charging some families for tuition. The school receives funding from Hogar de Cristo for students of HdC families, and is supposed to use them to expand the workforce to reduce the 60-1 student-teacher ratio that the government supports in its public schools. The director has failed and the new teacher, who is not receiving a paycheck, protests by simply not teaching. Kids are in the classroom, so it looks like they´re learning. But their rowdy noise travels easily through the cane walls and disturbs neighboring lessons. In the end, very few children are actually learning.
Yesterday after Semillas, I sent my kids home and walked out to find Belén, who is six, walking toward me tugging an enormous pink backpack. Bringing it to Semillas to sell to another girl. She couldn´t go home, she said matter-of-factly, because Mom had gone out and locked the door. This didn´t bother Belén nearly as much as it did me. What was she going to do? Wait for her brother and sister, she said. Clarita (9) and Winky (7) (yes, ¨Winky¨...I don´t get it either) came home, but without keys. Mom doesn´t give them keys. Eventually Belén wriggles her way through a hole near the floor and they tug on it to make it big enough for Clarita to enter. I left them there, with a hug and an offer to come to my house if they needed anything.
So what does all this mean? Neglect, embezzling, corruption, prostitution, kidnapping, gun violence. This is not small potatoes. This is very, very big, enormous, chemically-enhanced potatoes. Part of me wants to write you a nice resolution that leaves you feeling hopeful. But maybe it´s more fair to make you sit with this for a while, too. Be uncomfortable with ugliness. Find hope anyways. That´s my challenge every day. Now it´s yours.
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