mutual humanness

Friday afternoons are seriously my fav… all but a few of us have history so the houses are quiet and without class the next day there is time for relaxing, catching up or doing whatever my little heart desires. Its one of the few times during the week where I really feel like I can just breathe…and it SO fantastic.

Today is Margot’s birthday. Yesterday she told me she didn’t want anyone to do anything for her other than have a good day. She’s right we don’t need to shower her in gifts, but oh did we find ways to celebrate, 7am latin dance class and Mr. Donut, sent her to a massage, making crumble and a delicious dinner for her and showing her how very much we love her. I think the chance to celebrate someone’s life is so special. Especially an out of this world friend like Margot. It has been absolutely WONDERFUL having her here with me to share and understand and laugh with. She knows my soul better than most the rest of the world, including me sometimes, and I just could not be more grateful to have her here on this journey with me. I want nothing more than to celebrate her, so her how much I love her and how grateful I am to have her in my life. She has been such a guiding light for me the past year, a source of love, balance and the most wonderful conversations in the world. So today we will celebrate her life…because we each get one day a year to be celebrated.

Tomorrow we leave for the Campo for a week. I am so excited and as always a little nervous. Ill be staying at a house with another girl, Steph, who lives in my house. We will be spending all our time doing what the family does. Learning from them in the fields, milpas, fincas, in the house, at church, wherever they go we will go. I am so excited to just create relationships, to be out of the city and have a little change of pace and to continue to get to know the reality, the beauty and the pain that makes this county as special as it is.

In preparation for the campo we have continued talking about what it means to be here. To be in relationship with people. To come from privilege and difference, to not understand and continuously attempt to understand. How do we accompany and learn without taking advantage, without creating a power dynamic. We do that by being human. By having a deep desire to create relationships, to be here, to love. As I was making Margot’s crumble I was thinking about how much I love to love people. Being in mutual humanness with the people around me and loving people is the juice of this life as far as I know so far. So this week I just want to be human, to love, to keep the barriers I create out of my head, to share and to be in mutual humanness.

And ya know what Ive been learning… for the past 20 years, but also I have been so reminded of this in the past 5 weeks. Being human does not come without pain. We have seen pain here. Monday two of the other praxis groups encountered something so real in this country, death. One group drove past a man who had been hit by a car and killed on the side of the road. They said “it seemed like no one was doing anything, but that man he is someone’s child, brother, maybe father” but this is part of their reality. The other group went to the wake of a man who was killed in relation to gang violence. He wasn’t involved, there was no reasoning, he was only in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both were just chance, both completely unfair. Yet the Salvadoran’s didn’t cry like we might of, they weren’t caught off guard like we were. The only choice they have is to keep moving. This is their reality. And that is not ok.

In Cedro we are doing a project on women. We are surrounded by amazing, strong women in the Comedor and also in all our home visits. We rarely meet men… they are either working or out of the picture. We are talking about how religion and machismo affect women. How are these women so resilient, what are the family structures and how do these structures affect education, what is the role of the women in each of these pillars? So we are asking questions. Every answer is heart breaking and incredible all at the same time. These women never stop working. Some of them have jobs that they work at from 8-5 or 6-6 and then when they get home they must do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry and loving of their children. Nina Santos, one of the ladies at the Comedor explained that her husband doesn’t read with her children even though he went to school and she didn’t, he doesn’t have time. They always come to me when they need something she explains, they don’t feel as comfortable with their dad, they aren’t as close with him. Granted, this could come from the mouth of many people in the U.S. too,  but the role of women in so huge here, so exclusive, so very important. Grandmas raise their children and grand children at the same time. Twenty year olds have babies in almost every house. Children with mental illnesses never get the resources to develop. And in almost every woman, when you look past the beauty, the hugs and kisses, the laughter, the unending amounts of love in their eyes, you can get a glimpse into the pain and exhaustion that they experience.

Machismo leaves woman working so very hard, and families without the support they need from their family. Alcoholism runs rampant. Money problems. Inability to pay for health care. Pain that has consisted since the onset of the war. Loss for so many reasons. Unjust working conditions. And self care… unheard of for women. Homes, although many overflowing with love, there are also many where pain is the most common emotion. And half days of school, lack of programs, extracurricular activites, support and resources leave young kids with a void that needs filling. Many turn towards gangs, security, a sense of belonging, a home. Young women turn towards relationships, often get pregnant early and the cycle continues.

The struggles of poverty, the aspects of development are so many layers deep. Many see change coming, and it is, but not enough change and not fast enough. It is not fair for people to live the way they are living here.  And maybe the hardest part of it all, every single one of us that lives with more than we need is contributing to so much of the world living with less than they need. Capitalism has created a society full of competition and a constant desire for more. While we are trying to buy nicer cars, bigger tv’s, the cutest clothes and take the best vacations people in El Salvador and so many other parts of the world are trying to put food on the table. They are trying to survive day after day in the hardest of working conditions. People are being killed, education and health care is not sufficient and problem after problem rest on top of each other. All encompassing of the pain of poverty.

Stuctural change needs to come, but ownership and empowerment might be the most important. Understanding, seeing, feeling and entering into mutual humanness together. We are falling in love with the people of this country and as we fall in love we start to feel their pain with them. We are not finding answers to questions, only finding more questions. How do we liberate the oppressed, how do the oppressed liberate the oppressed? What does it mean for these people to have such suffering yet still be so full of joy and love? How do they continue to have faith? And the scariest of all the questions… what is our place in all of this?

For now.. it is to be human together. To love, and listen and share. And at least in some of the moments, to stop worrying about how different we are and start seeing how the same we are. Because the sameness is what will bind us together, will allow us to fall in love, will allow us to see how our choices are affecting their lives. Maybe.. slowly, step by step we can let go a little so they can have a little more. Come to El Salvador. Go to Africa or Haiti or Nicaragua or any of the endless countries that is filled with poverty. Have your heart broken, fall in love and then let it change you. That’s what we are trying our hardest to do. To be all the way in this so that when we get on the planes to fly back home we can make small changes. Not so that we can be distraught and pessimistic and mad at the world for the rest of our lives. So we can share, and love and understand what it really means to be human. So we can see that there is more to this life than the little world we are living in at home.

Just some food for thought… that is where my brain is. Every day El Salvador seeps deeper into my heart. Just like this community that I am living in. My whole body itches and my clothes don’t smell particularly wonderful but I could not be asking for a more meaningful experience. Ill be in the campo learning, loving, questioning and trying to get over my fear of cockraoches, outdoor toilets, constant Spanish and Salvadoran food for the next week. Ill be back with lots of stories and thoughts and love exploding out of my heart as always.

Thank you for listening. For getting me here. For cheering me on the whole way. <3