Rain, love, pain, tears and frustration

I wrote about this stuff getting heavy a couple days ago (scroll down… didn’t get to post it til today) about being safe, and now my heart is thinking about a whole new kind of safe.

And it has only started to weigh on me more. My heart hurts today. My eyes feel full of tears and I am so worried about the people who have become such a part of my soul here.

First let me introduce you to some special people.

Christopher… 2 years old. Big brown eyes, spiked hair, cutest “I did something wrong” grin, full body giggle, pants that don’t fit him and so much love in his heart. He rode on my shoulders and laughed the whole time, kissed me on the cheek after I put lip gloss on his lips, giggled with me while we rode the scariest toy in the world together and runs from me when I chase him to love on him and plant besos all over his adorable little face.

Nina Santos, her eyes are young, her face looks weathered, her soul is full of love and wisdom. Everyday she walks 45 minutes up hill to come to the Comedor. She cooks and organizes the woman and makes everything run as it should. She loves us and welcomes us with the best hugs every Monday and Wednesday. She sits at the lunch table with us and laughs with us and then lets us into the pain and beauty and truth of her life. Of being a woman and working all day then going home only to work more. Of her father who was an alcoholic. Of not being paid enough. Of supporting her children to go to school even though she couldn’t. She tells us we are the best they’ve had. She tells us when it rains they don’t have drinking water or water to bathe in because they use the river water and after rain it is dirty for days. She is Christopher’s grandmother.

Dorotea, a women who cares for children and grandchildren both. Who has experienced so much pain. Who relies on the 5 am bus ride to the city for her grandson to work during the week and for her to work twice a week to buy food for the family. She cries as she tells us the story, with her two daughters younger than me sitting next to her with their babies and her grandchildren who lost their mom listening on. Knowing the pain, feeling it with her, holding her as she shares the pain.

Nina Reina, my mom during Praxis weekend. Always smiling and loving taking care of her family. She cooks and cleans and loves them. She laughs with and at me all the time at the Comedor. She is the strongest, the most beautiful and loves like none other.

The list goes on of these beautiful amazing people that I love. Love them with me. Imagine them as part of your heart and your family. Imagine them just as you do each other, best friends, family, inspirations. Please, try to think of them as people who are close to you, not just as people, far away in a different country.

It has been raining since Monday. The hardest and longest rain I have experienced. And we are cozy in our homes with warm socks and blankets and hot tea.

These people that I have come to love are not.

They do not have houses that protect them from the rain. Water leaks from the ceilings and comes in through the makeshift doors. They do not have enough blankets. No heat source. They cannot leave their houses. Landfalls block their roads which are already in ruins because of the rain. Crops are uprooted. Days of work are lost. Rivers of trash run through their yards and sometimes their homes. People are killed in these storms.

First I was sad and heart broken and worried. I couldn’t go to Cedro on Wednesday because the road was too much of a mess to get there. That’s when I realized how much I love these people, how much I rely on them to give me hope in all of this pain. Because yes they may be matierally poor but they are the richest when it comes to faith, joy, love and hope. They have it in a way that I have never understood and they spread it to us.

Today when I woke up and it was still raining I got angry. They are not protected from nature that the whole world has to experience. They are cold and hungry, wet, unable to work, stuck in their homes and have no refuge. The lives they live are completely unjust. We have big tv’s, nice cars, more clothes than we know what to do with and think of rainy days as fun and cozy. That is bull crap. It is not fair that some people in this world have so much while others don’t have enough to survive a natural strom. I am mad at the United States, I am mad at myself. I am mad that this world is so unequal for reasons that I can never understand.

I have fallen in love with these people, the same way I love friends and family at home. Because they are exactly the same. Full of love and with so much to give, here for me, special to share with, beautiful and human. And for that same reason they should have the same. They should have access to houses that protect them from the rain, streets and crops that aren’t ruined because of the rain. One big screen tv could fix the houses of so many to protect them. But ya know why we have so much and they have so little.. because every time we hear about a people that are suffering, they are just a distant group of people. That we can dehumanize and feel for for a mere second and then move on with our lives.

Its not so easy when you know them and love them. When they are your family. When they give you hope and love and faith in incredible amounts. When they teach you and hold you and mean the world to you.

Rain is not something that is just fun and cozy or an excuse not to go outside or something that lets us wear fun colored rain boots and curl up and watch movies. Rain is life or death for so many parts of this world, so many more than just Cedro. And it is not ok that we can spend money on things that are completely unnecessary and continue to search for more when they don’t even have enough to survive through a storm. We cannot continue to just live like this, in our bubble, disconnected and desensitizing the people that are far away from us.

We need to fall in love with people so we can understand the truth of this pain, we need to go outside of ourselves, we need to rethink our priorities and work for social justice, equality, protection and love across the world. We can no longer support flat screen tv’s and luxury cars and extravagant vacations and designer shoes when people do not have homes.

And I cannot just be angry and heart broken. I have to find a way to make this meaningful. I have to find a way to run with this love and hope and keep it with me. They give me hope and love, they teach me to hold on and find meaning and have faith. But sometime I will have to leave them. And just without seeing them for four days I am down in the dumps, angry at the conditions and equality of this world, in tears that I cannot be with them and that this life is so painful. But I will leave them for a long time before I know it and I think part of my responsibility is learning how to balance this anger, pain, sadness and awareness of the injustice with a hope and faith that change can come. I have to find a balance between using this frustration to create change but not letting it debilitate me, cause that is not the point.

So for now this is the best I do. Try to imagine these people. Try to imagine the injustice they are experiencing. Think of the way you react to rain and then think of how it affects others. Think of how they way you live your life affects the way others do. Try to find something in you that can change, that can give and love and understand more. Because that bubble that we live in is not reality. And it is not fair that we live in it. Im going to say it again, come to El Salvador or any other place in the world that can teach you all of this, they will find their way into your heart and you will never ever be the same.

And this is the quote waiting for me when I open my email..

“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come.”