"The same world"

The closeness in a friendship. The exchange of the dollar. The distance of our systems. The friendship, the dollar, and our systems. I felt the power in each of these this past weekend.

Friday through Sunday, I stayed with a Salvadoran family in their home. I have visited their home twice a week since I arrived here, but this time I stayed longer and became closer. The friendship between this host family and I grew stronger. We ate every meal together as a family and dissolved the barriers of culture, language and age. We laughed a lot. We shared stories. We asked simple questions. “Do you have siblings?” “How old are they?” “Do they live far away?” And, “What is your work during the week?” We felt the weight of awkward silences. We shared photos together of our families and friends. We looked at each other in the eye. We smiled when all else failed.

On Saturday night, those smiles defined us. After a long day of working at our friendship, I found myself closer than I had expected to be. I found myself closer, not only to this Salvadoran family, but to the reality of our broken economic systems. That reality came between us in their humble home, just off of the busy moving streets in Mariona.

On the walls of their home hang posters of Oscar Romero. I have long admired posters such as these and was eager to share that admiration with them. They were eager to tell me the history behind these posters. I found out that they sell these posters, as well as shirts with images of Romero. The mother of the house told me that, if I wanted, she could show me some of the posters and shirts in case I wanted to buy some. I could sense hesitation in her offer. She seemed uncertain of how I would react. But I had no uncertainty; I wanted to buy a poster and maybe a shirt as well. I assured her that I would love to look over her collection.

Before she took out the posters, she explained to me that she sells the posters and the shirts for the organization that creates them. When looking over the options, I quickly found a poster and a shirt that I wanted to buy. Her six-year-old son then asked her to show me the lotions and shampoos that she had. She again seemed hesitant. But her son asker her again. She smiled. I smiled and assured her again that I would be happy to look over what else she had. And so she opened another box with the lotions and shampoos. She took out each soap to show me and explained to me how she had become involved with selling these products as well. She kept referring to her “situation”, which I took to be a way of expressing her economic situation. Soon I became aware of my being the customer in this exchange, and she the vendor. These are not roles that she meant to introduce in our friendship. This is not a role that I realized I had entered. And yet there we were. And a new closeness formed between us, a more uncomfortable sort of closeness. That lack of comfort is not inherent in trade; but accompanies an exchange in which there is great disparity between my wealth and hers. We had managed to become friends beyond that great inequality, until I took out my wallet.

It cost nine dollars for the shirt and the poster. I had a ten-dollar bill. I was not about to wait for change. I gave her the ten-dollar bill. And she looked at me unsure of how to respond. I told her to keep the change. And I can hardly imagine what my face must have looked like to her in that moment. I have never been a good liar. My emotions are my expressions. And I know what I was feeling in that moment. I was feeling the uncomfortable closeness of the inequality in that exchange of the dollar. I was feeling the power in that exchange and the inequality of that power.

In that pause, after she took the bill and before I told her to keep the change, our eyes connected. I tried to share a smile with her, but my smile failed because it could not cover the tearing confusion in my heart. Yes, confusion in my heart, not my head. My head was not confused, my head knew exactly what was occurring, but my heart did not know how to compensate for the brokenness of that exchange. That painful confusion, which is lost in the distance of every other purchase I make within the global capitalist system, was brought close with that one purchase.

Going to my backpack to grab that ten-dollar bill meant that I had a wallet filled with money. That money meant that I had enough to spend in this country without much thought. While this Salvadoran family cooked meals for me all weekend and told me how expensive milk and cheese are to buy, I had money in my wallet. I had money in my wallet for posters and shirts. Milk and cheese are some of my favorite foods. They are not too expensive for me to buy and my body does not ache from the lack of their nutrition. I eat and drink them without much thought.

And in that pause that she and I shared, with the failed smile and confused sadness, I tangibly felt power in my hand. I felt power folded in that ten-dollar bill. I had the power to buy another shirt from her and maybe then she could put milk or cheese on their table at their next meal. I had the power to buy only what I wanted, thus giving her what was convenient for me to share, not nearly close to what she needed. And this woman, this friend, this Salvadoran mother of mine, waited in that pause with a failed smile of her own. In that smile she tried to communicate that she would return my change if I wanted it, but her smile also failed. It failed to cover the need that that extra dollar could only begin to fill.

Neither of us was being wholly honest. Me with my guilt. Her with her innocent wanting. How disgusting it felt for me, at twenty-one years old, having suffered nothing like the suffering of this woman, to hold a monetary power that she will likely never have. How uncomfortable it is when I can no longer pretend that we have nothing in common, this Salvadoran mother and I. How painful it is to feel at once close through laughter and painfully closer in the disparity of our monetary wealth.

And in that closeness, I am the one who returned to my wallet that night to find twenty dollars remaining. Twenty dollars left in my wallet, not hers. Twenty dollars in my hands, not hers. None for milk nor cheese. None for nutrition. None for her only six-year-old son. All for me.

But this is not about me and my suffering. This not about my guilt alone. And this is not about her and her suffering. This is not only about her reality. In the exchange of that dollar, it is not only my guilty reality nor her reality of poverty. Instead, my reality and her reality became our reality. Her reality is a part of my reality. In my college classes and my peace loving meetings and potlucks, I can do my best to prove the interconnectedness of humanity. I can use big words. I can create beautiful dreams of hand holding masses and pray for the unity of all people. But this closeness is no theory. This kind of closeness is no prayer. This closeness is not always a beautiful image. This closeness is our reality in a world defined by globalization, where the women of this country often make the shirts that I buy, and where my wealth is their poverty. This a reality that I hide from and dodge with every material comfort and distant purchase that I make choosing instead to hold my privilege closer than relationships with these people.

This global capitalist system, whether I believe in it our not, is alive in the uncomfortable closeness that I felt in the reality that this Salvadoran woman and I share. As Juan Luis Segundo S.J. said, “The world that is satisfying to us is the same world that is utterly devastating to them.”

Mariona 2.4.11

Two full days each week, I spend my time in Mariona. Mariona is the location of my praxis site, and my time there is deeply connected to one of the pillars of this program, to walk with the people of El Salvador. While at Mariona, I am with two other Casa students and a family of Salvadorans. We arrive at around 9AM, depending on traffic, and we leave at around 3:30PM. I spend those six hours each time speaking in spanish. We make mistakes. We struggle. And we laugh a lot. From day one, these people have told us that their home is our home.

Mariona, is home to the largest prison in El Salvador called La Esperanza. Gang violence is a significant problem in the area. Consequently, we spend our time primarily within two households (in a small row of houses just off of a big street). The kids in these families are rarely, I mean really rarely, allowed to play outside. This means that we often are not outside either. And while in the late afternoon heat of this country, indoor time is often a blessing, this time is also an experience in the reality of these people. Gang violence and the speeding trucks and buses near their house are enough to confine them inside. And leaving my privileged life in the States, where I am able to walk where I want to walk, I now spend time aware of those walls in Mariona, I feel the restlessness that can accompany sitting, I feel the difference in a smaller home, I begin to challenge the comfort I've claimed in my large spaces. My large spaces. My comfort. Their home. My home.

For the rest of the semester and my time here, I will continue to learn from these people. This is an outline of what that classroom looks like:

Mondays: Generally, we stay in Mariona at the house of a couple with two children. They are all amazing, and so very beautiful. He is a candle maker, to make money. And he also is a gardener, again, to make money and support their family. He doesn't consider himself "employed", because neither jobs are careers. When in Mariona we will learn how to make candles with him and also how to make some native Salvadoran foods with his wife. Much of our days with them are spent talking. Learning about their lives during the Civil War, their faith and their everyday struggles.

Some Mondays throughout the semester, we will travel with him to rural artisan cooperatives, which he voluntarily aids in their business. In the late afternoon, on the Mondays when we are not visiting cooperatives, we will have creative time with local neighborhood kids (about 9 of them between the ages of 4 and 11), which can be music or crafts or dancing or games. This week, we played "charadas" or charades and "vaya pescar" or go fish. The kids loved it and so did their parents.

Wednesdays: Each Wednesday we will work with this man's aunt, who lives down the block from him. She practices massages and energy workshops as well as meditation. She has taken classes to learn this practice, and invites people in the community to join her workshops in order to work through the traumas they experienced during the Civil War and also the daily traumas they deal with in living in poverty. After lunch with her family, we visit for awhile and then teach an english class to those same nine children from the community.

This classroom is unlike any I have ever visited. The family, in their generous love, completely makes the work what it is. They are so welcoming and friendly, and willing to talk openly about their struggles and the state of their society here.

Tonight I will spend the weekend in their homes. I leave at 4PM and will return Sunday afternoon. And love continues to grow in my heart.