meet my new roommate

sometimes with weeks like these, you head out for dinner and find yourself taking a new kitty home.

meet my new roommate.

matt (my bro) will appreciate this one.

my neighbor nate (fellow mccer, but admittedly not a cat admirer) saw her in action last night and christened her "spazma."

i will not accept that!

but i will have to accept that i am now one of those people who posts pics of their pet as if they were a newborn human infant.

i think her name is shiloh. a name that popped into my head as nate was leaving.

so i just checked the meaning and it is:

shiloh -

"resting place;"

a word with similar meaning to the hebrew shalom -meaning "(holistic) peace."

yep. that's sounds like the message that must be being sent.

while we´re waiting

just killing time til i have more news.


here are some pics from a via crucis (stations of the cross) activity that we participated in with the emu students yesterday.


for the non-catholics among you, the stations of the cross corrospond to various "steps" that christ took in the passion leading up to resurrection day, including judgement of pontious pilot, when jesus stumbles, when he is helped to carry the cross, etc.

various orgs and schools participate in the via crucis activity headed up by centro atencion al migrante, a catholic migrant-support and advocacy org with branches in guatemala, honduras and the mexian/us border. in their version of the via crucis, each org is to relate the "station"/with the situation of the migrant.



the seminary, and consequently the students, were assigned "jesus is crucified," and so were to relate that to the migrant´s experience.

we came up with a photo drama - each student would show a photo, read the caption on the back, and hand it over to be stapled to the cross.

• "Jesus is crucified when social injustice forces families to separate in migration."
• "Jesus is crucified when social injustice forces families to separate in deporation."

• "Jesus is crucified when we build physical boarders."
• "Jesus is crucified when we construct boarders of discrimination."

• "Jesus is cruficified when other countries create economies that rely on the migrant´s labor, without providing a legal means to contribute it."
• "Jesus is crucified when other countries want to enjoy our (read by Guatemalan) music and food, but don't us ourselves within their country."

• "Jesus is crucified when the migrant risks his/her life in searching for a better life."
• "Jesus is crucified when the migrant dies trying."

Other students held posters with facts:

• On Guatemalan deportations in 2007 (27,000 - twice that of 2006) and the loss of family income that provides to poor families in Guatemala who had been receiving remitances from their migrant loved ones at an average of $300 per month.

• On the impact of unjust trade policies - like US-instigated CAFTA that actually further contribute to migration, as local farmers leave their farms when they cannot compete with cheap, US-subsidized import crops, like the Guatemalan staple, corn.

• On the number of migrants, 460, who died last year in the intent.

Here are some highlights of the activities:



Watching some of the other Stations...

Setting Up the SEMILLA/EMU station...

note: for the spanish savvy, yes it should read juzga - judges.

And, action...

yep, i`m here

hi. i`m here.

i just wanted to break the silence to thank all of you who have been praying and sending me little messages of encouragement at the nudging of my cuz.

don`t have much news yet, but i should know somthing more this week.

i will just say for now, that there has been at least one potential miracle/piece of the answer in some of this.

yes, i am being purposefully vague! sorry if that is frustrating. i should have both more answers and more freedom to share them soon.

thanks for being such a support.

-sm

confession

i feel like i have to quit.

too tired, too stressed, too behind all the time, too inadequete for the levels of responsibility, compassion, wisdom I would need to have to do my job well.

every day ends with the same exhausted body - a pattern of work, bed, work. which wouldn´t be so hard to live with if at the end of each day i didn´t still have lists of "to do" hardly dented. people waiting for answers, documents, meetings. students, staff, our board. tomorrow we start staff evals. god help me. i am no where near prepared to start those. and i have no motivation to carry me through the night to fininsh the preparations. again, all i can think of is bed.

today a new student asked me about how it was making friends here. i tried not to laugh, and to give an answer that wasn´t as stark as "who has time for friends." it´s not that i feel a lack of friends. in that sense, i am blessed to be an introvert and don´t require much in that regard.

but time to think, to feel, to feel like a human being again. this i miss.

i am crumbling.

i feel like i have to quit.

i will do my best not to.

but please don´t disown me if i do.

May God bless you with tears...

This world is screwed up.

And I am at war with myself.

My job is to know. To know the story behind the story - of the way the world was, of the way it is, at least as it relates to the context of Guatemala. It is a story riddled with pain, injustices, savvy cover-ups and glaring hypocrisy. If this is what learning brings, I am not sure I can take anymore of it.

I vacillate between weeping helplessness, at times teetering dangerously near cynicism, to a stoic delivery of the facts: "and over here is where Bishop Gerardi was assassinated in his parish home by smashing his head in with 18 blows of a brick two days after releasing the Recovery of Historical Memory Project report, a 1500 page testimonial account of civilian massacres and killings suffered at the hands of the state duing the 36 year internal conflict."

Last night with a group of students I showed Discovering Dominga, a video I should have watched by now, one of many that the program owns and that we show to student groups. It is a video tracing the former life of a young woman, now known as Denise, but formerly as Dominga.

Dominga was a young girl in Rabinal, one of the 400+ indigenous Mayan communities massacred by the Guatemalan army during the years of La Violencia, ("The Violence") . As her parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors were being snatched up by the army, later tortured and killed, she fled with her baby sister on her back. High into the mountains, for days without food, trying to keep her baby sister alive by squeezing berry juice in her mouth. But she couldn´t.

Dominga was eventually found by a group of nuns at at orphanage, and sent to live with a new family in the U.S. Years later, a mother now of two young boys, married to a white-bred Mid-west Iowan, she is overtaken by memories, the desire to know her Mayan people, remaining relatives, to ask and learn what happened, to find the remains of her parents, and give them a proper burial.

She travels to Guatemala several times, and you watch her identity be thrown into a state of crisis. She has forgotten Achi, her native language. But she remembers he mother, the way she smelled the cloth in the market. She remembers how to wrap a corte around her waist and make beautiful round tortillas. She remembers fishing with her father - the way he cast out the net and the would bring home buckets of silver fish.

Scenes cut to she and her husband researching the cause of the 36 year civil war in Guatemala. They find that Guatemala had a peaceful, democratically elected government in place. They learn that the US CIA staged a coup and put in a military government. That the generals who lead the massacres, kidnappings, tortures and extra-judicial killings were US School of the America trained.

They begin to share this and Dominga´s double-life with their church. Parishioners where understandable horrified - why didn´t we know that our government what implicated in this?



My mind cut back to Iraq, to Israel and Palastine, to Colombia. Will we say the same in 20 years? We didn´t know that we were so involved in the killing of innocent people. In placing dictators in power. How could this have happened? And how could we have supported it?

Her heart breaks and you watch it happen. No, does not break. Is crushed. You see scenes of her limp body draped over the ground, weathered hands of stranger-relatives caressing her hair, lighting a fire and candles near her on the soil of her people, praying ancient prayers of mourning for the dead. How could this have happened to innocent people? My parents? Who am I?


The content of my work, the context of this place, I fear for the two extremes of what is could bring. I fear on the one hand that it may destroy me like Dominga, smashing my heart to pieces, with the more I learn cutting me off more from places and people who once were home, leaving me limp in mourning and despair, unsure of my place, certain of only the ache inside. Or on the other hand, harden and harden me, make me a talking head of facts and figures, unaffected by the legless man who begs as I cross the passarela, the bones of the slaughtered lying on forensic scientists tables as I translate the facts of a community´s massacre. I need both composure and a soft heart. I want to feel, but I am afraid.

Yesterday, a Presbyterian minister, who is also indigenous Mayan explained to our group the essence of his Mayan spirituality, which for him is compatible with his faith in Christ. Hearing him, I think it sounds more Christian than Christianity. He had a beautiful way of speaking -using metaphores, pictures, our Christian-ese would call it parables. At one point it took him repeating himself twice for me to understand and do my best to retain the beauty if his words while transfering them into English.

"Spirituality is to feel, it is to experience. It is not just to know. Look at this waterfall. You can see that is it beautiful. You can sand at the edge and say, that is beautiful. And that would be true. But get in. Let it cascade over your body. Now you truly know what beautiful it, for you have experienced it."

"The first step in Spirituality, knowing God, is letting yourself be marvelled by life and what is around you. The trees, the animals, the birds. Be marvelled."

"Then you cultivate it. Spirituality is not magic, it is not planting corn and then there is a harvest of corn. You plant, you nurture, you weed, you fertilize, you water, the sun comes, and then there is a harvest, fruit is born. So it is with Spirituality. "

"And if you cultivate this, it is like spending much time in the sun, in the light. So that when it becomes dark, you are not afraid or destroyed by it. You make it through the dark because you have the memory of the light, you have guarded the light in you for the dark times."

So this group of students just left today, and on their way out, one of their team leaders gave me a copy of a poem he had read, through tears the other day, as we left the Guatemala city garbage dump, with images of people scavenging through mounds of refuse, for bits to recycle and sell, salvage, repair. Afterwards, I asked him for a copy of it.

A Franciscan Benediction

May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
Amen.


And as he left, I offered him my job.

Tis the season + Oct & Nov

My guess is that my unfaithfulness to tack updates here means that the readership of two people has now plummeted to zero people. Alas. I will still post some pics here for posterity’s sake if for no other reason…

So here’s the Cliff’s notes version of the past few months…

October 2007:

Left Guatemala on Oct 19th for a 2 week, MCC “orientation” in lovely and quaint Akron, Pennsylvania, 6 months into my 3 year term. (The orientation session scheduled in April, pre-departure, would have been ideal, but it had been cancelled, thus, I was scheduled to head back to the US 6 months after the fact for my orientation!).

If nothing else, it was a good excuse to see some lovely fall colors and to meet some great people headed to every nook and cranny of the world.

The ladies– a USian, a German Canadian, a Paupa New Guinian and a Columbian were able to successfully finish the Aryan Jesus puzzle. Good job ladies. We talked about coloring him in a little to make him a bit more ethnically accurate, but alas, it was time to snack again.


Gave myself another whack-10- inches-off haircut. Thank goodness.

And had a mini-day trip from PA to NY to see my musically-gifted friend Rachel on an aptly-destined MCC sanctioned trip to NYC one Saturday during orientation. Rachel is pointing out her apartment building from the ? story of the Viacom building.

November 2007:

Immediately after MCC orientation, hopped on a flight to Chicago to embark on a 2.5 week visit in the US and Canada to promote the CASAS program with one of the CASAS Spanish teachers- Marta. (This is an annual part of my job I learned about after I came to Guatemala!)

We visited 12 universities, 5 churches, stayed with 8 families, had 25+ meetings, presented to 10 classes and logged 3500 miles in the rental car, driving from Chicago to Kansas, to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, to Ontario, Canada, to Michigan, and back to Chicago. Next year I promise you I will not be so overzealous. It was muy cansado to say the least.

I have a powerpoint work presentation that I will next try to upload if it works. And it will go HERE.

We ended in Chicago two days before US Thanksgiving, so while Marta headed back to Guatemala, I was able to take the train to Grand Rapids, had a fun day with cuz Jolanda and met up with bro Mike to head home to Ludington for Thanksgiving. This was all an unexpected perk this year, as I left for the three years thinking I would not be back until 2010.

Anyway, home involved a few whirlwind days of …

A little card playing…

A little bowling…

A little bit of…well…my brothers and their antics:

A first attempt at making a turkey solo (no pics, you+ll have to take my work for it!) and an extended fam Thanksgiving/Christmas.

And came back to Guate to a surprised-ly newly painted living and dining room courtesy of my dear MCCer counterparts!

December:
I’ll steal an excerpt from a letter back home that sets the December tone a bit…
If you’ve already read the letter, feel free to skip to the pics -

Christmastime prep in Guatemala City:
“Grocery stores begin filling with larger than average piles of papaya, pineapple, pears, raisins and prunes that will later be chunked and simmered in big pots with cinnamon to make the Guatemalan Christmastime beverage ponche. Ofertas (“sales”) boast “bargain” prices of 40 Quetzales (about $6) for 2 lb bags of imported Hershey’s chocolate chips. Piles of fruitcakes in estilo ingles (“British style”) find their place next to the typical pan dulces (sweet breads) in the bakery isle. The economically well-to-do reach for corn maseca to make tamales, timely fruits for ponche, along with a sampling of imported oddities, evidence of globalization hitting the grocery cart.

Neighborhood tiendas (tiny corner stores), pile stacks of firecrackers along store fronts and sprinkle the sidewalk with pine fir nettles. The senoras at the vegetable and tortilla stand do double duty filling orders for homemade tamales, employing the help of girls with strong arms and good balance to deliver heavy baskets filled with the banana-leaf wrapped Christmastime specialties – steamed corn flour filled with bits of chicken, tomato sauce, green olives, and prunes.

I watched all of this, feeling pushed out of my resident groove into again the role of spectator, as new sights, smells, sounds, and traditions took over the routine. At the seminary, we celebrated our annual Christmastime convivio (“gathering”), a morning of dinanmicos (group team building games), a devotional, going out to a restaurant for carne asada (grilled beef steak and chorizo sausage), exchanging gifts for our amigos secretos (“secret friends”) and receiving Christmas baskets filled with bags of dried black beans, rice, powdered milk, sugar, coffee, cooking oil, salt, and a bag of angelitos (“marshmallows”), and closed down the 15th of December to reopen the 2nd of January. Some businesses close for a full month.

In spite of an overwhelming quantity of work to plan for two University groups and the Spring semester all to take place in January, I took advantage of (fellow MCCer) Beth’s family being in the country to visit over Christmas to join them on a couple excursions the week leading up to Christmas– to the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal in the Peten jungle and to Lake Atitlan, a crater lake formed by a collapsed volcanic cone, surrounded by volcanic peaks.”

So yes, took a mental health week and rested for a couple days on lovely Lake Atitlan – a crater lake formed by a collapsed volcanic cone, surrounded by lovely volcanic peaks…



And went to the ruins of the Ancient Mayan capital of Tikal in the Peten jungle with the family Peachy:

Beth and a half excavated temple

Our awesome guide Daisy:

Climbing up....and the view of the Peten jungle from atop the tallest climbable temple:

Random collection of Tikal shots ahead. Enjoy:

Daisy explained to us that the ancient Mayans used the rock that was readily availble to build most of their structures. Which in the case of Tikal, turned out to be limestone. Here it is crumbling in my hand. It is a wonder there are still ruins to see a couple thousand years later!

Passed through the nearby island of Flores and paid homage to one of Gallo’s hundreds of Christmas tree displays stationed around Guatemala (Gallo = “rooster” and is Guatemala’s national beer monopoly), before hopping on my 10 hour night bus back to the city.



Got home to the city and got a bug to get baking Midwest Christmas-style. So…

Made cookies…


And more cookies…

Christmas Eve night fell peacefully…

and then Christmas announced itself at 11:55pm with firecrackers and fireworks.

Another letter excerpt:
“I woke to a war zone, or so it seemed. I glanced at the clock. 11:55pm. Five minutes until Christmas.

I made it to the living room, plugging my ears as windows rattled and the blasts pounded in my chest. Out my windows, there was a literal panoramic display of fireworks – coming from rooftops all over the city and sending flashes of color to every inch of the sky. In the street, teens, kids, young men were setting off every type of noisemaking, light-producing firecracker know to human kind in the streets (all of which I am sure would be illegal in Michigan, perhaps in the entire US!). The streets filled with firecracker shrapnel and smoke.

By 2:30am the last of the firecrackers of the night had been set off, and I went back to bed, waking an hour later than usual at 7am, to another deafening and unusual sound – complete silence. The sun was bright and high in the sky, but there wasn’t a single pedestrian, water truck, bell-tousled ice-cream cart, newspaper seller, barking dog. Normally at this hour, it is a bustling street packed with people, vehicles, and vendors. I went to get ready, and came back to check on the status of the silence at 8am. Still all was at peace. At 9. Again, nothing. I started calling fam, and in the middle of the conversation with my sister, the silence was broken. It was 11:55am Christmas Day and apparently it was time for a firecracker reprise!”

Later in the afternoon, the Peachys made Pho (“Fuh”),Vientamese beef and rice noodle soup to truly mix up our ex-pat Christmas celebrations. Mmm… Pho…


Drank steaming fruit ponche (traditional Christmastime beverage with pineapple, pears, papaya, raisens and cinnamen) from my landlady, Dona Chonita:

And topped off the evening with a lively game of spoons and, yes, Christmas cookies…


The end.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are on your way to a great New Year.

Over and out til 2008.

-sm

forensic anthropologists

the other day i took our fall semester students to fafg-the forensic anthropology foundation of guatemala. (this npr link also has a mini slide show)

these are people who visit indigenous communities throughout guatemala, speaking with survivors, to aid in locating and digging up bodies piled in mass graves.

guatemala has a terrible recent history - 36 years of "the violence," begun by a CIA-led coup, when a u.s. trained and supported, guatemala army "disappeared," tortured and killed tens of thousands of guatemalans and massacred entire indigenous communities - men, women, children, elderly, infants when the word to blanketly justify such atrocities wasn´t our current-day "terrorism," but the generation-removed term "communism."

we waited as the armed guards checked my i.d. after a few minutes, they gave me the ok and we started in. it was hard to ignore the piles of empty wooden coffins that formed morbid columns banking the entrance.

we first watched footage of mass grave excavation. of wailing mayan women standing at the edge of an uncovered pit, wrapping their rainbow-colored woven shawls over their faces, as they caught glimpses of a telltale shred of clothing that put a name to the bones being uncovered as those of their husbands, mothers, neighbors, children.

laura led us into the forensic lab - rudementary by northamerican standards - where cardboard boxes of remains stood in piles to greet us - case numbers, names of villages printed in black marker. beyond the boxes, a dozen tables shrouded with blue sheets, and on them skeletons being painstakenly pieced together.

laura led us to the first table. "here is a heavy trauma victom. gunshots here in the bottom of the skull, here in the neck, here in the spine, the hip, the rib cage. here you can see lascerations in the chest area." we watched as she picked up the skull to show the bullet projectory. our eyes rested on the long slices in the bones of the rib cage - the work of a machete. we counted 9 bullet wounds.

we moved to a table with soil - covered indigenous women´s clothing, a huipil, a corte (mayan blouse and skirt), a hair cord, sandals, a woven baby blanket.

"here is a 30 year old women, and her baby. the woman was shot here in the head. the baby died 3 days later, we think of starvation, in her mothers arms."

we moved to another table.

"here we have the remains of at least 5 victims, as noted by the five right femers we have found. as you can see all show signs of fire damage." they were burned to death.

"here are the remains of a 2-3 year old. we can tell because the bones had just begun to fuse." we watched as she picked up pieces of the crushed toddler´s skull.

a social work masters student asked if the workers themselves had any support or counseling for their mental health withthe kind of work that they do. a smile from laura. "well, no. it doesn´t affect us like that. the more we see the more we are motivated to do our part to see that justice is done. to make sure this never happens again in our country."

as the students began to file out, i hugged alma and kissed her check - the traditional greeting. she was working on the case of the women and child. although i had only seen her 3 times before this, she seemed an old friend. "how are you?, " I asked as she carefully brushed the earth off of the tiny baby´s bones. "good. when are you going to start translating? you should have this down now" "next time, i think."

we made small talk. with the weight of brutal death all around.

i had fought the lump in my throat several times during our "visit" - my 4th time to this place with student groups. and i felt relief and gratefulness each time the tears welled up, each time i swallowed hard. it still impacted me as it should to see these things. next time, when i try the translation, i hope i have to stop to cry.

please god never let me become accustomed to this.