Leaving our Comfort Zone
Our trip to the Episcopal Diocese of El Salvador with Episcopal Relief and Development
by the Rev. Louise Howlett, Chaplain, St. Anne's Episcopal School, Middletown, Delaware, and Mr. G. Lindsay Brown
Above: Language and cultural barriers dissolved when Lindsay Brown did magic tricks for children in the mountaintop town of El Congo. Brown and Howlett were inspired by the way that the Salvadorans faced the challenges before them with hopeful determination, dignity, and joy. Click the photo to see it larger.
In 2008, Sherrye Henry from the Episcopal Relief and Development (ER-D) office in NYC visited our diocesan convention here in Delaware and asked if I would like to see some of their work in Central America.
Lindsay and I support ER-D financially and believe strongly in their work. They are careful to make every dollar count by working through churches, priests and lay leaders to effect practical change that improves the lives of communities materially and spiritually.
This sounded like a great opportunity; nevertheless, although we are very committed to social justice and global awareness intellectually and financially, we were nervous because we had not traveled in the developing world or gotten our hands on many specific projects beyond serving meals at a local men’s shelter, Andrew’s Place, or organizing clothing or food drives for our schools.
The invitation to travel with a small group, to be hosted by the Diocese of El Salvador and chaperoned throughout the trip, was the perfect chance for us to take the leap we had resisted and go beyond what felt safe and familiar. To be honest, I half expected to be depressed by poverty and violence and guilt-ridden by our own affluence when we went on our brief trip in November, 2009, but instead what we experienced was hope, inspiration, and a deeper sense of commitment. What follows is a brief diary of our visit along with some reflections along the way.
Wednesday, 11 November, 2009
We arrived in San Salvador, the capitol of El Salvador, on a Wednesday afternoon after a smooth and on-time flight from JFK. The country is warm and green, lots of agriculture and dramatic volcanic mountains jutting upward. Not much evidence of the recent flooding and devastation we heard about this week on the news, but we’ll see that on Saturday when we head east toward the mudslides.
After getting settled in to our (very nice) hotel, we were off to the diocesan office to meet with the Bishop of El Salvador who is also the Archbishop of Central America. Bishop Martin Barahona is a small man but full of energy, intelligence and humor. He shared the short, fifty-year history of the diocese and the province, the work that needs to be done to overcome the financial challenges of the church and some of the projects done with ER-D that we will see in the next few days.
This is such a small country (about the size of New Jersey or Massachusetts) and their time of revolution and terror is still quite recent. Where does their sense of hope and pride lie? What is their understanding of themselves and their role in the world? As Americans, we can’t understand what it might feel like to be small, unstable, unsure of your own role or destiny. It will be interesting to explore this idea as we travel and meet people and see their work. It’s startling to see guards with machine guns in front of every store, hotel, and even church, but the people have become used to this necessity. Most of the guards are friendly and greet you as they open the door with one hand and clutch a machine gun with the other!
Thursday, 12 November, 2009
Izalco was our first stop after picking up Dr. Daniela Flamenco at her home. She is just 32, an energetic, positive young Salvadoran woman. Daniela directs the ER-D team which includes herself as a medical doctor, a mother’s and children’s health educator, a mental health professional, an agricultural/nutrition expert, and a social worker. This team works closely with the local priest to support the families in the village, but they also serve anyone who comes to the clinic.
ER-D has built nine communities of houses, clinic, church, and community center or school. The homes and buildings were built after a series of three earthquakes in the 90’s. Izalco’s community is called San Marcos. The priest Padre Herman and Dr. Daniela showed us around with pride. San Marcos has a shared well with some water during the wetter seasons, but not enough for everyone. Water also comes through a nearby pipe every other day; they have to share with another village and take turns, so one of their goals is to plan a better water system to serve the families there. The community members have a shared garden and are planting food to feed themselves. Most of the adults work in the local coffee plantations so they haven’t been growing enough food to eat; this garden will make a big difference for them. We saw moms and children gathering kindling to cook on home fires; this too is an issue to address; the fires are dangerous and smoky and the trees need to be saved to protect the environment which is vulnerable to flooding and mudslides, so safer fuel sources and cooking methods will be introduced, along with better sanitation and composting. One thing at a time!
One success at San Marcos is a community cornmeal processor for making tortillas and pupusas, the local starch staple. It is a simple machine that grinds the corn and mixes it with water into a paste, saving hours of labor. In the church building, chairs and white boards were set up for evening literacy classes, and the open air community building hosts meetings of the committees that meet to work on agriculture, water, education, roads, etc.
We went on from Izalco to El Maizal, on a beautiful breezy plateau surrounded by volcanic mountains. El Maizal has some attractive brick buildings housing an agricultural training center with extensive gardens and orchards and fields used for teaching young people, especially young women, to farm sustainably. Virginia is the spiritual guide of the community. She leads the worship in the absence of a priest and teaches sewing, literacy and other skills classes to groups of women. Her husband Antonio is a visionary agricultural engineer, a retired professor. He teaches the agricultural classes to groups and they get to keep the proceeds of their plots. He has used the gardens and orchards to try out species borrowed from other continents and new to El Salvador but suited to their climate, many nutritious vegetables, fruits and nuts, as well as woods for building.
Behind the agricultural school is a neat street of homes in the sunshine with a school of several classrooms, grades K-6.
Our third stop today was after a drive up a mountain, first through sugar cane fields and then through slopes of coffee. We could see across the country to another mountain range over one side of the road, and down the other an incredible lake in a large volcanic crater. The lake is a gorgeous site but only the wealthy can get much access to the shore through their private docks and weekend homes. Finally we reached El Congo up a rutted road on a mountain top. A new young deacon, soon to be a priest, met us there. Our driver Arselio lives there and his daughter ran out to greet him. He has been kept busy driving us around. The priest has a little house but it’s still not habitable, no water or outhouse, and the entry is filled with dirt from a recent mudslide. It will require some money and hard labor to make it cozy. The villagers have to walk down the hill a way to get water. Their community center is unused and a mess, but the priest wants to put in a library and computer center. There is much to be done here. Yet the children are laughing and happy and most of the homes are well-tended. Hopefully the new priest will be able to help them work together to make some community improvements. One family has used an ER-D micro-loan and their house here to start a successful landscaping business. Their gardens are gorgeous.
Lindsay sat on a bench and started doing magic tricks with sticks and rocks from the ground. Soon he had a group of laughing children jumping up and down to see the tricks and to see themselves pictured on our digital camera as I clicked away. We have really been wishing we could speak Spanish and communicate directly with everyone, but kids are kids even in another culture and speaking another language; Lindsay knew just how to cross those barriers.
The Rt. Rev. Martin Barahona, Bishop of El Salvador and Archbishop of Central America, and the Rev. Louise Howlett, Chaplain, St. Anne's Episcopal School, Middletown, Delaware. Click the photo to see it larger.
Friday, 13 November, 2009
The Bishop and his daughter Elizabeth, a psychologist in San Salvador, are joining us today to serve as translators. A long drive to Baja Lempo, the Lempo being the largest river in El Salvador. We met with the representatives of the Mangla (Mangrove) Association, a conservation and sustainable agriculture education organization. They were passionate about their work to educate the people of the area, a former guerilla stronghold that had been undeveloped. They are working with several hundred families in coordination with ER-D on environmental issues in farming but there are several thousand families in the area so they hope to continue growing and having farmers teach each other.
From their office we drove inland through a somewhat swampy, flat area to meet with Padre Alex, a hard working priest. His church is an open air wooden structure with bamboo benches and palm leaf roof. A nearby concrete community building serves them when it rains. The local people all help build and maintain the church and plant the adjacent corn fields that the church owns. Padre Alex works with a young postulant to encourage the people.
We have not had time to visit all the ER-D communities but the ER-D team led by Dr. Daniela goes to all nine in a fifteen day rotation to meet patients, teach classes, and hear from the village committees and the priest about their work and their needs. In between they make plans, re-stock supplies and medicines and do relief work. This week they have been going to places where the flooding has washed people and homes away and taken out important bridges that make supply delivery possible. In San Marcos, people who gathered at the well to fill buckets listened to Dr. Daniela’s stories of the suffering, and they who had nothing extra to give, offered to go and help other towns dig out—the generosity they have received is being passed on.
In the afternoon we switched to some cultural, historical visiting. First we went to the University of Central America (UCA), a Jesuit university where several priests had been killed in the civil war. The Museum of Martyrs there contained a sobering display of photos and clothing with bullet holes and blood stains. The most famous figure and main focus of the museum is Archbishop Romero but we also saw pictures and heard the story of his friend Fr. Rutilio Grande whose murder helped Romero renew his faith and commitment to the plight of the people. There was also a display of the four Catholic churchwomen (two American) who were raped and killed, Romero’secretary who was chased down and killed, the six Jesuits killed in the dormitory at UCA, and the housekeeper and her daughter. The stupidity and audacity of the killings is amazing. The gardener who survived planted a beautiful rose garden with red roses for the priests and yellow for his wife and daughter, right at the site of the murders.
From there we went to the cancer hospital and the chapel where Romero was shot and killed in the act of celebrating Holy Communion. Across the lane is the simple little house where he lived alone. His words from just a month or so before he died are inscribed on the wall (loosely translated): “Martyrdom is too great a grace for me to offer to God but I hope my blood will be the seed of justice and hope for the Salvadoran people.” He certainly knew what was coming for him. He also said: “I wish to live my life as a love poem to God.” Although it’s been thirty years since his death, his picture is everywhere in the country and he remains a great inspiration to the people.
Our last stop was a memorial wall where 30,000+ names were inscribed of those murdered or “disappeared” during the civil war from 1979-91. In 1980 alone there were thousands and thousands, including Romero. Our driver Arselio’s father was listed too; he was killed in church when Arselio was two years old. Sadly, out of fear of the communist insurgents, the US was sending 500 million dollars a year to help fund this horrible slaughter. At dinner I asked Bishop Barahona where he was during this time. He explained that he had had some “disagreements with the government” and had left the country with his family in 1978, thinking to return within the year. Thirteen years later he was finally able to move back home from Panama and take on leadership in the diocese.
Saturday, 14 November, 2009
Today we drove an hour over some beautiful ridges, some shanty towns on the slopes at first and then opening into farms and lush, flowering jungles in the gullies. We arrived in the gorgeous valley of San Vicente and then the shock of Verapaz where a piece of the volcano above had broken loose and washed through the town. Two or three streets of houses were completely washed away and in their place were huge boulders, deep piles of mud, and giant logs. Here and there were shoes or pieces of clothing, although most of the bodies have been found and buried by now. On neighboring streets people shovel foot deep mud out of their houses. The military distributes water pouches, the FMLN (now the ruling party of government) brought shovels and wheel barrows. ER-D brought food and mattresses, and many other groups were there—some who had crock pots of food to hand out, others hauling and shoveling. Amidst the chaos and smell stood some still in shock, a woman whose mother had died, a man whose son was lost. A still smiling, handsome young man told us his family had already moved in with relatives in the San Salvador; their house here was gone and they had nothing to stay for.
Sunday, 15 November, 2009
On our last day we went to church at San Juan Evangelista. The priest serving this day is a guest from another part of the city, David Alvarado; his wife is a deacon and will be the first Salvadoran woman ordained to the priesthood. We also met a young man, Alvaro, an aspirant for holy orders, who spoke passionately to us about his country and the hard but hopeful work of the church. He thanked us for caring enough to come and visit and see what they were doing to help their country. The Salvadorans carry on after hurricanes and earthquakes, mud slides and civil war. What choice is there? But their spirit is amazing and they carry on with dignity and even laughter surrounded by chaos at times and extravagant natural beauty every day. Lindsay and I can only hope to live lives as committed and hopeful as those of the many Salvadorans we met on this trip.
Google Map of El Salvador with some places marked from this visit.