Hope Tour #1: Where Kids Can Just Be Kids

Workers wait to dig through trash dropped off
in the Guatemala City garbage dump
Photo Credit: Safe Passage

Visiting a garbage dump in Managua, Nicaragua in spring 2006 changed my life. (You can read about it here.) When I returned to school and life in Southern California, I vowed to do something to help the children and families who lived and worked and breathed the toxic life of digging through trash. 

I eventually found an organization in my own city that empowers rural farmers in developing countries to restore their land and improve their incomes before they’re forced to go looking for work in the city, often in the slums and garbage dumps.

Last Thursday, I had the privilege of visiting a non-profit in Guatemala City called Safe Passage, or Camino Seguro in Spanish. Safe Passage works with the children and families who have already emigrated from small, rural towns, to the Red Zones of Guatemala City. Red Zones are areas where the government has recognized a high incidence of gang violence and organized crime. Safe Passage joins with the mostly single-parent families who live near the Guatemala City garbage dump. These families supplement their income by working in the dump, digging through trash to collect metals, glass, aluminum, and other scraps that can be reworked and recycled for a small profit, including food that can be resold in the streets. 

Children under age 14 are no longer allowed to work in the dump, but parents often bring home their finds for children to sort through and separate to contribute to family income. Many families live in the makeshift houses of squatter cities that lack running water and siphon off electricity from neighboring streets with a tangle of live wires.

On the tour with Safe Passage, I learned that the violence rate in Guatemala today is higher than during the conflict. The physical violence, that is. I’ve been told there is nowhere near as much psychological violence or terror as there was during the war, but the injustice, extreme poverty, and social problems that existed before the war, that caused the guerrillas to pick up their arms and fight for a revolution, still exist today.

Vultures perch outside the Guatemala City garbage dump
Photo Credit: Safe Passage

Perched on the edge of a cemetery that overlooks the expansive dump, I could see how such living conditions could lead to violence, insecurity, and organized crime. Vultures circled above the sea of debris, and I had flashbacks of my visit to the dump in Managua. Only this time we weren’t cruelly rushed off to the mall to indulgently eat ice cream and feel awful about ourselves. Instead of focusing on the overwhelming horror of it all (and it was horrible), we were taken instead to see the good that is being done, the hope that has become manifest.

After viewing the dump, we drove just a few blocks to the new Safe Passage preschool, or escuelita, the part of the Safe Passage’s educational reinforcement program that targets the youngest, most vulnerable children, ages 2 to 6. The contrast was staggering. In the very same neighborhood as the garbage dump, the preschool is a haven of safety and fun.

The Escuelita looks like any other preschool. Kids were jumping and squealing and rattling off a million questions a minute. Tiny chairs surrounded knee high tables adorned with primary color construction paper. We even caught a bit of the day’s English lesson and break dancing session, and man did those five-year-olds have some dope hip hop moves. 

Part of the Safe Passage preschool playground.
 The blue wall separates the school
from the rough neighborhood.

Everyday from 9am to 3pm these kids who live in the roughest area of an already crime riddled city, get to just be kids. They’re given breakfast, snacks, and lunches. They get a head start on an education that will prepare them for better jobs and will open them up to a world of economic opportunity beyond work in the garbage dump. Instead of sorting through trash or begging on the streets, they are treated as kids: they get to run and squirm and pick their noses.

I understand it can be easy to be swayed by squealing preschoolers, but Safe Passage gets high marks for also addressing root causes and following best practices in development: their programs are run by local Guatemalans, they work closely with the entire family, not just children, collaborate with and reinforce the efforts of local public schools, and even offer adult literacy and social entrepreneurship programs to help the parents of these children work their way out of the dump.

I think you can see that I was clearly impressed. I’d encourage you to check out their blog and website and look for ways to get involved, I know I will.

In addition to learning about a really cool organization that I may be able to partner with this year, I am grateful for the compassion, care, and patience the staff extended to us visitors as we grappled to absorb such weighty issues. And I am excited to share more bright spots and encouraging stories from Guatemala in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks for reading. 

T.S. Tuesday: What a Difference Hope Can Make

“You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope.”  T.S. Eliot, Family Reunion

I know what it is not to hope. 

The Guatemala City garbage dump, where hundreds work
 each day to support their families.

Six years ago I came to Guatemala at the end of my semester abroad in Central America. After three months of visiting garbage dumps, hearing rants on U.S. involvement in dictatorial coups throughout Central America, and basically having my entire Christian belief system come crashing down, I was numb and tired. Tired of hearing of injustice. Tired of trying to care.

From the airport in Guatemala City we drove to Seteca, the theological seminary where we would be staying until we separated out again into different groups for a week long work project.  We’d barely had time so to set our bags down and sit down before our professor began yet another belligerent, and yet no longer shocking, tirade about U.S. involvement in Guatemala.  

In a rare act of encouragement, one of our leaders played a song in which the singer confidently declared that in God’s hands her “pain and hurt looked less like scars and more like character.”  We’d been through a lot that semester, but we were developing character, my study abroad program implied.  Character shmaracter, I thought.  What if you no longer believe that God has hands for you to be in?  Or feet?  Or a heart?  Anything?  Had I gone Nietzche on myself?  Could I really believe that God was dead?  

Yep, dead as a doornail.  Or a least in a coma.  

Our professor, Don Mike, continued to rant and rave, we heard from different people involved in myriad types of government positions, toured the city, went to the dump, talked about justice and Jesus and liberation theology. 

Is it so awful to say that after awhile all third world countries start to look the same?  The littered highways, the graffiti-covered concrete buildings, the bars and spikes and security guards with guns.  I wish I could say that I instantly connected with Guatemalans, that it mattered to me that they had been in a civil war for decades.  But I didn’t care about the indigenous, specifically Mayan, influence on the culture or that hundreds of thousands of women had mysteriously lost their husbands and sons, fathers and brothers to midnight kidnappings and mass murders during the war.  I feared there was nothing in me that cared anymore.

I had lost my hope.

Throughout the last six years, I have experienced a Love that saves, a Joy that saves, a Hope that saves. My friends and family and church and coworkers have shown me that my anger doesn’t help the suffering, my hopelessness does not prove my compassion. They have shown me, and God continues to teach me, that Hope brings change, that Joy alleviates suffering, that Love drives out fear.

This time around in Guatemala, although I’ve already heard countless stories of war and violence and injustice, although I’ve already visited the wasteland of the Guatemala City garbage dump, although there are plenty of reasons to shut down and tune out, I will cling to hope. I will look for the bright spots.

I will remember the words of AnnVoskamp in One Thousand Gifts,

“Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world."

This time around I will not be paralyzed. I will not reject joy. I will listen and I will move and I will act. I will engage.

I will not disregard the suffering. I will not turn a complacent eye to their pain. But amidst the pain and horror, I will look for hope. I pray I will be brave enough to “focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true.”

So far I’ve seen some incredibly hopeful, transformative work being done in Guatemala. There are so many ways for me to get involved in bringing Hope and Life and Joy to the people around me. But I don’t know quite where to spend my time yet. Despite my commitment to move, I feel a call to be patient, to wait on God’s timing and leading. I pray for wisdom in how to spend my time here. I ask for an open heart to accompany my open schedule.

Kids playing with bubbles in the park in Antigua

As I wait and look for ways to engage, I will share the bright spots that I have seen. Throughout the week, and I imagine beyond this week as well, I will share the stories of hope and redemption and transformation that I have glimpsed. I will write of the miracle of kids being able to be kids in the midst of gang violence and extreme poverty, of women speaking out against injustice and sharing their stories of pain for the first time, of brave individuals seeking alternatives to violence, of people daring to hope and try and move in a place where the problems seem copiously complex and insurmountable.

I know what it is not to hope; this time around I will fix my eyes on the Hope that saves. 

Guatemala: A Hope Offering

This post is part of the Hope 2012 Blog Relay started by the indomitable Melanie Crutchfield and the not-so-subtle nudge from my wonderful mentor and friend, Melissa Tucker. The basic premise, you guessed it, is to write about hope. 

So hope, the enemy of self-respecting cynics the world over. What could a sarcastic-around-the-edges gringa possibly have to say about hope from the city of La Antigua, Guatemala?

Thus far my life here has been idyllic. Each morning I've attended one-on-one language classes where every stunted phrase I've uttered in Spanish has been reinforced with a friendly nod and a "Buen trabajo" from my encouraging teacher. I've spent my afternoons meandering the cobblestone streets while sliding slippery mangos from plastic bags onto my tastebuds rapt with anticipation. I pass women in colorful woven skirts and tops pressing their palms together in the pat-pat-pat of tortilla making. The city of Antigua, where poverty is smoothed over by smiles and tourists just like the renovated facades of its 16th century architecture, makes a postcard perfect backdrop for the next year of my life.

In Antigua, the souvenirs, the coffee, and the bars are easy to find. It's the tumultuous history and subsequent signs of hope and reconciliation you have to go looking for.

I don't know how much you know about Guatemalan history, but for over 30 years, from 1960 to 1996, Guatemala was entrenched in brutal civil war. When I visited Guatemala during my semester abroad, we visited an organization committed to helping people who had lost friends and relatives in the civil war. Not an organization so much as a support group, un apoyo mutuo. Hundreds of portraits lined the walls. There were young men, old men, fat men, some merely boys. All were missing. Gone.

Desaparecidos. Disappeared.

As the leader, an indigenous woman wearing a crumpled grey skirt as crinkled as her wrinkled, weary eyes, described the group’s brave and somber purpose, I snuck back to the bathroom. I returned during the question and answer segment. I had just slid into my cold, metal chair when one of my classmates asked the question we’d all wanted to know.

“How many men have you found?” “Cuantos han encontrado?” The group was devoted to searching for the missing family members, los desaparecidos. Surely, some must have been reunited with their loved ones.

“Cero,” the woman stated matter-of-factly. “Zero.”

After the war, the Historical Clarification Commission estimated that “more than 200,000 people were killed — the vast majority ofwhom were civilian indigenous people.” 

Six years later, the eyes that used to haunt me from these posters, the faces I used to call forth to justify my anger, the stories I used to tell to bash ignorant Americans, now implore me to look for a different reality. To look for hope in the scenery around me, in the life around me in Guatemala.

If I allow myself to look deeper, to not be seduced by cheap tours, cheap drinks, and cheap Spanish classes, I think I will find this place I now call home to be a country of great hope.  Hope against all odds. Reconciliation and healing and redemption against all odds.

If I look closely and sensitively enough, I will see that the woman wearing traje (the typical indigenous dress unique to each village and people group) isn’t just the source of my lunchtime tortillas (a gift in itself), but she is also a sign of hope.

I will see that the parade I witnessed this morning wasn't just a festive reason to yell and shout and dance, but was a symbol of the survival of a culture despite great adversity and discrimination in celebration called,  Dia de los Mayas (Day of the Maya).

I will glimpse the magnitude of healing that has taken place as people who used to kill each other now walk down the same streets, shop in the same stores, and send their kids to the same schools in peace.

I will hear the Kaqchikel words a mother whispers to her wide eyed child in the dentist office not just with linguistic amusement, but with awe and gratitude that the syllables will be passed to the next generation.  

While driving through Guatemala City, I will see the Mayan flag waving from the palace as not just a splash of color in the cityscape, but as a sign of inclusion, a step toward reconciliation.

This year I have the chance not only to learn Spanish and eat mangos and dance salsa, but also to share meals with some very brave, very inspiring people, to hear stories of unbelievable horror and unbelievable healing, and to learn from a country that is, poco a poco, choosing hope. 

***
Fabulous blogger friends of mine... you interested? If you want to join the Hope Relay, let me know!

Adrian Waller: Life Before The Bucket

Caleb Wilde: Confessions of a Funeral Director

Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires
Tim Høiland: Tim Høiland

Teach Us To Hope

In the car, I dim the music and I pray about promises.

Yesterday's message was on welcoming God, on learning to trust His promises. I seek to answer the question, "Is there a promise from God that I need to trust?"

These last few months have held a flurry of promises:

"I will restore your joy."
"I will comfort you."
"You will grow."

I'm praying off-the-cuff, spouting words to my steering wheel, to the silver Chevy Malibu who sneaks into my lane.

I ask God to teach us to hope.

TEACH us to hope? They're my words I've spoken, but still I'm surprised.

It's a prayer I don't think I've uttered before, or a least not often.

Teach us to love.

Teach us to care.

Teach us to follow you.

Those requests spill from my lips, almost of their own volition. But never teach us to HOPE.

Bring hope.

Stir hope. 

I've prayed those lines before. God is the one with the hope; we are passive recipients. 

I've never viewed hope as a discipline to be learned.

All this while, all this year, I've been caught between expectation and entitlement, wondering which promises to cling to, discerning if anything has been promised at all. I've been finagling my way to some kind of spiritually mature sense of hope for the future and trust in His promises.

I never thought to ask Him how. To ask Him to teach me.

I've sensed Him telling me to choose joy and to choose to trust, whether or not I feel hopeful.

As I dodge brake lights, exit the freeway, I sense the missing piece, the forgotten discipline, the unanswered command:

"Learn hope," He whispers. "Let me teach you."

Yes, Father, I want to learn.

On the Difference between Hope and Entitlement

If I had a dime for every time a well-meaning older friend told me not to fret my current  boyfriendless state because "God will bring the right man to me," I'd be rich enough to buy myself the aforementioned perfect man. 


Apart from the fact that those statements often make me feel worse, not better about my lack of a love life, I also worry that trite phrases like these are actually spreading false theology. 


I don't doubt God could bring the right man into my life, but I also don't believe he promised me one. 


He never promised me the perfect love story or the perfect job or the perfect body. 


As a restless twentysomething, I've been doing a lot of dreaming and scheming for my future. I've been trying to work out the difference between my God-given hopes of finding love and keeping a fulfilling job and the unhealthy entitlement monster that tries to convince me that God owes me these things and I will not be satisfied until I get them.

I came across this wonderful post today over at Ragmuffin Soul about the many things that God doesn't promise us. The author writes,


 "The ONLY thing that we are promised is the love of Jesus."


Not an easy life. Not freedom from depression. Not the perfect marriage. Not a fulfilling job. Not even a happy, functional family. 


Only love. 


The author writes, "And that love can…Hold you during a rough adulthood…Sustain you during rough depression…Restore you when you sabotage your marriage…Provide for you when you are out of cash…Support you when Jesus is your only grace…Reveal to you when you look in the mirror and see Grace on your chest…Be Hope for you when the fridge is empty…Fill you when you read His Word…Satisfy you when you have worked harder on your job than on your family…"Now that sounds like a promise worth putting my hope in.  

What empty promises do you put your hope in? How do you balance your desires between hope and entitlement?

T.S. Tuesday: Why I am Pro-Choice

“If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.” T.S. Eliot

In the spring of 2006, the terms of my life were turned upside down. Life gave me anger. Anger at injustice and poverty and the overall suckiness of a broken world. After what I’d seen, I thought I had no choice.

I thought I had no choice but to wallow, to lash out, to leave the church that was complicit in the complacency that allows injustice.

But in the midst of this anger, I ever-so-painfully learned something. I discovered that faith and hope and love can be chosen. Not only can but must.

I learned this because I was choosing precisely the opposite: not to have faith, not to have hope, not to have love.

It seems like something you can't choose. You're either a glass-is-half-empty or glass-is-half-full type of person and there's nothing you can do about it. But that's not true.

You can choose hope.

I can choose hope.

There’s a part I didn’t choose: the suffering that I witnessed. The policies and politics that have been in place in Latin America long before I was born. The terms the world offers me.

But I can choose my response.

This weekend I had the immense privilege of being a part of something hopeful. I saw the fruit of choosing to love and serve and engage that has been years in the making.

This weekend I helped host an event at my church that highlighted many of the world’s injustices: poverty, environmental degradation, sex trafficking, and the obligation of the church to respond in awareness and compassion.

I heard testimonies of men and women in my church who have chosen to do something. Who have chosen love for our neighbor. Who have chosen faith in the redemptive work of a loving God. Who have chosen hope.

Planting a tree is an act of hope. Making a donation to a poverty fighting organization is an act of hope. Befriending our brothers and sisters who live outside here in San Diego is an act of hope. Delivering furniture to a newly relocated refugee family is an act of hope.

I am grateful to be a part of a church whose heart beats for justice. Whose heart beats for hope.

I can’t even express the humble awe I feel that God would use me to share this hope with others.

That God would use me to give people the chance to get involved in His work of feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and caring for the poor. That, years later, I would be working from within the church to reverse the complacency and disengagement that led me to leave in the first place.

I don’t mean this to sound like I’m tooting my own horn. I type these words in amazement that I am here. That I am leading. That the guilt and pain and anger that once engulfed me has been driven out by love. That the drive for justice and redemption grows stronger not weaker as I choose to engage a broken church and a broken world.

I am grateful for the strength I am given to impose my own hopeful terms upon life.

Most of all, I am grateful for the Hope that chose me.

I am not an island, You are not a "Them"

I thought this blog would be about hope, not anger. But anger is a very real part of my journey toward hope.

I used to be really angry about injustice in the world. Don’t get me wrong, it still breaks my heart, still brings tears to my eyes, but it no longer hardens my heart.

I used to be enraged on behalf of others. Particularly the plight of the rural poor.

I used to use this anger as an ideology. As my new religion.

I used this anger as an excuse not to move. To stay stuck. To lash out.

I used it as an excuse to dehumanize the poor. To reduce them to a “them” I could be enraged on behalf of. Not people that I knew and loved. Not people that deserved my hope and my efforts as much as my anger and indignation.

A while back I wrote a poem about this act of dehumanization I masked as romanticized, righteous indignation. And here it is:

I am not an island

You are not a “them”

I remember the romance of the pain

Weathered, leather face

Acidic fumes

I forget you

I talk anger

I feel smug

You are a story I heard

A feeling I felt

Not a person I know

I use you to feel pain

In pain I am Justified

I use you to reject Him

But you praise Him with your chapped lips

Chapped, I said it,

Romanticizing again

I put it on you

It’s never me

I’m the enlightened one

Finally free

Of the guilt on my hands

Of the burden of me

But am I angry for you?

Or angry for me?

In the fury of my rage

You become a “them”

I become a lie

I am not a martyr

Remind me yet again

I am not an island

You are not a them

Pictured to the left: Me with a woman, Grey, that I stayed with in Nicaragua. She shared not only her house and food--mostly pineapples--with me, but also her thoughts, her hopes, and her dreams. She was one of the women I wrote this poem for a year after I came back to the States.

Have any of you experienced a time when you used anger on behalf of someone or a group of someones as an excuse to stay stuck?