October 08

Las Mamacitas
Cindy went down to Estela’s house tonight. She wasn’t sure if she should go, because her throat was already scratchy and she might have already been catching whatever Charlie had this week.
I told her she ought to go: if she wasn’t sick already, she’d certainly come home that way. Estela’s house is down in the Basurero community, which borders the city dump. So the environment, even in a well-kept house like Estela’s, is thoroughly contaminated, and it can get into your sinuses pretty quickly.

Once a month, Estela invites teenage mothers to come to her house, where they get a night of fun and free babysitting (left - some of the girls at Estela's house). It’s the only time these girls have to be away from where they live (invariably in a crowded one- or two-room shack) and to be with other mothers. They play silly games, they sing, they laugh. I’ve never known any of them laugh, except in pictures and in stories I hear from Rebeca and Estela. I’ve always wanted to go and see for myself, but I’ve never worked up the courage. I’d be the only guy around, and although I like holding babies, I’m fairly sure I’d end up having to hold eleven of them.

Cindy went. She came home – getting sick, sure enough – but smiling. I asked her how it had gone, and she told me about the silly games, the singing (Rebeca deserves some kind of award for bravely leading the first few songs all by herself, before the girls finally joined in), the babysitting (Estela’s daughters, up in the loft of Estela’s little house). I knew Estela would be giving a talk of some kind tonight, but I almost didn’t want to ask Cindy about that part. There’s no shortage of talking in that community - lots of outsiders (like me) descend on the neighborhood to talk. It’s listening that’s rare. Estela, on the other hand - along with Fito, and Sandra - lives there, right in the middle of it all, and lives purposefully, intentionally, out of love. She listens. She’s spent countless hours out on the streets and in the homes of these girls. This strikes almost everyone around her, including much of her extended family and most of her neighbors, as an extraordinarily foolish way to spend her time, not to mention the obvious dangers involved in being out in the alleys and streets of this community. But out she goes, into their houses, into their lives. She’s well aware of the absurdity of what she does, and she struggles with the sense of futility that accompanies any time spent with the poor. But she keeps on going to them, keeps inviting them into her home, keeps listening, keeps being silly. When she talks to the girls about the love of Christ - as she did tonight - they’re ready to listen.

(Right: Estela in footy PJs and a wig, trying to get a laugh out of the mamacitas.)

I’ve tried to say something like this before, and forgive me if I’m not able to come up with a new way to say it: I’ve never personally seen any clearer examples of men and women living out Christ’s outward-facing love, his upside-down, relentless concern for the poor, for the “last, the lost, and the least.” I get to be a part of Rebe’s, Fito’s, Sandra’s, and Estela’s lives. I get to be with them in the beauty and mystery of their lives in this very difficult community. I’m so grateful you’ve made it possible for us to be involved in their lives, and in the Basurero community. I hope, reading these stories, that you sense your own involvement in their lives as well.

Baseball
Parker and John started baseball last week. Guatemala isn’t a baseball country, and this thing they went to isn’t anything like what I did when I was a kid. There are no uniforms, no leagues, and these kids don’t even qualify as a team (there are only seven of them). But a first grade mom found a guy who comes for an hour on Wednesday afternoons, and he’s not very expensive, so a few families signed their boys up, hoping we could at least get our boys a little exposure to the game.

There are actually a few baseball diamonds in our part of town. They’re on the main road going to all the other parts of town, so we pass by them every time we go anywhere. On Sunday mornings we can see what look to be league teams playing softball. It’s as busy a street as any in the city, so the noise and the diesel fumes are pretty thick. More than one parent has expressed concern over the proximity to the street and the associated kidnapping risk (this being Guatemala), but at least one of the kids is always accompanied by an armed bodyguard, so the general concensus seems to be that we’re probably OK. I went this afternoon, to see what it was like, and I ended up sitting in the dugout with the moms and a few squirmy younger siblings. Having no clue how to produce sideline chatter in Spanish, I was aware that my yelling “Attaboy, Parker!” and “Get in front of the ball!” in English would call attention to the fact that I’m not from here. (Although, to be fair, it’s not as if people don’t already know, even before I open my mouth: you can spot an American from fifty yards, just by the way he walks.)

And sure enough, the question came. “Where are you from?”

East Tennessee. It’s in the south, near Nashville, which is where country music comes from. (Plan B, if they’ve never heard of country music, is to tell them it’s the state where Elvis Presley lived - everybody gives a knowing bob of the head at the mention of Elvis Presley.)

“And what do you do here?”

It’s called Vida Joven, it’s a mission to teenagers. Sometimes this is all people want to hear: “there are loads of foreigners here doing vaguely helpful things with the poor people,” they think. “He’s one of them.” I’ve gone through the same thought process a hundred times when meeting someone.

“So, what exactly do you do?”

We spend time with them, on their turf, on their terms, and on their time (a nice phrase I borrow from a friend). We help them stay in school, we have a small scholarship program, we provide caring relationships. All based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. There’s a cold war going on between catholics and protestants here in Guatemala; we in Vida Joven are conscientious objectors. We’re made up of Roman Catholics and all sorts of protestants types, and we want to avoid any unneccessary muddling of the message of Christ’s love.

“Do they want to be helped?”

I’m sorry, do they want what?

“Do they want to be helped? Will they receive the help you give them?”

That, I can tell you, is question worth asking, and not just on a Wednesday afternoon at the noisy baseball field. The answer of course is yes and no: some welcome us. Some don’t.

Lupe
There’s Lupe. Her father is a drunk and an abuser. Her mother works and keeps Lupe and more or less fed and defended from their father, but she sometimes leaves for days at a time, and Lupe and her two younger sisters have to fend for themselves. This year, their mother just left. The journey up to the US must have presented more problems than she had anticipated, and she came back after a month or so, but it had been disastrous for Lupe and her sisters.
(above: Olga, Lupe, Joselyn, Rebeca)
We’ve known her for years; when Rebeca began to volunteer with us, Lupe was one of the first girls she met. She was 17 then, she’s 21 now. They’ve spent countless hours together by now, and Rebe hears everything – all the mess that passes through Lupe’s life. I only hear what everybody else hears – the common knowledge of a community where just a sheet of tin or cardboard separate one house from the next – and what I hear is bad enough. I’m not sure how Rebe is able to bear everything she hears.

And yet. Even with all of that, Lupe has somehow managed to stay in school this year (after so many years of forced and voluntary dropouts, she’s finishing up 4th grade at age 21). Her tuition is paid out of the Vida Joven scholarship fund, which is to say her tuition is being paid by you who give. Sandra, who is on student staff with Vida Joven, waged a one-woman war against the governmental bureaucracy in order to get Lupe registered. Some government office had mixed up Lupe’s paperwork, and Sandra and Lupe had to compete in the photocopier/mindless government regulation olympics to make sure she got enrolled. The two of them were even mugged one afternoon on their way to the government buildings, but Lupe got enrolled, and it looks like she might pass this year.

Lupe’s life is a mess. It has been her whole life, and surely it will be for some time to come. Rebeca says that Lupe will be a great leader in the community someday, when she stops selling drugs. She says it with a wry smile, but she means every word of it. Rebeca is talking and living out of a fierce and ragged hope. Lupe’s decisions are for Lupe to make, of course; but there is at least the option to live out a different sort of life than the one she’s known til now, and a friend she can look to for direction.


Kevin
Then there’s Kevin. Long time readers of these letters will know the name; I’ve been writing about him since he was just a kid. He’s 17 now, and he’s starting to get into the kind of trouble a 17 year old in this city can. Fito , who has seen so many Kevins come and go that he knows what the odds say about Kevin’s future, shakes his head when we talk about him. We’re not giving up on Kevin, but there’s a time to respect a boy’s decision, and that’s whatwe have to do. We’re still friends, Kevin and all of us with Vida Joven. We’ll continue to offer our friendship and love, even as we watch him choose his own destruction. Kevin was who came to mind when the baseball mom asked me if they wanted help. Some do; some don’t.



El Recuerdo
One of the great gifts of this job is that we occasionally get to introduce teams of people from the US to our Guatemalan friends. All of us at Vida Joven look forward to the weeks when workteams come down. (It looks like our schedule is full for the winter and spring, but next year might be a possibility if you’re part of a group that’s interested in coming down.)

We hosted a group of folks from the Chicago area in June, and besides getting lots of hard work done – floors and roofs for familes who desperately needed them – they helped us open a new Vida Joven club in the Recuerdo neighborhood. El Recuerdo lies in between the Aguilar neighborhood (where we started in 2003) and the city dump. It’s a step or three down the socioeconomic scale from Aguilar, which is hardly imaginable. Sandra, who is completing her second year with us as a volunteer and her first year as a student intern, has spent untold hours walking the alleys of the neighborhood, getting to know the kids, and she thought it was time to start something regular for them. We started Vida Joven Club there in June, with the help of the Chicago folks, and the neighborhood has been enthusiastic ever since. Pray for Sandra, Rebeca, and Fito as they spend time there. Pray for more (and brave) volunteer leaders to spend time with kids in this difficult place.


Friends,
thanks again for being here with us. For supporting us, for praying, for reading these letters. We’re grateful for you.

Brady


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X364-GUATEMALA

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