no basta rezar

Just returned on Sunday from a weekend visit with my praxis site family in Mariona. The things we carried: 2 gallons of bottled water, and a roll of toilet paper each. Vital and humbling. There are 3 families we spend time with in Mariona. Family numero uno: Oti, her husband Roberto, and their son Oscar (4 yrs old, named after Oscar Romero, without a doubt). Numero dos: Oti´s nephew Lolo, his wife Aida, and their daughters Maria Jose (3 yrs) and Karen (5 yrs). I `teach´English to these three lovely children...Um, still trying to figure that out. Anyway, family numero tres: Lolo´s brother Lydio, his wife Keny, and their daughter Jasmin (2). I stayed with the third family. Details seemed necessary.
To continue, this past weekend brought back a lot of memories and feelings about Costa Rica, about what it was like to live alone with a family, to be completely dependent on an entirely different reality, language, bed, food, etc. My Casa community, as all communities to some degree, has the tendency to be rather insular here. So, this past weekend carried a healthy discomfort, necessary if I expect to grow at all here. The first night was so beautifully awkward. I was sitting there with so much pena, struggling to speak, express myself, be myself, pass the time. A small house, with no doors save one for the bathroom. Simple cloth partitions strung in front of the two bedroom doors facing the common room. A hammock draped across the length of the room. A refrigerator, a small table, some white plastic chairs, and a television filled the rest of the space. A plastic Winnie the Pooh poster and a small Salvadoran-made cross hanging on the wall. Though I offered to help, Keny cooked dinner alone. While she cooked, and while we ate, the television was on and the sounds of our evening were Avril Lavigne, Brittany Spears, and Smallville. I cannot help but smile in light of such circumstances. So awkward. Keny´s daughter Jasmin was fascinated and extraordinarily confused by my presence. I would even distract her from eating. She never took her eyes off of me. At one point, I was sitting in one of the chairs, and Jasmin was standing in front of me. One finger in her mouth, looking up at me with her giant deep brown eyes, she just started to pee all over the floor. No tears, no looking down to see what happened, no smile, just incredibly focused on my presence. Mama just mopped it up, changed her underwear, and went back to cooking. Diapers are for special occasions. For dinner: beans, platanos, some kind of egg pancake, and tortillas from next door. After dinner, washing in the pila - including dishes, clothing, face, and teeth. As I fumbled around in the pila, trying to figure it all out, Jasmin just stood and stared at me the entire time, ignoring constant pleas from her mother to leave me alone. Precious. After washing, I went to bed, but without a door, Jasmin was free to peek around the corner every few seconds, and ocassionally climb into my bed, content to just look. So I drew pictures with her, of rainbows, and ice cream cones, and cats, and hearts, and whatever easy cheesy happy things came to mind. After each picture I drew, she expressed some kind of sound akin to laughter, but more closely related to a monkey grunt. She was happy. And we are both left-handed.

On Saturday, we visited the Pequeña Communidad, a Christian base community in which Oti worked throughout the war, for about 17 years, mainly working with refugees and those in poverty. Oti often cries, relfecting on `the martyrs,´ friends of hers that were threatened, tortured, killed. In bits and pieces, she retells her experience to a new group of Casa students every semester, and I wonder what this means to her, why she is willing to relive it all, what sort of healing is found in sharing, if any at all. The other day in theology class, we talked about living with 'radical uncertainty.' Lolo talked about this, saying that even if they could not promise tomorrow, everyone working in the Pequeña Communidad committed to the struggle. This is their faith: ´No basta rezar; hacen falta muchas cosas para conseguir la paz.´ It´s not enough to pray; many things are lacking in order to achieve peace. Another song we´ll have to sing when I get back. I will deeply miss the music here.

Later in the afternoon, Oti taught us some massage techniques, and we all spent the afternoon doing a little liberation theology Bible reflection/meditation and giving each other massages. What? Kind of surreal. And not the experience people in other praxis sites are having, though no more or less beautiful. Oti is sort of my hero. She has suffered much and suffers still, but there is nothing holding her back from a good massage, afternoon reflection, and some sweet bread. She gets really excited about organic coffee, and calls her son `my sky.´ Lolo is equally wonderful. That afternoon, after our massage time, he said, `how marvelous, our hands!´ Everyone there is always encouraging us to share our lives, interested in where we come from just as much as they want to show us their reality. They are always saying how we are family now, and that borders do not exist for them. Solidaridad.

Lolo´s father, Moncho, was also in town this weekend. He and Lolo have identical smiles. But Moncho´s eyes are deep blue. Throughout dinner on Saturday night, Moncho sat in the doorway, swinging his keys in his hand, looking at the floor and occasionally looking at me. Everything was tinted blue, and on the wall of the street behind him was this giant mural of Che Guevara. And it´s hard to refrain from romanticizing everything, from taking mental photographs of images like that, and holding on to them as if they were reflections of pure truth. But it´s still here in my head, and it means something to me, and I thought it was beautiful. And knowing some of Moncho´s experiences throughout the war, every time I looked at him and he smiled, it made me want to cry. Not sure yet if that feeling is sadness. But I´m not in Kansas anymore. And never was. Not sure where I came from or how I got here. But I´m in love.

It´s raining now. Time to roll up my pants and walk home.

Peace.