Where I Am

“In a plane, train, boat, or car, the greatest place is where you are.”

~ Dr. Suess ~

View from the top of a lighthouse downtown

“Buenas,” friends, family, and people I have yet to meet. Happy end of August and welcome to September!

I will start with a quick “I am alive, strong, and healthy.” Ok, strong is a relative term. But as a matter of fact, I’m one of only 4 volunteers (Duran included) who have yet to be sick. Feelin’ better than ever and I haven’t even been conservative on my diet—in that I’ve eaten and drunk outside the house.

All in all, these past two weeks have been productive, hot, and a smorgasbord of experiences. A lot has happened, so although there are things I hope to go more in detail on in the not so distant future, I figure I will fill you in on what has been happening since the 1 month anniversary, two weeks ago.

Work at Proyecto Misión has definitely been both a struggle and a blessing. Of course the language is a challenge every day, but before this week both Coli and I—after having finished reading all the important documents to get us caught up on the work of the office—were having trouble defining our role in the office, and what kind of work we would be doing. Last week was hard in that sense, but this week I was finally able to experience the “out-of-the-office” work, and delivered invitations twice to the neighborhood presidents. So twice this week I spent the mornings walking all of Mount Sinai, touring parts I had never seen, and meeting committee members, which was exciting and life-giving. All the while strengthening my calf muscles and getting some sun.
Back in the office, I asked Alexis (one of the bosses) about what I could be doing in the office, and that’s when I found out that this next month is going to be a lot of work. After talking about it for awhile, it was decided that I am going to begin, in October, teaching Computer Workshops to the coordinators of the committees in Mount Sinai. By myself. Which means this next month is not only a month to plan how to teach computation to individuals who have never used a computer, but also a month to improve my Spanish. A lot. Again, thinking of me in front of a bunch of adults teaching in Spanish makes me laugh…but now it’s a reality.

The neighborhood time has been absolutely wonderful. Two weeks ago I learned how to make arroz con menestra with Monica, one of the first friends of Rostro de Cristo in Sinai. I went over on a Friday morning and just opened beans, cut vegetables, and watched her work her magic on a slab of aluminum in her front yard. There was a moment, while “unbeaning” bean pods that I just took notice of my calmness. Sitting there, talking with this woman I met 3 weeks prior about each others lives, partaking in work she does daily…I felt at peace and so happy for the opportunity to be sitting right there. I talk often and read much about being “present,” following the Dr. Suess quote above, but I don’t know if I’ve ever actually felt it like I did that morning. No phone in my pocket or schedule of to-do’s…Just garlic-cutting and making a friend. 

It was a wonderful motivation to push myself, and since then I’ve met many more neighbors. A couple of us met many of the women of the indigenous community this last weekend, I now help two boys (Ricardo and Elias) with English homework, two girls (Ivis and Mel) with Math, and have learned so much about WWE wrestling from every child here. I am blown away, daily, by these people’s ability to combine patience, hospitality, and openness into the way they receive a stranger like myself. They make loving where I am easier every day.

Other tid bits:

• Last week we figured out our roles for parish involvement, and although I am doing music ministry with the youth whenever they need me, I will also be teaching a catechism class every Saturday before the 5PM mass. It is a second level Confirmation class that I am sitting in on right now, and I hope to be able to have my own group after a month or so. 

• My dog duty is going swell and I think the Rottweiler is finally warming up to bath time.  

 Clubber: Quite the guard dog.

• As of last week I am officially HIGHWAY CERTIFIED, which means I learned stick shift and am good enough to drive the Rostro vans. My passive driving has no place on these dog-eat-dog roads, and with every honk of the horn my confidence rises. Wish me luck.

• The first retreat group for Duran is here as we speak, and they come to visit Mount Sinai for a day tomorrow. I’m giving a talk on Mount Sinai and then after lunch we break into micro-groups for neighborhood visits. That means I’ll be taking a group of 3 retreatants to a house by myself…and if I don’t get a fluent speaker in those 3, I’ll be translating. Poor kids…

• My community is doing well. We’ve gotten into a schedule of community nights, spirituality nights, chore rotations, and we’ve made Sunday nights accountability nights. These nights we’ve gone through the pillars of Rostro and just talked—in a safe, honest, and open space—about how we’ve been living them out: what has been going well and what should we pay more attention to. There are, of course, difficulties and tough times; we are not all perfect, but in general we’ve gotten along great. We even discovered that the dark, long, and ominous hallway…

…doubles as a wonderful bowling alley.

• And two weekends ago both communities took a day trip to the Malecon (boardwalk) and spent the day checking out one of the more touristy parts of Guayaquil. Almost everyone went to the IMAX theater to see the new Batman…but as it was in Spanish with no subtitles, I stubbornly opted out with two other who have been anxiously waiting to see it. Instead, the 3 of us hiked up a hill of colorful houses to a lighthouse where I was able to take the picture at the top of this blog. After getting my photography fix, we stumbled across the Miniature Museum with an exhibit on the history of Guayaquil, so we ended the day with tiny scenes of the city’s past that blew my shoebox diorama’s out of the water. Except for my project on Narwhales. That was awesome.

• Lastly, as the rainy season approaches, so do the bugs. This beetle was the size of my face. Or at least a newborn’s face…or hand. Not my scene.

Take note of the sheer terror in the reflection

That’s enough rambling for now, but expect another soon rather than later! I’ll save more words for another day.

From right where I am,
Miguel

Photos Up!

Expect an update soon, but for now, I finally found a way to post my first set of pictures! There´s two albums:

A general album of some of my first pictures of our house, the community, a trip to the ocean:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/101137469503369044340/albums/5781752233448302833

And our community trip to the Boardwalk downtown and up to the lighthouse in Guayaquil:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/101137469503369044340/albums/5781761267840424785

And for all of you who have heard about the volcano, it´s far away from us. No worries! All is well.

Enjoy!

Love
Miguel

Poco a Poco

"Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that 
give us more and more clues that we are not perfect."

--Fred Rogers aka "Mr. Rogers"--

 

View of Monte Sinaí from the 

bell tower of Corpus Cristi

Today is a kind of strange day. Strange in the sense that I have officially been in Ecuador for a month. 2 weeks of orientation with the old vols, and 2 weeks on our own. Doesn´t feel like it one bit. But the 6 of us, we´re getting closer as a community, learning about each other´s live and realizing that we are each others support this year. We all come and go throughout the day, but at the end of it we´re together for community dinners and daily prayer, community night, or spirituality night. We talk about our days--the highlights, the struggles--the funny thing a kid said or did. It is in that sharing that we talked about our conversations with people; how it has been a time when we get one question more than anything.

¿Ustedes estan acostumbrado a algunos?
Are you accustomed to things?

And I ask myself if I know the answer to that question. Would I know what it feels like to be accustomed to something here? Maybe. People say there´s such thing as the honeymoon stage of culture shock. Maybe that feels something like "accustomization"? I don´t know.

So I think about what "things" they´re referring to. Perhaps the cold showers, the different food, the new faces? Or maybe the public transportation and rollercoaster dirt roads. Remembering to throw your toilet paper in the garbage and brush your teeth with water from your water bottle. Shaking out your shoes every morning knowing there´s a chance a scorpion or thumb-sized cricket could be snuggling comfortably inside. Making a meal for 6 for less than $3.00. Being part of a lively, youthful parish life; working my way into the music ministry, song by song. An Irish Spanish-speaking priest. Taking in a new job with energetic co-workers. Having time blocked off in my day to go visit and be with the people in my neighborhood. Remembering children´s names. Remembering children´s names I can´t yet pronounce. Driving stick shift. Having "personal health" in the back of my mind, all the while wanting to be grateful and accepting of food and drink from new friends. Pushing myself to become a vegetable lover. Pushing myself to become an onion lover. The amazingly fresh bread I get on the way to work every morning. Wearing pants on the ecuator. The cheese. Sleeping under a mosquito net. Letting guard whistles, roosters, and a blaring "Danza Kuduro" be my lullaby at night. Cooking one night a week, when I haven´t a clue what I´m doing in the states, let alone in Spanish. Jaw-dropping sunsets. Wearing a polo 7 days a week. Trying to get a hold on how to balance communication with friends and family while being present here. The cow heart I ate on Thursday. Having to plan out sentences before I say them. Thinking and paying attention at all times, with every word, in conversations. Being comfortable with saying "¿Mande?" more than once because I don´t understand. The fear that my personality can´t quite jump the language barrier. Being gentle with myself.

But in that moment, when they wait for a response, I answer in the shallow, minimal way I know how right now. "Mas o menos." More or less. I need to practice my spanish a lot. The food is much diffrent. But the people are very kind. Probably throwing an incorrect preterite verb in there somewhere with an attempt to use "have been." And more often than not, despite what I say, they see my struggle, my tenseness, my worry, and respond "Poco a poco."

Little by little. I wrote it on a paper and hung it on my wall. If only they knew how much I´ve reminded myself of that advice, how it has become my tagline, and how the more I think about it the more I realize the importance of doing just that.

During orientation in Boston we had a presentation on self-care: something I perfected in college (which of course, my friends, is a joke). One of the things she talked about--something I apprecited greatly--was the idea of a "Sustainable Pace." I had not heard it put in those words, but I found it to be beautiful. With new experiences like these, my pace is so important to how I´m going to feel 2, 5, 10 months down the road. She told us how easy it can be to hit the ground running, but you have to exert yourself in a way that is sustainable, a way that can healthily last the year.

For me, it is about not letting my feet get ahead of where my head and my heart are, while also respecting where my feet are at, not letting my heart drag them along. The former prevents me from running to a place I can´t keep up with. I am behind the language barrier right now, struggling with the lock and key, and it is an emotionally and physically exhausting thing. I may want to pack my days with these new things--things I should get "accustomed to"--but I also need time for myself. Time to breathe. And the latter helps with the restlessness of going slowly. My heart may connect with people, but somehow I have to respect the moment I am in--even if that moment I am having seemingly-shallow conversations, not being able to ask the things I really want to ask or enter into a deeper relationship. It is, again, about being gentle with myself and keeping that sustainable pace. If I had an ever-present to-do list, that would be on it. Always.

So I´m here, with more than enough new things. Some difficult, many amazing, and I´m counting my blessings as I go. I can´t change the moment, I can only affect what the next ones look like. So for now I´ll work hard, stay calm, and remind myself that things take time.

 

My community and Padre Jon--pastor of 3 parishes in 

Monte Sinaí--before he left to visit Ireland

Failing and Succeeding, Little by Little,
Miguel

More Than A House...

 "Cada pobre, cada vago, cada mendigo es Cristo en persona que carga su cruz."

- Padre San Alberto Hurtado, S.J.-

Hogar de Cristo Founder

I suppose, after the timing of my last post, it would only be fair to begin with what the heck I´ll be doing, work-wise, for the next year of my life.

Discernment--although it was 2 days (about 12 hours total) of sitting and discussing everyone´s posibilities--went well. To be honest, my top choice every since we visited it was Proyecto Misión, and that was hard because it was also Coli´s (Colleen´s name in Ecuador) top choice. But, after a few strings were pulled, Hogar de Cristo decided the Misión office could take two volunteers. So if the picture up top wasn´t a give away already, I will be a volunteer at Hogar de Cristo next year, in the office of Proyecto Misión, with Coli as well! Our first day was last Monday.

As mentioned before, Hogar de Cristo is a Jesuit foundation who´s missino is to serve the poor and marginlized of Chile and Ecuador - specifically Monte Sinaí. Hogar was founded in 1944 by Padre San Alberto Hurtado, S.J., a Spanish Jesuit in Chile. After seeing the situation of the poor, he founded a shelter and school for boys and soup kitchen for the poor. In 1971 Tío Paco started a Hogar de Cristo in Guayaquil, Ecuador, founding the Vivienda project. Similarly to Habitat for Humanity, the Vivienda program builds houses for those people who are in insufficient living situations, giving them a cane house (looks like bamboo) at $25/month for 3 years, but it is also possible to qualify for reduced a reduced price or donations. Since then Hogar has come a long way and--in my opinion--has become something like 10+ nonprofits in one. Projects and offices include health centers, education, microloans, pastoral ministry, psychology, a clay water filter project, sustainable agriculture, workshops for women, and (my new office) community organizing.

To understand the importance of my office, you need to know a little about where I live this year. Hogar de Cristo used to be in the center of Guayaquil, but in the last 5 years they have moved to Monte Sinaí because they believe it is where there is most need. If you were to have taken a trip down to Ecuador 6 years ago, my house, neighborhood, and entire "town" would be nothing but open, agricultural land. It was owned by a few wealthy men who decided to divide up the land and sell it to families. However, this land--which was supposed to be used for farming--was government land and legally not theirs to sell. They gave families little slips of paper saying they purchased the land, which, to the government, is about as official as monopoly money in the USA...maybe a little moreso. Some new land owners then began to also sell land that was not theirs, and so on and so forth. Land continued to be sold by "land triffickers" and there was an immense influx of people from various parts of Ecuador who wanted to live closer to the city, or people from the city who could no longer afford it. In January, 2011, the government took their rist real step of involvement in this "illegal community" and arrested the men originally responsible, but also kicked out families who had purchased land from people other than those original men. As you could guess, there is still much confusion as to who may be kicked off their land and who can stay.

So imagine you live in a house made of a couple cement walls, a couple wooden fences, and a tin roof. Any electricity you have is pirated from the state (as most of the community has it rigged to their houses) and goes out at least once a day. Any clean water you have is from a water filter jug you bought across the street. Your street is unpaved and you know if you ever need emergency medical care the fastest thing would be to take a bus 15 minutes for help. You cannot receive mail, fill out official documents (because you have no address) and you are unsure if the government will come to your door one day and demand you to leave. I suppose that is a difficult request--to imagine that--but this is the situation of most of my neighbors, and it is a reality Hogar and Proyecto Misión hope to help change.

Today over 6,000 families live here in the Monte Sinaí community. Proyecto Misión at Hogar de Cristo is a 3 year project (it ends next year) and aims to accompany those people of the community, educating them of their situation, and strengthening integral development within the community. This is done in hopes that when Hogar is no longer around, the community can stand on its own. The office has organized committees in various "neighborhoods," all of which have a leader and participate in weekly meetings, workshops, events, etc. The tangible goal before next year is to put the committees on the track to becoming legalized as a community organization. Once that happens, it will help them all in the much bigger goal of legally registering the land they live on, hopefully giving them addresses (which you can all probably recognize the immense importance of).

As for me personally, I will be helping out with this project in whatever way they need me, including accompanying them in the beginning as they visit the community members, get to know faces, deliver invitations, attend talleres (workshops), and really try to be a face of trust for neighbors who may or may not believe in the cause. In the future, when my Spanish improves and I have my feet firmly on the ground (if that could ever actually happen) there is definitely potential to work with specific skills and iterests of mine, including multimedia and video, perhaps even putting something together for the end of the 3 years. As a matter of fact, this morning they informed me that they want me to lead computer classes for the committee leaders. Ha...I chuckle imagining my current level of Spanish proficiency in front of 10 adults. There´s no doubt it would be fun, but that is an example of something that may come with time.

Right now it´s definitely been a bit overwhelming trying to get a hold on all of this--aspects of a new job, my neighborhood, the parish life--when I cannot fully communicate. But I often remember something Molly Davies, a friend and mentor from Creighton, told me when leaving a long conversation: "Be gentle with yourself." That was the first time I´d heard that phrase, and I´ve heard it often since. It is not always easy to keep in mind, but today I am just enjoying the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing project and am expecting to learn much from the people, both community members and co-workers. I never know what´s in store for the day, but as a strong Type B, I think I´ll do OK.

Miguel

HdC Vision:

We are contributing to the restitution 

of the rights of the people in major situations 

of poverty, vulnerability, or exclusion;

influencing structural transformations 

towards a more just, equal, and inclusive

 society in Ecuador.