Walkin' legs

The rainy season is coming into full swing now. It really makes travelling to communities tough. Today on the motorbike, I had to cross a normally shallow river (1 ft deep). I was thinking it had probably grown since it had just finished raining, but once I saw it, it didn’t look like it had very much. I dropped a gear and went into the little river, lifting up my legs so as not to soak them. The moto and I got across fine but my boots went under so I think it was probably about 2.5-3 feet deep. But eso no fue nada (that was nothing)! My coworker Elvin (the one who doesn’t exaggerate) said one time he crossed a river where the water almost came up to the seat on the moto. Scary!

I got to the community and sat around for a while, waiting for the young people to show up. Plenty of younger and older people came in too once we started singing songs and playing games. As is typical, following instructions turned out to be difficult. Reminded of the time, I tried to talk with them about what kind of interpersonal and life skills they had been able to practice while working on the vegetable garden. Unfortunately the presence of the overly participative group leader meant that no one else really had to talk. Soon, the rain started up again and drowned me out. Between the time restraints, the talkative leader, and the rain, I think very little (less than normal) of what I said was understood. Though it was a weaker than mediocre meeting, a bunch of them let me know that they had enjoyed it and thanked me for visiting.

My conclusion is that there is a lot of value in going to a meeting just to make sure that they know you’ve made the effort to come out to see them. I’d probably be encouraged by a simple visit too if I lived out there. Some of them walk to the municipality center (1.5 hours fast, 3 slow) and back for high school every weekday. For these people, spending half a day walking is fairly common. My church in La Campa had a service tonight at an 85 year old man’s house for his birthday. He walks to town at least twice a week for church, about a 4 hour roundtrip over hills covered with loose rocks. In that context, understandably, the presence of people at any meeting means that they care.

And some more books that I just read:

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver – She has an ability to pull you into her story so completely that you never want to put it down and then when its done you miss the characters. It carefully explains the importance of community as few of us know it while providing an intreaguing look into modern Native American society.

A Traves de Cien Montanas (Across a Hundred Mountains) by Reyna Grande – Is a powerful book about immigration to the US from the point of view of a poor Mexican family. Hope carries through the emotional struggle of anger, worry, fear and disgrace. It puts a very human and personal touch on immigration, well worth the read.

Same Kind of Different As Me by Denver Moore and Ron Hall – Powerful and touching, it is a true story about how a millionaire and a homeless man become emotional brothers. Encourages the reader to an enduring relational ministry to the homeless and society’s outcasts. Read it and tell me how many times it chokes you up/makes you cry. My count of 2 shouldn’t be very hard to beat (especially if you’re my dad ;).

Oh Happy Day!

I've finally gotten to post some pictures! They're beautiful, check them out :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012625&id=1161480074&l=c1d78e3d27

That NGO Addiciton

The other day I picked up an Utne Reader magazine and started reading it. I found an interesting article called ´The New Colonialists´ talking about NGOs and what they do for the people of third world countries. I`ve read before about aid shipments of clothes, grain, and infrastructure collapsing local economy on those three levels, effectively creating a dependency overnight. The article correctly said that while the effects of NGOs´ work can be horrific, it has saved millions of lives. By saving all those lives, they take authority and the need to be competent away from their host government. This makes the government weak and since it has fewer responsibilities and expectations, more likely to be corrupt. The people lose confidence in their government, making a situation of civil unrest more likely to happen. It was a fascinating article, really, considering that I work for an NGO.

What made it even more fascinating was that I was reading it in La Campa´s municipal building at a meeting of representatives from all the local NGOs with political and community leaders from La Campa and its villages. And who was invited but wasn´t present? Take a guess. La Campa´s mayor. It seemed like the people who were united were the de facto municipality officials, yet no elected government officials were there (but a mayor candidate for the coming elections did showed up). The next day they had a similar meeting in San Manuel, but there the mayor and local government officials showed up.

Whether or not the NGO workers in the area are aware of the political and dependence issues that could come out of their work, what they were doing in La Campa and San Manuel had the possibility of stemming those issues. That would be achieved by uniting local NGO-empowered community leaders with each other and with local government, to effectively do whatever work that needs to be done, without relying on foreign donations to NGOs.

The goal is to empower people, something I feel like we do with CASM. Sometimes though, dependence rears its ugly head. A couple of times when I have visited communities, people ask me what I brought for them. Sometimes it feels offensive, but then I remind myself that its true, I have access to more money and more resources than they do and I am here to serve, so why shouldn´t I help them? The biggest challenge is to work for sustainability, to ward of dependency. Luckily, my work is focused on building leadership in youth and in communities, something that is directed to diminish dependency.