Staying focused

This would be a great night to purge my inbox, but right now I'm concerned about that strange human trait of desiring something more when we know we can't have it. No, I'm not yearning for lent so I can give up something else. It's mid-October. We're in La Paz, which is a beautiful city, but we should be in Carmen Pampa. There's plenty to keep us busy in La Paz--museums, restaurants, artesanias--but our agreed-to responsibilities as missioners are in Carmen Pampa.  We can't reach them because of the blockade on the road into the North Yungas.   The blockade has been in place since early Monday morning.  Some people here think that with further negotiations the blockade might end this weekend, and that way we might return to Carmen Pampa by Monday. That's an attractive thought, but I don't see what negotiations will resolve the protest.


As I understand it, coca growers here are protesting the government's 15-pound limit on how much licensed coca growers can sell.  They also want the resignation of two apparently over-zealous government ministers.  Of course, I don't understand why each side feels as it does. I've only been in this area for a few months, and in my own selfish way I just want to get back to the UAC-Carmen Pampa so I can feel responsible as I try to fulfill the expectations about my being there:

• the children that wait for the library to open
• UAC-CP students that show up for the 6:30 am liturgy of the hours service before plunging into another busy day
• setting up for Mass
• Pastoral,
• English Club
• the volunteer teaching program for English.

Of course, none of those activities cease just because we're not there to help. Maybe our desire to return is stronger because we know we can't get back.


How do we know we can't get back? We tried, and finding that out was an adventure in confronting our own naivete. After returning to La Paz from a retreat with our fellow Franciscan lay missioners in Cochabamba (Catherine, Clare, and Nora, as well as our mentor, Hermano Ignacio) we heard that the blockade was indeed in place, shutting down all traffic on the only road into and out of the north Yungas. Before leaving, we had heard that a blockade probably would be set up before our return, but following the information we liked most to hear, we thought that we might just be allowed to walk across the blockade and be on our way. We hear that does happen sometimes. So, we went on to our retreat. When we returned we took a cab to the site in La Paz where the minibuses depart for the north Yungas. There we discovered that the minibus companies were all closed. However, while we were there we met two students from UAC who were also trying to return.  The four of us agreed to risk crossing the blockade.  As we understood it, the taxi would drive us right up to the blockade. We would get out of the taxi, explain to the nice people holding the threatening signs and marching back and forth around and beside the big piles of rotting papaya and other fruit unable to get to market, that we were all about social justice and higher education, so would they kindly step aside so we wouldn't be late for class. We would then lift our backpacks and other bags and saunter the scant two kilometers over to the other side of the blockade and pick up a ride in the minibus that was sure to be waiting to drive us  to the next stop, Coroico, or probably even right up to our apartment door. For all I knew, maybe some of the nice people would put down their signs so they could help us carry our bags and so we could get back in time for a little class prep. Ah, truly, this was the best of all possible worlds!¹ (Did I mention that rain clouds were rolling in?)


Fortunately, we were turned back by the police before we made it out of La Paz. We were later informed that the people on these blockades sometimes turn violent. We also learned that there were actually two blockades, one at Unduavi and another about 65 kilometers away at the Santa Barbara bridge. Had we been allowed to walk unharmed across the first blockade, our hike to the second would have been a few kilometers longer than expected, and in weather for which we were unequipped. Our guardian angel must've been splitting her sides at how hard we had been working to hurt ourselves. We felt fortunate to be able to reflect on these things from the comfort and security of a room at the Maryknoll House.  Once again in our lives, we were learning that we couldn't just choose to believe what we wanted to hear. And we were learning about the complexity of social change in this country (what about the various reasons why each person on the blockades was there), why some things that are possible, like increasing education in the Yungas, may proceed very slowly.                                    
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1Doctor Pangloss, true to his phenomenal longevity in Voltare's Candide, is alive and well in Bolivia.

Thanks

Lynn and I know that life continues to change for our family and friends back home, just as it does for us here in Bolivia. We also know that they continue to make it possible for us to do our work here.  Such was the case when we found out recently that Ken and Janice had decided to move to another state.  They have been providing a home for some of the belongings that we did not give away and they couldn't take these things with them. Craig and his family were kind enough to accept them. And Chris was kind enough to transport them. Thanks guys.

A note between classes

September 24, 2010

It's 11:30 am. I have a break between the English classes I'm teaching, enough time to think about what I've been doing since moving to Carmen Pampa from Cochabamba in June. Lynn and I are working at our assigned duties¹ here at UAC-Carmen Pampa:

• teaching English classes for the Departments of Ecotourism (lower campus²) and Education (upper campus),
• assisting with Mass preparations on Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon,
• assisting with the students' Thursday night Pastoral meeting on the upper campus,
• conducting an early morning Liturgy of the Hours service in the chapel on the upper campus (Tuesday through Friday),
• staffing the children's library on the edge of the lower campus.

These are some of the proposed assignments we received shortly after we arrived. There were others, such as coordinating the painting of the chapel interior on the upper campus³, but these were the ones that became routine duties.

The environment of the two campuses was very different in late June from what it is like now.  We were between semesters. Few students were on campus and we were not taking classes ourselves so we relaxed. Except for noticing different and more dense vegetation,⁴ maybe the occasional clouds outside the door of the apartment where we moved our belongings, it felt like being on any college campus between sessions in the United States.  We worked at meeting and remembering the faculty and staff still around the school--making lists to associate names and faces and functions.  They all were very patient as we slowly fitted ourselves into their midst.

In the empty apartment we moved into we found a big echo and some memories of the previous Franciscan missioners (Jean and Leo Lechtenburg) and volunteer David Flannery who lived there. Yellow curtains decorated the two windows in the front room.⁵ A giant Asian fan spread wide over the main wall in the kitchen area. A large set of shelves covered one wall, waiting to become our bookcase. Two maps of this north Yungas region and a poster of Saint Francis filled the area by the front door. A San Damiano cross hung at door-top level on the sliver of wall between the doorways to the two rooms directly off of the front room. Two UAC uniform shirts for teachers hung on the rack in the bedroom.  The two cooking pots and lid beneath the kitchen sink lay waiting to be discovered as, in fact, a double boiler so that just maybe with a little free time and enough fresh eggs we might have a batch of hollandaise sauce for eggs benedict. A small cylinder of fabric on one of the tables unfurled to reveal a Tibetan prayer flag. Once we found places for our own things among these things the echo vanished.

A supporting part of our mission during this quiet time between semesters was spent setting up various daily life systems for eating, hygiene, laundry, and getting to and from work. Every environment presents its challenges and surprises.  Setting up some of these routines in Carmen Pampa took more time than I expected.  I also learned new methods for things we have taken for granted in our lives in the United States.

I'll write about some of this with my next post, but right now Janina, one of the children from Carmen Pampa and a frequent library visitor, has discovered that the library door is open. That technically means that the library is open despite the regular hours, and she has headed immediately for my laptop.  She wants to play a game of ajedrez (chess) against the computer.  I'll close out this post so Janina and I can walk over to the dining room of the food cooperative where there's more space for the game and where her mother works. Not knowing the regular hours of her school, I want to be sure this middle of the day ajedrez habit has parental approval. . . . "It does?" Yes. Okay, caballo b1 to c3, and she's off to the races!


The photo above shows some of the regulars at the children's library while they're playing Scrabble. 

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¹ We are doing these things without salary from UAC, but our housing is paid for, and we receive a stipend for living expenses from Franciscan Mission Service. This helps UAC provide education at a lower cost for students in the Yungas.  Thanks to all of our friends for supporting our mission here.

² The lower campus, Manning, was built first and is further down the mountain (Uchumachi), beside the community of Carmen Pampa. Further up the mountain and close to the main road to Coroico is the upper campus, Leahy, built as more career areas were added to the curriculum.

³ This would exclude the mural decorating the wall behind the altar. This was painted by missioner Leo Lechtenburg. It unites the chapel with the natural beauty of the Yungas and the people who live there.

⁴ Well, okay some of these plants I have seen frequently in the US, such as impatiens, fern, wandering jew, caladiums, and ajuga, but they were growing anywhere there was space to spread leaves and throughout winter here.

5 Through these windows each morning we could see that the sun ascended over the top of Uchumachi at about 9:20 am. This was in late June, and by the longer days of mid-September, the sun was topping the mountain at about 8:15 am.

Kids Having Fun

It was nice to see kids enjoying themselves at a recent birthday party in Carmen Pampa.

Reflections on Language School

Six weeks ago Lynn and I completed the 5-month Basic Spanish immersion course at the Maryknoll Language Institute in Cochabamba. I thought the living/learning situation there was close to ideal.

Cochabamba is an easy city to get around in, even if you don't know much Spanish. Taxis and buses run frequently, and for someone from the United States, the fares are cheap . Our section of the city--Cala Cala, on the north end--was served by plenty of shops and a Catholic church (we're Catholic) within a 15-minute walk. Also we could satisfy most basic needs without traveling far from our host's home on Calle Rafael Canedo. Even so, I remember the curious exhilaration and independence I felt when for the first time in Spanish I communicated my need to purchase toothpaste and bread, or attended Mass and discovered that I was beginning to understand parts of it, homily included.

Life with our host family was both simple and good because of their 25 years of experience hosting students from the Maryknoll Language Institute, their care for the welfare of the people they hosted, and their amazing willingness to be an active part of our effort to learn their language. That willingness extended not only to Dr. Henry Rojas and his wife, Lily Arze, but also to their three adult children (Lupita, Diego, and Cathy), their friends, and even aunts, uncles, and parents. We broke bread together, stoked the koa together, attended soccer games, shared music and photos, and talked and talked and talked. We were welcome on a daily basis to include or absent ourselves depending on our own schedules and/or those stages of fluctuating confidence in our ability to join in. We didn't realize it at the time, but because they slowed the pace of their own lives enough to include us they cushioned us from culture shock.

The Maryknoll Language Institute also helped us overcome culture shock. During classes I found it hard to do more than work at the vocabulary and grammar. The hypothetical daily situations we practiced gradually became real as we began exploring Cochabamba and needed to communicate. We also practiced vocabulary during class for events that we were encouraged to participate in like Carnaval, and the trip to the Jesuit missions.

The professors at Maryknoll Language Institute were patient, optimistic, and often inspiring. They were obviously accustomed to adjusting the pace of the program to the needs of individual students and even to adjusting that further as students had their periods of two steps forward and one step back. This was effective teaching-- sometimes tolerating error for the sake of continuing conversation. This brought more questions, answers and corrections. It also felt good to be a student in this group of like-minded people from different language traditions. People from Brazil, North America, New Guinea, England, Korea, Ireland, and Togo were speaking together in Spanish and communicating.

At the Institute conversations with faculty and staff were in Spanish, from the librarian to the grounds crew and gatekeepers. The grounds of the institute were carefully tended and formed an orderly garden. the prevailing there is no accident. The work of Padre Ramond Finch, Hermana Cathy DeVito, Alejandro Acázar and others helped to preserve the harmonious atmosphere. Our experiences with Padres Pancho and Juancho at Masses in the Institute and during visits in the South Zone taught us the high level of personal commitment to improving life for the people. Our brief meetings with the three older hermanas (they referred to themselves as the dinosaurs) and Padre John Gorsky, reminded us of the long history of those traditions. They knew the talented missionary linguist Padre Jack Higgins ( they called him "the Colonel") from Nashville, TN who served in Bolivia during the '50s until his early death in the '60s. His sister Bitsy would be pleased to know that the good work he was doing there has carried on. That includes Padre Ignatius Harding (also has a sister in Nashville) for his 39 years of service in Bolivia, and good work by people from our own organization, the Franciscan Lay Missioners, for I recall a boat ride back from the Isla del Sol to Copa Cabana and a casual conversation with two young volunteers from Cochabamba (started when one of them remarked on my Middlebury cap) revealed that they had worked with Richard Nalen in after-school programs and had great respect for his willingness to go out and visit with the families of children having problems, addressing them both in Spanish and Quechua.

I remember pausing one day at the bulletin board in the Institute, and there was an aerial photo of the Maryknoll headquarters and grounds at Ossining, New York. The building was designed in the style of a Japanese pagoda. I remembered our week of study there with prospective missioners from four other lay missionary groups, including the Maryknollers like Minh (Lynn's language partner at the Institute), and how even that had seemed difficult at first, interacting with all of them despite our basically shared goals. I remembered that not all us ended up going on mission. And I remembered an early morning jog I had taken on the Maryknoll grounds there, past the tennis courts overgrown with patches of grass, and past the graves of Jean Donovan and the missionaries martyred in El Salvador--God bless them for their intent. It reminded me that these were complex steps we all were taking.

While in Cochabamba we explored possible service sites. On retreat at Angostura we shared reflections with our three fellow Franciscan lay missioners there, Clare, Nora, and Catherine. All of these activities challenged my decision to undertake an out-of-country, out-of-culture experience, to examine my perceptions of myself and other people, to think about my relationship to the Franciscan vows of conversion, poverty, contemplation, and minority, and our motives for wanting to help other people.

Enduring Overwhelming Questions

Lynn and I have completed the five-month Basic Spanish course at the Maryknoll Language Institute here in Cochabamba.  Soon we will leave for our active mission site at Carmen Pampa in the Yungas region northeast of La Paz.  In the lull before packing I've been thinking about some of our experiences here. One in particular, K'ara K'ara, the dumpsite for domestic garbage for the city of Cochabamba, is particularly disturbing. In writing about K'ara K'ara, I remind myself that the dump will close and that a new dump will open with--I hear--appropriate environmental safeguards.  That will be good if those safeguards are in place when the new dump opens, but that still leaves the K'ara K'ara dump to mature as a social and environmental problem.

On Sunday, March 14¹, Lynn and I, along with fellow lay missioners Nora Pfeiffer and Minh Nguyen, visited K'ara K'ara at the invitation of Padre Ken to visit his parish there. Padre Ken was a missionary in Venezuela for 18 years, has been here in Bolivia for 4 years, and has lived at K'ara K'ara for about a year. In Quechua K'ara K'ara means something like peeled or barren. It refers to the natural condition of the land there, which is perhaps a perfect dumpsite for garbage. Problems arise when the garbage dumping process proceeds without environmental safety regulation and when the site around the dump populates with low income housing and inhabitants at risk of compromising their health because of toxic wastes accruing there.  Despite noted health risks the dump continues to operate because it provides an income to some in the region and because claims over who has the right to decide its closure are disputed. And despite this people continue to move into the region because they need a place to live and they can afford to live there.

As such, K'ara K'ara has become a complex part of the social fabric of Cochabamba and a social problem. Social problems are dynamic.  When they first strike our attention, they look like fixed realities, but they spread, intensify, and worsen for the people who inherit them. Institutionalized social problems become more difficult to stop as they perpetuate. K'ara K'ara is an institutionalized social problem:

• Opened in 1987 approximately 7 kilometers from the center of Cochabamba as a garbage dump site for the people of that city;
• Covers an area of approximately 98 acres;
• Established and operated without the benefit of a protective liner to contain the spread of toxic liquids leaching from the garbage deposited there;
• Surrounded by small homes of the many people living nearby, and some directly beside the dump;
• The site of unrestricted dumping, including unguarded hospital wastes and open pools for the deposit of chemical sludge;
• An income for 7 of 33 neighborhood groups by collection of permission-to-dump fines amounting to approximately $87,640.00 per year;
• An income for trash resellers who sort competitively through newly dumped garbage for items to salvage;
• An income for small contractors who buy lots near or adjacent to the dump, build homes on them, and sell them to buyers unaware of the long-term dangers of living next to a dump site.

Court orders have been issued about the dump since 2000. In September 2009 the Superior Court of Cochabamba ordered the dump to close and listed many problems with the dump in its present state:

• Nonexistent drains and insufficient works to capture the liquids leaching from solid domestic residues;
• Lack of monitoring of the volumes of production and recovery of leachate from solid domestic residues;
• Insufficient compacting of solid domestic residues, resulting in the formation of air pockets between residue deposits;
• Nonexistent monitoring of biogas formed during decomposition of solid domestic residues;
• Insufficient coverage of solid residues from hospitals (originally, this area of the dump site was surrounded by a security fence, but no longer);
• Lack of reforestation effort for those areas where material has been gathered to cover over areas of deposited waste;
•  Flow of leachate into air pockets among solid domestic residue deposits as that decomposes;
• Transport of deposited solid wastes is facilitated by inadequate cover of the domestic residue as it is deposited;
• Inadequate plan for pick up and disposal of collected leachate;
• Nonexistent plan for adequate disposition of residues;
• Nonexistent plan for recovery and recycling of usable materials in the interior of the dump;
• Insufficient traffic signs warning about the dangers of the dump site, resulting in ready access of unauthorized persons and animas in the area of the dump site;
• Insufficient barriers between the dump and neighborhoods surrounding the dump site;
• Nonexistence of an adequate plan for industrial hygiene.

During our visit to K'ara K'ara, Padre Ken reflected on some of his experiences while living there:

• Some of the older garbage piles are now covered with dirt. Gas pipes have been installed in some areas to channel off the gases created by the decomposing garbage. These gases catch fire and can be seen at night.
• The official collectors of the garbage (EMSA) dumped in K'ara K'ara had a meeting.  After their meeting Padre Ken was informed that he should be careful about going up on the dump site because of the escaping gases. (During our visit to K'ara K'ara trucks arrived, dumped garbage, and departed.)
• Numerous people were sorting through this garbage, apparently for possible reusable items. It is doubtful that they were informed of any danger regarding escaping gases.)
• The priest of the parish at K'ara K'ara before Padre Ken was asked to leave because he asked questions about the income derived from the dump and who controlled that. Padre Ken has been encouraged to not ask questions. As a priest, he visits all of the various neighborhoods around the dump, but many of the people are unwilling to associate with him, possibly because it is rumored that he is a representative of Vicente Cañas, an organization working to close the dump.
• The dump continues to operate by the payment of fines from the mayor's office.  For any of the money from these fines to be spent, a project proposal must be submitted to and approved by the mayor's office.
•  For the dump to close there must be a common agreement of the 33 communities surrounding the area. However, 7 of the 33 claim to have the greatest right to determine the fate of the dump because their inhabitants live in the closest proximity to it.  They oppose the closure.  In this limbo K'ara K'ara continues to operate.
• People are ignorant about the poisons in the dump and their potential effect on people. Urbanization continues on the slope west of the dump site.  People are building houses directly beside the base of the dump, close to all of the toxins. Speculators buy lots there, build homes, then sell them to people who are unaware of the danger. This is not large tract development. Typically, a developer will buy one or two lots then build houses and sell them.

I am very impressed by Padre Ken's persistence in enduring this tough assignment. I recall something he said as we rode in a taxi trufi to visit the dump. "Sometimes you just have to sit with problems, be with them."  True, we sometimes make problems worse by attempting to impose the wrong solutions on them.  And some problems by their complexity seem to mock our desire to solve them. During our brief visit it was very easy to see the potential for ill effects as I watched cows grazing on grass growing atop some of the older garbage and then saw elsewhere closeby children playing who might drink the milk from those cows. To think about K'ara K'ara is to want to fix it or just walk away and try to stop thinking about it.  I cannot stop the garbage flow from the growing city of Cochabamba or the ill effects of the past 25 years of garbage flow, but I propose the following:

• Differentiated future collections to divert most discarded matter into recyclable, compostable, toxic, or safe garbage;
• Incentives for local universities to develop and implement effective strategies for neutralizing the negative effects of the current deposit of undifferentiated waste;
• Broad-based public involvement to provide greater transparency regarding the profit incentives for operating the dump and to challenge the continued operation of the dump site as a cash benefit to a few and a health risk to many;
• Monitoring of residents in the area for possible contamination-related health problems;
• Your constructive suggestions.

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¹A little over a month before the Deep Water Horizon drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

On the street

I have lived in Bolivia for only 4 months. I have spent most of that time learning to speak and write Spanish at the Maryknoll Language Institute so I can communicate with people here when Lynn and I move to our mission site. In Cochabamba, when I walk on the streets I see a lot of people selling food or small consumer goods on the street. Most of them seem to be people from the countryside around Cochabamba, dressed in traditional Quechua attire. The upscale ones have a kiosk or a cart.  Others may simply have a bag of stuff beside them--fruit or vegetables--as they sit on the sidewalk and offer their wares to the passers by. That there are street vendors does not disturb me; it's that so many people seem to be trying to make a living this way.¹ Maybe a lot of them don't mind being street vendors, or even want the flexibility of being able to move to a new location at will², but I think more often than not they choose from within the opportunities available to them and that they haven't had much to choose from.

Maybe they even perpetuate this themselves by making short-sighted choices. It wasn't so long ago that I first saw a woman from the country (camposina) making a cell phone call while she sat on the sidewalk beside the sack of narangas she was selling. My first reaction was to assume that sitting on the sidewalk in her slightly dirty traditional attire was just a way of trying to look impoverished in order to influence people to buy the fruit out of pity³, and that the cell phone meant that she really had chunk of discretionary income that she opted to squander on a material possession that she would always have to keep paying for to actually make it work. Then I remembered the cell phone in my own pocket. Cell phones here are not expensive. They can be used without a contract by buying minutes only when you need them. Maybe the cell phone was part of a more efficient system of supply and demand for this woman: "Hey, I don't think I'll be able to push a second sack of narangas by sundown, so maybe hold off on that and bring me some potatoes instead." Maybe it helps her to relieve boredom there on the sidewalk or to keep someone from worrying about when she might be coming home for the day. Or maybe it was for something about her baby; she had a baby wrapped up on her lap.

Thinking about the camposina vendor with the cell phone reminded me to think about my own reactions to the things I see. I knew that I couldn't suddenly transform her life,⁴ but I also didn't want to have a reflex reaction that allowed me to just keep walking and eventually not even see her when I passed.⁵ One day the following week Lynn and I were leaving the Language Institute after classes, and just outside the gates a woman with a small child in her arms approached us.  She explained that she needed help because she had no job and she had four children, one of whom had Downs syndrome.  She was waiting to see one of the Maryknoll brothers inside the institute but he hadn't been able to come yet.  We went back in the Institute to make sure he would come out to see her and told her that he would come when he could.  We wished her good luck and walked on. About 50 yards away a woman stopped us and asked us if we would be interested in buying some bread in support of the cause she was working for. She handed us a brochure.  She showed us the bread.  We didn't need bread, but I checked my pockets for money. The bread cost 8 bolivianos. I had 10.  We gave her the 10 bolivianos and asked her to give the loaf of bread to the woman with the child back at the gate.  We pointed her out, and the woman with the bread was walking toward her as we left.  We think she probably gave the loaf of bread to the woman with the child, and now I felt I knew what to do the next time I saw the woman selling narangas on the sidewalk.

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¹I hear that for the purpose of employment statistics, selling something on the streets counts as being gainfully employed. So, is the unemployment rate then a falsified statistic or one based on a realistic use of the criteria for employment in this market economy? And does the fact that I can internalize both sides of an argument make me a better final arbiter, or is that just a gratuitous first step toward believing what I wanted to believe in the first place, employing the appearance of a Hegelian dialectical process?

² This feels a little like the argument that even if there is such a think as global warming one of the benefits will be to bring more land into cultivation for food. ("Till, baby, till!")

³ Would there be anything wrong with having a sales tactic?

⁴I wasn't sure what needed to be transformed and how to go about that anyway, and there were too many on the street to help them all even though that shouldn't stop me from helping one.

⁵Because my own preoccupations and the settling dust made her seem to blend into the road.

Imagine, if you will, Glaucon . . .

March 29, 2010

Last night Lynn and I returned from visiting two of the Jesuit missions in the Chiquita region near Santa Cruz: San Javier and Concepcion.¹ They represent different stages of mission work by members of the Catholic Church and also the dedication of the Bolivian people in preserving them.  Popularized outside of South America by the 1986 film The Mission², the mission towns (called reductions, in that they gathered in people for protection) were organized by18th century Jesuits who tried to reestablish social stability for indigenous peoples living in the areas now known as Bolivia and Paraguay. Fragmentation of traditional tribal society for people in this region began with invading Spanish conquistadors and some accompanying clergy in the 16th century.  The reductions were a safe haven for indigenous people against the continual need for slaves to work in the growing farming and mining efforts to accumulate wealth through forced extraction. In the reductions they could produce wares for sale and practice their own way of life.  They were also exposed to Christianity and to the baroque tradition of music and art from Europe. The Jesuit missions represented a later effort to bring Christianity to the indigenous people but by blending Catholic ritual with the tribal traditions and beliefs of the peoples surrounding each mission site. Their success at this may be gauged by the growth of their own influence and by the animosity this generated among landowners in the region.  In 1767, nine years before the thirteen American colonies declared independence from Britain, the Jesuits were ejected from Bolivia, and the mission towns became the property of the remaining residents.

The mission churches in the Chiquita region survived.  They were cared for by the local inhabitants, and members of the Franciscan order became responsible for the services conducted there.  After almost two centuries, as paint faded and wood rotted, the mission churches that survived were in need of repair and renovation.  This came under the direction of Swiss architect and theologian Hans Roth who completed most of the major renovations before his death in 1999.

The churches themselves would be striking to anyone who loves color, contrast, detail and symbolism, but this was made all the more remarkable by their location--in a region filled with natural beauty but no great manmade structures other than hotels for travelers like us, or the dam at the lake by Concepcion.  The improbability of their location heightened their impact on our senses as we entered.  These are not museums but living churches, and our best experience of this, I think, was in Concepcion when we accompanied the townspeople on their Palm Sunday procession from the edge of the cemetery to the plaza and into the church.  It was a hot day in a hot, humid climate, and the procession was packed with people carrying garlands woven with palm fronds. I thought I must be offending some by walking along the edges of the column, stopping to take photos as I went--a gringo gawker--but I wanted to share pictures with everyone who couldn't be there with me.

By the time we reached the arch of palm fronds before the great doors of the church entrance, I was sweating. In an arc over the great doors were painted the Spanish words for "The house of God and gate of heaven" (Gen. 28:17). I felt like I was one of the congregation and that I too could take a seat in the packed sanctuary, if I could find an empty one. There were none, and so we stood by an open window in the back.  This proved lucky for us as the temperature rose and we had a breeze on our backs. Throughout the service we heard hymns sung by a youth chorus accompanied by violin and guitar. For the benediction I decided that I had to get a closer shot of the celebrant, Bishop Antonio Bonifacio.  Of course, I expected this to be one more offense as I seemed to flip-flop from worshipper to photographer. However, as I stood beside one of the massive columns, one hand resting in the deeply carved folds, and the other poking my camera lens through the fronds of a palm leaf, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  The woman standing beside me at the end of the pew smiled and stepped out, offering me her place so I could take the shot.

We were reminded again that Jesus was going to see it through to the end, inviting us to do the same. Following the recessional, we spilled out into the plaza and the thick red dust of the streets.  The sun was bright and hot. One child after another offered to sell me woven crafts. I didn't mind.  It felt good to be there, occasionally understanding a few remarks, sharing the joy of the people.

Cooled by the breeze passing over my own sweat, I remembered how I had felt a few years back when our family, Lynn, Emer, Norbert, and I, were at the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey in Scotland, a Norbertine monastery closed and confiscated by Henry VIII. It was beautiful and serene, but I was sad that the community had been destroyed. And now so far away in time and space I was seeing how a similar disenfranchisement had escaped destruction. I thought of Paul's remarks on faith in Hebrews 11-13.

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¹Our guide, Mercedes, explaned to us that chiquitano is one of those "lumping together"words that occurs when one group of people tags another group as all being a certain way, in this case as being shorter than the invading group, apparently based on the diminutive doorways they constructed in their traditional dwellings, and that feature in reality being more to protect themselves.
²Written by Thomas Bolt, this is a beautiful film for cinematography, acting, narrative, and considerations of moral dilemma. Bolt is also the author of the award-winnng play and 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, one that Lynn and I used to teach during discussions of film and writing. It felt good to draw physically closer to one of Bolt's subjects again (just as when we visited the grave of Saint Thomas More in Canterbury) if only for a day or so.
³Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J., identifies utopianism as a factor in the early drive toward mission in Latin America, and cites Vasco de Quiroga as having been directly influenced by Thomas More's fictional work Utopia, written in 1516, when he tried to organize two ideal communities in the area now known as Mexico. Fr. Klaiber is author of The Jesuits in Latin America and other works on the role of the Church in the economic and political history of the Latin America.

VIA CRUCIS

On Wednesday, March 3, Lynn and I accepted an invitation to attend Mass and a stations of the cross ceremony in our neighborhood.  The invitation appeared on a photocopied sheet of paper posted on the outer door of our host family's home. To be sure we would arrive on time, we decided to find the house a day ahead of schedule so we followed the directions to the  address on the invitation and came to the door of a house only about a block away.  The houses here are surrounded by high walls and have locked gates or doors.  This one was no different, but a similar photocopied invitation indicated that we were in the right place.

On the following evening we returned at 6:30 and pressed the doorbell.  A middle-aged man with a kind face soon greeted us and led us in.  He was dressed in plain clothes, but we soon learned that he was Padre Tito and that this structure behind the high walls was a house of study for seminarians. The chapel was a large room just to the right of the foyer.  About fifteen people were already there--some seated, some standing close and chatting.  In the back were three young men, two holding guitars.  All seemed to be in good spirits, and soon a second priest, Juan, was welcoming us in English about equal to the Spanish we used to thank him for the invitation. No importante because our limited words were only a part of our communication: he could tell we wanted to be there and we could tell that we were welcome.  Juan introduced us to a neatly dressed woman and withdrew to prepare for celebrating the Mass. This woman turned out to be the mother of our host family's father.  In a moment we were laughing together and sharing the news we had heard of her recent birthday and how her three of her children--our host Henry, his brother and sister--had celebrated her birthday by hiring a mariachi band to stop by her house (just two houses down from ours) at midnight and serenade her. It was good to  get to know the person who lives on the other side of the wall we pass each day on our way to Spanish classes at the Maryknoll Language Institute, the wall covered with cascades of flowers I probably mistakenly call drops of gold. It was good to learn that before retirement she had been a professor.  She was energetic and observant, and when she welcomed us to the neighborhood, she did seem to speak for the entire neighborhood.  Others I recognized in the congregation were the Franciscan Sisters who lived together in a house two blocks from us, among them the one from Italy who greets me with a smile when I jog past her sometimes in the early morning.

Through words and song we drew closer during the course of the Mass and shared the body of Christ.  Our common beliefs united us.  Following Mass we were all invited in to the social hall to drink cups of api, eat empanadas, and share information about ourselves.  Most people were from the neighborhood, but several were from other Latin American countries, and Lynn and I, the only two from the United States, were welcomed again. The three young men of the choir were seminarians. Gradually people began to drift out of the social hall.  Lynn and I presumed they were returning to the chapel for the stations of the cross, but when we returned there we saw that no one was there. Confused, we thanked Padres Tito and Juan and left. As we started walking along the dark street back home, we wondered how we could've misunderstood about the stations of the cross and wondered if maybe we had missed something because of our limited Spanish.

On our way back we saw a light ahead at one of the doorways and saw several people gathered around. We stopped and had our answer about the stations of the cross.  Here at the gateway to this house the family was preparing one of the stations: a table covered with a white table cloth, images of Christ, Mary, angels, a wooden cross, candles, flowers, water, salt.  As we looked up and down the street we saw other stations being erected and learned that the fourteen stations were arranged at the gateways of fourteen homes at intervals around the block on which we lived.  We followed others to the first station and walked and sang in procession with them and the seminarians with guitars, stopping at each station for the announcement of Christ's sufferings and for the benediction.  To our surprise the gateway of our hosts' home was the final station.  (A neighbor took a photo of Lynn and me with our hosts, Henry and Lily.) This blessing seemed to complete the blessing of houses with the koa fires honoring Pachamama during Carnaval.

I suppose a block party can bring about good spirits among neighbors, and it would be wrong to idealize the faith of all of the participants, ours included.  We were not trooping around the block in lock-step bliss.  But it was beautiful to see this ceremony reverencing Christ's acceptance of sufferings extended from the church and into the homes and lives of the people nearby.  And it was beautiful to see so many people voluntarily join together in a peaceful ceremony of shared belief to express their faith.

Sorrow and Joy

Rantastic #1: "Anybody that thinks we're not born losers in a game of attrition is just kidding himself."  I'm quoting one of my own bleak attitudes when circumstances seem to take life in the wrong direction for no apparent good reason.  In my best-of-all-possible worlds people who intend to help others do so and their efforts are on the mark and the ones who are helped get better somehow and they're really glad about that and so they thank the people who helped them and then they begin trying to help other needy people with their own efforts that are on the mark or even if they've already been helping others, one by-product of the help they received is that somehow now their own perceptions and efforts are sharpened so that the quality of their help gets even better and so in this vision (I usually glaze over with joy while I'm locked onto this one) the whole universe starts dancing with 'no-problemo' harmony. And despite whatever age of aquarius reverberations flake about in this snow-globe vision, I think it's still healthy despite that nagging attitude on the sidelines, that raw aftertaste in a fabulous too-good-to-be-true dish:  maybe this just precedes something terrible happening to rebalance life into an inscrutably gray mediocrity of random chaos. In fact, it's always there at the feast, that devilishly complex postre of when-bad-things-happen-to-good-people dish, and we struggle to recover from our own hard knocks or watch and try to help others struggle to recover from theirs. That too is mission, and that was the pie on my face when I heard recently that one of our compañeras at the Maryknoll Language Institute here in Cochabamba had taken a hit.

Damnificados: So what could be more absurd than a nun on mission getting mugged while walking to Mass on a celeste Sunday morning? Okay, how about the probable take--one black bag containing an umbrella and a Bible. (True, there's priceless stuff there, but you gotta know how to work with it or it just gets all over you, and it probably will get all over you anyway.) Or better, how about the method for this intended property transfer--a snag from behind bag-jacking in which one guy drives the car and his buddy leans out to grab the shoulder strap. Or even better, how about the outcome--enmeshed Sister (bag is strapped courier-style from shoulder to opposite side) is whacked on the head but struggles to keep pace with accelerating car, falls against the car and then elbow down into the gutter, bag still at her side as the white taxi (it's always a blanco taxi they say here) speeds safely off toward...what? But, of course, there's always the impact on the victim--eleven days in the hospital to deal with cuts on the head and elbow requiring stitches, bruises and road rash, five broken ribs, one of which punctures a lung, necessitating a drain tube to evacuate the blood, and, of course, that's just the physical stuff.

It's no surprise that after further healing she will complete her Spanish language training elsewhere. I'm amazed that she still plans to serve on mission in El Salvador.  I hope that when she feels better she will lead others with her clear voice as she did when she concluded our prayer service with the City of God:

Let us build the city of God. May our tears be turned into dancing!  For the Lord, our light and our love, has turned the night into day!

In the quiet times between my amoeba infestations, between earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, I think about these things.

Vamos a cortar la distancia entre la vision y la realidad

January 30, 2010

Especially for Lynn and me, undertaking an out of country mission after having a family requires a considerable amount of unwinding from so many of those affiliations necessary for surviving in American society. During that time we tried to give back along the way, but we recognized the difficuly of doing that, especially when the needs of our immediate family asserted themselves intensely and frequently. I'm reminded of a remark by Reverend Preston Dumas of Texas, "When you're raising kids, that's about all you do." And as I think about it, that's about right. So Lynn and I found ourselves with a desire to keep on responding to those very real human needs in a way that broadened our sense of family at a time when we could manage to pursue that vision. Along with the many other people along the way who helped us, I think of Harmon Wray who suggested to me that maybe his friend Alex Weisendanger could tell us something about the Jesuit Volunteer Corp (which Lynn's professor from divinity school, Patout Burns, had first mentioned to her) and how that led to chat with Alex over some really fine brew at the Bongo Java East in Nashville, and that led to talk about living in intentional communities and opportunities for lay missionary work through the Maryknoll group in Ossining, NY and the Franciscan Mission Service (FMS) in Washington, DC. We were fortunate to be selected by FMS and to live in the mission house, Casa San Salvador, just down the street from the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, during our 3-month formation period under the direction of returned missioner Beth Riehle.

I thought about that journey as I shot this photo recently on the street in Cochabamba, Bolivia. We are in the process of finding additional supports as we gradually enter into Bolivian society. Among them are our language school, the Maryknoll Language Institute (MLI), where we spend most of our time learning Spanish, and our host family of Dr. Henry Rojas, his wife Lily Arze, their three adult children, Lupita, Diego, and Cathy, and Diego's wife Cecilia and their 3-year-old son, Sebastian. I caption the picture "Vamos a cortar la distancia entre la vision y la realidad," or "We go to bridge the gap between the vision and the reality." Those in the picture left to right are fellow Franciscan missioners Nora, Lynn, Clare and Catherine, and Padre Ignatius Harding, OFM, our mentor for mission in Bolivia. They stand before the middle panel of a 3-panel mural painted on an exterior wall of the Franciscan church. The left panel depicts common people working to realize a better life. The right panel depicts a polluted world through which combat-ready soldiers move warily. The middle panel depicts a triumphant Francis of Assisi striding through an ideal world.

We know that our mission service will give us a more Bolivian-specific understanding of the Spanish verb trabajar. We work now to acquire a common language for servicex in Bolivia, and to learn more about Franciscanism and Bolivian culture. All of our efforts proceed simultaneously.

On an afternoon not long after I took that photo we met with Fr. Ignacio at the Centro Social Franciscano on Calle Colombia, a few quadras from the Franciscan church. When we arrived the Centro was not in session, but Padre Ignatius gave us a tour. It is an immense two-storied antique casa with open porches built around a central courtyard. The story about the facility evolved was interesting to me--a property of the Poor Clares that they wanted to see put to better use. An appeal to the Franciscan Padres, some meetings with other members of the Diocese and the agenda was set to offer up the facility as a site for social services badly needed for the poor in that area of the city. The facility then became a magnet for others in the city who wanted to share their skills in providing those social services. With only a few salaried employees, the Centro offers people an impressive array of care options: primary medical and dental care, otorhinolaryngological care, psychological counseling, massage therapy, and access to counseling for alcoholics and their families through group meetings with a chapter of the local Alcoholics Anonymous. Other services include burn care for children and housing for them while they convalesce. One of the young boys in recovery met us and asked us if we would be back tomorrow--and, in fact, some of the new Franciscan missioners might return to perform their service there. Even the weekly meal prepared and served by volunteers from the Legion of Mary and others provided good service opportunities for anyone who cared to help. (As skilled choppers of potatoes, carrots, and onions--thanks to all the guys at the Fr. McKenna Center in DC--Lynn and I quickly identified a short-term service op.) And the facility itself with the broad porches, tall ceilings, and welcoming staff offered people hope.

While touring the Centro, I saw that good will toward poor people in Cochabamba is hardly fallow. May God grant us all serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. It made me feel better about the fate of people outside who crouched along the walkways and in the plazas, mendicantes begging outright or offering some small service or product like chewing gum or a tune from a flute. But the number of them doing this dwarfs anything I've seen in the U.S. It made me wonder about the causes of this poverty too and how service might work both to alleviate the suffering of those trapped in it and to keep others from being trapped. Photographing my fellow missioners before a mural, as beautiful a statement as that might make, was only a moment of psychological preparation to become a trabajador in the tradition of Francis and Clare. The need is there, the facility and companeros are there. We just need to find our place in the active picture of social response to the need.

The need for service was underscored again while we were there by the presence of Padre Edwin Quispe, OFM who leads the mission outreach effort in the Parroquia San Carlos Borromeo to the south. He talked to us and showed some of the different paths for mission there in providing instruction about the importance of good health habits and nutrition within that environmental context, after school care and tutoring for children, accompanying them in games that promote community involvement and activities such as dance from their own varied cultural backgrounds. He made it clear that with the work being done via small centros throughout the parroquia, new volunteers are needed.

I thought back to the photo of the missioners before the mural and I know that they all had their zapatas on, but it reminded me of a quote from the Bible in a reading Lynn had used from Francis Klein's Four Ways of Holiness for the Universal Church: "And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Rom. 10: 14-15).

The coming week gave me more opportunities to struggle with language (a pobre hombre is not the same as an hombre pobre), learn some Bolivian history through a presentation by Dan Moriarty, Program Director of the Maryknoll Bolivia Mission Immersion Program, and think about poverty both abstract and Bolivian style.

On the Road

What's left of the mission when all of the images fall away? What energy powers the mission? The will to participate is important. The many ways to participate are important. The energy coalesces in good will and and good works. Never completely prepared for what we encounter, along the way we rediscover what we need.

Señor,
hazme instrumento de tu paz:
donde haya odio, siempre siempre yo amor;
donde haya injuria, perdon;
donde haya duda, fe;
donde haya tristeza, alegria;
donde haya desaliento, esperanza;
donde haya sombras, luz.
Oh Divino Maestro!
que no busque
ser consolado, sino consolar;
ser amado, sino amar;
ser comprendido, sino comprender;
porque dando, es como recibimos;
perdonando, es como tu perdonas;
y muriendo en ti, es como nacemos
ala vida eterna.
(San Francisco)

[I'm still polishing my translation of this, but it was great to hear the words of a buddy at the dinner table of our host family.]

Thanks

January 24, 2010 Lynn and I chose to come to Bolivia because we believe in helping people in need and because we were attracted to the Franciscan approach to mission service. Wanting to be part of an organized effort never puts one entirely there. Good people have shared our mission effort by helping us begin. Lynn has her own list, and some of the names here may repeat will overlap.


Thanks to our friends at Middlebury College in Vermont: Class of '10 friends Judy and Carmen and Emily and Eugenia and Nora and Jamie and Yuki and Ashley and Johnny and Philipe and Alexandra and Bilal and Todd  [We were so glad w could meet with you in November. We wish you all the best with your current semester and approaching graduation. Thanks for sharing the memories with the book that arrived on Christmas Eve], and Class '73 friend Mike [thanks for making time for us, and gracias por "Vaya con Dios" y el mundo.  We hope the Student Symposium continues to be a great opportunity for students to share their research], as well as Patrick [thanks for guiding our effort to honor Norbert], and Ron [congratulations for being recognized as one of the nation's best]. Paz.


As Catholics in Middle Tennessee, we received positive support from the members of religious orders there, particularly Fathers Steve, George, Patrick, and Dexter, all of the Dominican Sisters of Nashville, and all of the Benedictine Sisters of the Monastery in Ferdinand, Indiana. All participated in the development of our family and education of us and our children, Emer and Norbert. Lynn and I both have had good friends in our work places, people who made our jobs easier by doing their own jobs well so we could focus on doing our own, and sometimes inspiring us to try new methods for better results. We believe that going on mission is not a process of leaving friends behind but one of extending ourselves to use what we have learned through our work, education and family to help others in a new and equally demanding environment. Thanks John and Maggie, Eric and Sam and Paul and Mikey, Dean and Cindy and Tammy and Caleb, David and Joe and Coleman, Donna and Joyce and Naji and Dan, Stephanie and Ali and Carolyn, Bob and Sally and Lillian and Nancy and Bruce, Cathy and Jim, Mary Joe, Isaac and Darius and Joseph and Al and Betty, Manik and Tom and Kathy and Debbi and Derenda and Dantha and Jay, Jan and Ken and Mike and Bill, Alan and Paul and Dianna, Martina and Tom and Raul and Jeffery, Arnie and Sam and Harry, Doris, Benton, Mary and James, Nancye and John, Vickie and Anne and Mary and Tim and Tim and Deborah and Dominic and Bobby, Tom and Brian and Joel, Joel and Joel, Jim and Jim and James, Natasha and Nipun, John and Phil and Amy and Christy, the nice lady with the sack of iris bulbs, WebJim, Johnny and the gang at the track, Linda, and many more.


Thanks to Tom and John and Mary Ann and Emer for letting us slip away, and Fr. Frederick for blessing our effort.


For Lynn and me, a part of being able to undertake mission service at the ages of 57 and 58 respectively is having health. Despite our voluntary adherence to good regimens of diet, exercise and vitamins, we can't claim responsibility for our own good health. We also have received good evaluation, treatment, and advice from our physicians, nurses and counselors. They have accompanied our whole family in sickness and in health, demonstrating their own professional skills and the truth of our interconnectedness, our need for each other in all human societies. So, thanks to Harry, Ralf, Misty, Gail, Jonathan, John, James, Scott, David, Peter, Paul, James, and John.


We also had to find good homes for our two cats Abbey and Elliot, and our dog, Gemma. Special thanks to Amy, Emer, and Craig for opening your homes to them.


Redistributing our stuff was an adventure we could not have completed without tremendous physical effort and kindness from organizations (Craig's List, local consignment shops, the Salvation Army, Amvets, Goodwill and the Wilson County Dump) and people (Craig and Delores and Madi and Lara and Sunshine and Leroy and Layla, Ken and Janice, Eleanor and Barbara and Tim, Dave and Elliott and Chris, Gary and Betty and Claude).


Also I would like to thank Theresa of the Tennessee Register and Bob of the Tennessean for their interest in our undertaking, and also Bitsy, sister of Padre Juan, for reminding me that I am embarking on a well-traveled road.


Thanks to everyone at Franciscan Mission Service (I'll name names later), including the bread lady.


Thanks also to Jack and Otto and Michael and all of our buddies at Calvary.


I think about you all, and it feels so good.


As I reflect on our process of departure, I'm sure I will remember others and so will revise this entry as needed.

Entering Bolivia

January 6, 2010

Our mission has begun.  The four new Franciscan lay missioners are nearing the end of their flight from Miami, Florida to La Paz, Bolivia.  We should land in about 40 minutes or less.  The plane has already begun to descend. I woke after sleeping 5 hours and actually feel well enough to keep traveling.  I glance around. The other three missioners (Lynn, Clare, and Nora) are still asleep although probably lightly.  The beverage cart passed down the aisle, and now I have fresh coffee.  This isn't exactly roughing it--despite the pains of passing through Security twice and lugging around more baggage than I prefer.  The luggage is stuffed with the stuff I apparently thought I couldn't do without. Lynn and I did the cull and cast away a number of times, so I'm accepting responsibility for the tonnage in our two (well, okay, three each counting the papers and etc. tucked into ) carry-on pieces and two large neatly crammed checked suitcases each.

Earlier in the flight Lynn befriended the woman sitting beside her, a Bolivian dentist who lives and works in Washington, DC and who is returning to Bolivia for her vacation.  She included me, the husband, in the conversation briefly, and she seemed intelligent and affluent.  Her brother attended Carmen Pampa, the college where Lynn and I may work. The brother became a veterinarian and apparently married a woman named Kirsten from Wyoming who was a volunteer teacher of English there and who (as Kirsten told me herself in a conversation on the Bolivian woman's cell phone) started a goat farm. The Bolivian woman was very friendly to Lynn, and they apparently shared many details about their families with each other.  I was glad to see Lynn still doing what she always does so well--make friends wherever she goes. 

After Lynn's conversation with the woman tapered off, Lynn turned to me and whispered that it felt a little strange to be telling the affluent woman that she was coming to her home country to work as a missioner.  I found my own understanding of that feeling of strangeness. If prosperous citizens are not sympathetic with the plight of the poor in their country, they may think that it is their own fault or that perhaps it isn't really as bad for them as it may first appear. They might regard outsiders who come professing to help the poor as not understanding, or as being over-zealous about their beliefs--secular or religious-- or that perhaps the outsiders may have an ulterior agenda of social revision.  It is true that outsiders may not fully understand the root and complexity of a country's social problems and may by their ignorance even be regarded as part of the social problem themselves.

These thoughts weighed on me as our American Airlines jet touched down on the runway of the La Paz airport.  What peace and tranquility could I hope to bring to a country noted for uneven distribution of wealth, political struggles and a high rate of poverty among its indigenous people? Any idealized thought of this group faded as four indigenous men quickly took charge of our checked luggage and then set what seemed to me an outrageous fee for their services.  I paid without quarreling because I hadn't asked the price beforehand; I was feeling more disoriented by the second as the Altiplano began to grip me.  The four diminutive porters--acclimated and adept at this conquest--vanished.  I chalked one up for the caveat emptor rule.  Hoping to cling to something so I wouldn't have to look for something to fall on, I focused on why I had come and who had helped me to get there.