A new class

On April 10 Lynn and I began teaching an English language class to a group of Franciscan friars here in Cochabamba.  The number of friars attending will be between 10 and 13.  The class meets on Tuesday afternoon and Friday night.  All of the friars had some English instruction during high school, and one of them has recently taken English classes at a local language academy. I understand that if they wish to study a language they are encouraged to learn Spanish, English, and French (I need to verify that). Besides being a friendly bunch of guys, they're interested in learning, and I'll try to maintain that. At the end of the first class I asked them to pose for this photo so I could begin associating names with faces:

The Franciscan convent where the class takes place dates from the 16th century and was renovated in the 1980s.

Lunch

Fifteen days into the season of hope and renewal, I think back to the Easter Sunday Lynn and I spent at Carcel Abra. We arrived there later than we intended, near the end of Mass, but were welcomed in to the security checkpoint, the main gate, the entrance into the prison, through the main building and on past the Evangelical church¹ to the Catholic church (there are two church buildings inside). I'm accustomed to the routine of leaving behind prohibited items, the frisking, and the stamping of my arm to mark that I have passed the two security gates, but it still leaves me feeling a little nervous and awkward. That faded as we approached the church and various people who knew us called out and waved. We waved back but didn't stop to talk because we were so late, and joined the celebration at the point of consecration of the host. This wasn't what we had planned. As we passed all too quickly back out of the church we were greeted by I, one of our students from the advanced English class. He and A, another of our students, handed each of us an Easter egg decorated with magic markers. Mine was decorated with red magic marker.  Lynn's was decorated with blue magic marker. We thanked them and apologized for being so late. They thanked us for being there at all and, after checking with their group leader, invited us to stay for lunch.

I can't say that lunch at Abra was the hot ticket for Easter feasting in Cochabamba, but it certainly helped Lynn and me to center ourselves on that day. We had imagined that after Mass we would look for a restaurant where we wouldn't think too much about how far away we are from friends and family.  As it turned out we had a very pleasant several hours to talk to our students there among the inmates, to meet others and to learn more about how they spend their time. We sat on benches and old folding chairs, all placed on the rocky ground of a slope near the end of the prison yard farthest from the main gate but within close watch by a guard in a nearby corner tower. The sky was clear. The air was dry. The sun was hot. To shield us from this, the men had tied some of their blankets to the chain-link fence and extended them over our chairs and benches with sticks.  There were not enough seats for everyone, but Lynn and I were given seats of honor beneath the sun shade, and they wouldn't allow us to give them up to anyone else.

Sometimes when the wind gusted down the slope it fanned the blankets so the supporting sticks fell, allowing the blankets to collapse against the fence. Depending on who was in the midst of chewing, cutting (plastic knives) or gulping, and who was standing by or closer to the free edge of the collapsed awning, we variously restored the sticks so all had shade.  As the cooks--the men themselves, a visiting cholita, and that nice Korean lady that comes to teach violin lessons--prepared our meal, we all talked about where we were from and what we were doing. Lynn and I answered questions about why we had come to Bolivia and what we hoped to accomplish while we are here.  They thanked us for coming so far from our homes and country and for spending time with them.  I sensed that they meant it.  Most of them had no friends or family visiting them, and I know how lonely it can feel to be alone during a time of celebration.

Our conversations drifted and mingled with the savory smoke from the parrilla, a good offering of thanks I hoped, rising up from the valley floor of dust, rocks, and scrub brush into the stark mid-afternoon sunlight rimmed by mountains. We ate what was very special fare for prison food: cheese rice, a salad of potatoes, peas and carrots, and beef steaks and chorizo hot off the parrilla. (V poked the chorizos with a stick to see if they were ready.) I did not feel that this food was too good for these people--Lynn and me included. We were feasting together and not judging each other, something like that moment in the movie War Horse when two men from opposing sides risk crossing their lines into no man's land to liberate a beautiful creation senselessly mired in filth and pain.

When lunch was over the visiting priest, also Korean, said a prayer of thanks that we were all able to share this peaceful meal together.  Lynn and I said goodbye to everyone and that we were looking forward to classes with them in the coming week.

On the way back toward the gate, we toured the garden where the men can grow some of their own vegetables as well as the shops where they assemble soccer balls and make small furnishings of wood (wine racks, picture frames, etc.,) in order to earn some extra money for food and other needs. We felt very good as we left, and we were glad that we had been invited to share their special meal.

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¹ Felix, pastor of the Evangelical church, passes Easter greetings to former missioner Michael Johnson.

Hush, little baby . . .

When Lynn and I walk in the city center here in Cochabamba we frequently pass beggars. A few may be walking and holding a hand out to catch your attention, maybe holding an old medical bill that they say they need help to pay.  Others, frequently women, sit on the sidewalk and beg with their possessions and often their infants or small children gathered close around them as well.  At first it seems charming that the babies--though usually wrapped too tightly for comfort--are sleeping.  However, not long ago Lynn pointed out how unusual it was that so many of the babies were asleep and remarked that maybe they were drugged. ¹


A week later Lynn brought this up again during an adult English conversation group. One of the participants said she believed that some of the children were drugged by letting them inhale the vapor of glue. We often see glue sniffers here, usually boys from about age ten to mid teens, passed out on the sidewalk, or reeling along in a semiconscious state. Despite the bleakness of this approach to a depressing life, it shows some small measure of choice that perhaps can be corrected before permanent damage occurs. With the sleeping infants, the destructive choice is made for them by their care givers. Tightly wrapped and quiet, they  promote sympathy for the poor mother with mouths to feed.


My first inclination was anger that infants would be victimized by their mothers, but then I wondered how much must have happened in the lives of these women that some of them at least were willing to risk their babies' health by rendering them more suitable as props in what must be a competitive business to maximize plight as a selling point. The competition here is acute because along some blocks we may see three to four such family units encamped at intervals along the sidewalk. And this method of attracting attention can only add to the long-term difficulties each mother will face if her children grow with less than normal faculties. 


I would like to say that suddenly--despite the risk of addiction--the Victorian use of quietness doesn't seem so bad, but I don't really feel that way.  Instead,  the women seem like desperate prisoners on the sidewalk, in need of any kind of education that will enable them to support themselves and their children in some less destructive way.² And where are the fathers?

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¹We knew about the practice in Victorian England of using quietness to make children and babies sleep while mothers had to work.  This reminded me of a recent passage from Isaiah 49:14-15: 

"Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget,

I will never forget you."
²Of course, we see healthy relationships, like a young mother and her two-year-old son on a road on my way to Abra. He apparently had gotten his feet dirty. She sat him on a rock and was washing his feet with handfuls of water she dipped from a bucket. And as she ran her fingers over his toes he was laughing, and then she was too.