Day Four

Time is going too fast! My trip is 1/3 of the way done! But I have nothing to complain about because every day has been awesome...and each is better than the next. 

Today was simply fantastic, it was warm, beautiful, funny, thought-provoking and inspiring. I was a little mixed up on what we were doing today; instead of going to the detention center to talk with gang members we actually went to an organization that works with gangs, but we are going to the detention center on Monday. The organization we went to is called Equipo Nahual (Team Nahual--Nahual comes from the mayan tradition of believing that every person is made up of the physical person and the spiritual person which is represented as an animal and that is the persons 'nahual').  The director, Wilson, talked to us about the two main gangs in El Salvador, MS-13 and 18. He gave us a very detailed history of how the gangs actually started in Los Angeles when El Salvadorians moved to the US after the civil war, and came into conflict with people there who were latinos that were born in the US. The El Salvadorians started MS-13 and the Mexican/Latinos started 18. They are now all over the United States, Central America and even now in Europe. I've actually done a decent amount of research and projects on different gangs and all we hear is negative news or we hear about really strict laws that try to separate gangs and put members in jail; but for some reason they never work. Wilson has built trust with different gangs and their members, and after working with the individuals he realized that the problem is not the gang itself, but rather the violence that stems from the gangs. So his idea is to be able to keep people in gangs, but increase their focus on themselves so that they are not dependent on the gang and therefore they will not resort to violence. I have only been here for four days but I have already seen and heard such innovative and creative ways to deal with common issues like this. This is something that I never thought about before, but when I heard Wilson say it, it made so much sense! We don't need to take people out of the gangs, we need to take violence out of the gangs!

After our talk with Wilson, we got back in the bus and headed to Suchitoto, a cute little town deep in a valley where it is very hot. We went to the Centro Arte para la Paz (Art Center for Peace). After we ate lunch there, we met up with Sister Peggy, and local nun who is originally from New Jersey and is 72 years young. She is the most vibrant, enthusiastic, passionate woman I have ever met! She told us a little bit about Suchitoto and its violent history during the Civil War. The town was really hurt by the violence and struggled to recover when the war was over. In 1986, Sister Peggy bought an abandonded building and, along with other nuns, she turned it into a beautiful place of peace for the people of Suchitoto. It now functions as an art display, a museum (created by high school children), a school, a hostel for visitors, and a place to pray. They have created an oasis away from all of the craziness where people can forget their worries and concentrate on what matters. She has a bachelors, masters and PhD., and she is currently a professor for students who study abroad, and she teaches Liberation Theology. When she was explaining liberation theology to us she talked about how with many things, like the Bible, we shouldn’t always take things literally, but we should take them seriously. Sometimes people get so wrapped up in being ‘correct’ or ‘right’ all the time because our worlds are so  black and white, but she reminded us that sometimes our truth will be different than someone else’s truth because we have had different lives and experiences than everyone else.

She was very interesting to listen to because I expected her, as a nun, to be quiet and quote scripture, but instead she swore multiple times during her presentation, and had quite radical ideals for a Catholic. There are a few quotes that I wrote down because they were either inspiring…or just funny that a nun said them.

“When you mess up in a dance you don’t say “Oh Shit” and run off the stage, you keep going…nothing is perfect.”

“Hope isn’t being optimistic; it’s living through the darkness and knowing there will be light.”

“Your trip to El Salvador is like a low grade herpes virus….it’s going to last forever.”

After we left Sister Peggy we had a few hours to walk around the town of Suchitoto, do some shopping, and get some ice cream! The town was VERY different than the other places we have been in El Salvador. It was very quiet, there was little traffic, and very clean (no garbage on the side of the road). It was such a cute little town, and it had spectacular views of a volcano and volcanic lake. About a half-hour before we had to leave my friend Shannon and I were standing in the town square and a few school girls came up and asked us for our picture and started talking to us. Luckily both of us speak Spanish so we were able to talk for quite awhile. They were very interested in where we were from, what Michigan is like, and why we were in El Salvador. Not much later, we saw more and more students and eventually we, along with our other group members, were surrounded by about 50 students who were snapping pictures, yelling questions, and just overall really excited to see some white girls =)  We found out that they were on a school ‘tourism field trip’ and right before they left they all got up on the fountain and sang their school song for us! It was SO much fun to be able to communicate with the different teens and it reminded me why I am studying Social Work and Spanish. It is so rewarding to be able to communicate with them because they have such a different outlook on life than many adults in El Salvador. They are so optimistic about everything and they have so many questions for us (plus they think that Brittani is a moviestar because she is blonde). It makes me really excited to work with the refugees next year at Bethany!!

Women's Co-op in Suchitoto

Schoolyard boys in Suchitoto--they really wanted their picture taken!

beautiful city

Church in Suchitoto

School kids that sang for us

Drive home to the San Salvador

Today was so awesome, it was a little more relaxing than the first couple days, and it was nice to get a refresher in my body and in my faith. We had a lot of good talks about God today and what it means to really be a Christian. It is not how many times you go to church, or how much you tithe, but rather your actions and your relationship with God are what He really cares about. Sister Peggy really got me thinking about how so many of us think that God is just an ‘absent ruler’ like we are puppets and He is running things from Heaven, but really He is in and around everything, we just need to look for Him. I am glad that the girls in my group are open to talking about God and our relationships and I can tell that this is really going to push me to challenge my faith and help strengthen it as well.

Day 4: Refreshing, Inspiring. A success.