New Newsletter!!

Last weekend I wrote another YAV newsletter. It is now posted on the Presbyterian Church (USA) website.

Birthday weekend

I turned 23 last Thursday. That afternoon, Blanca cooked lomo saltado for lunch, which is my favorite Peruvian dish - a plate of rice, french fries and stir fried onions, tomatoes and steak. Roberto made a Waldorf salad (he has a cookbook of American recipes) to make me feel "at home." And I got a birthday card from my REAL parents in the mail! I spent that evening with my first host family (Daniela, Juan, Juan Carlos, Giulia, Damaris, Dayra) where we ate causa that Juan prepared (I'm not sure what all is in causa... it's basically a mashed potato salad with tuna and mayonaisse) and of course they sang happy birthday and we ate cake, too. After spending time with them, I went back home to my current host family. Waiting for me with them were about 10 members of Santa Isabel Church. We ate sang happy birthday (again!) and ate cake (again!). I share the same birthday with Juan, the president of the session of Santa Isabel church, so it was really a double birthday celebration. As is the custom here, everyone took turns saying nice things about Juan and I, with some inspirational bible verses mixed in. Juan and I then each said a few words about what the year has been like and giving thanks for our friends. All in all, it was a really great birthday. But it wasn't over.

The next day, I went to work at Km 13's compassion program. After work, there was a small "party" in the office that was very similar to the one from the night before. More cake. More singing. More reflecting on the year and being thankful for the community that I've become a part of. Afterwards, Alison, one of the young adult members of Km 13's congregation who also occasionally volunteers with Compassion invited me to have a lonche (small snack-type meal eaten at about 6pm, between lunch and dinner) at her house with her mother and sister. So I went straight after the office part to spend time with Alison and her family. I carried the leftover cake from the party with me and offered it to their family. Thankfully, they accepted (I definitely love cake, but by then I was looking for ways to "share" it). I continue to be amazed by the hospitality that people in Lima have offered me.

Saturday offered me a reprieve of cake. I spent most of the day with youth and young adults from Kilometer 11 church. KM 11 is another church in the Presbytery of Northeastern Lima. I've gotten to know Priscila, the president of their jovenes (youth and young adults) group, from various presbytery events. She had invited me a couple of weeks ago to spend this particular saturday with the Km 11 jovenes, hoping that I could present a theme/message/reflection at the worship service that night. I told her that I could spend the morning and afternoon hanging out with them, but that evening I was already committed to helping out with the worship service/meeting for Km. 13's adolescentes (middle school-age youth) group. She told me that was fine, and arrived to meet me in my neighborhood to together to Km 11 church at about 10am. On the bus ride there, she asked me if I could lead a talk with the jovenes group about ways they can affect change in their communities/country/world.

I've gotten used to these sorts of last-minute-requests for speaking engagements. They seem to be pretty common in the world of the IEP (Evangelical Church of Peru denomination). Pastors are expected to be knowledgeable enough about the Bible to give a sermon or bible study on a moment's notice. And from what I can tell, a large percentage of them really are. And I guess since I also have a University degree (and carry the esteemed title of "missionary"), I'm also expected to be capable of speaking in public about a wide array of topics without previous preparation. On the one hand, it makes me feel really good about my Spanish skills that people who have spent ample time talking with me think that I speak well enough to coherently impart useful information to a large group of people while speaking extemporaneously. On the other hand, I sometimes feel guilty that I can't possibly be living up to their expectations when everything is said and done.

As I'm sure most of you know well, I'm generally a pretty outgoing, fearless, and "just say yes" type of guy when it comes to opportunities to talk in front of people or be the center of attention. Nevertheless, there have been many instances during my time in Peru when I've told people in these situations "I'm sorry, I can't give that [talk, sermon, reflection, etc]. I'm really not prepared or knowledgeable enough right now." However, this particular time, I told Priscila "yes," because doing social/community work from a Christian perspective is kind of what I'm all about.

When we arrived at the church, I got a chance to meet all of the jovenes (and adolescentes, too actually) in the Km 11 church group. Purely for curiosity's sake, one of them asked me when my birthday was. When they found out it was just two days earlier, of course they all sang happy birthday to me (and apologized for not having cake). Then I got to lead my talk. Without missing a beat, I started by reading Isaiah 58, which is a passage in the Bible about "True Fasting" -- which isn't giving up food and praying to God, but instead working to make sure the hungry are fed and "loosing the chains of injustice." (Presbyterians never carry Bibles around with them. Members of the Evangelical Church of Peru, however, do; I've changed my ways.) I then basically "borrowed" much of the central message of David Lamotte's "World Changing 101" seminars to explain why activism and volunteer work is important on both community and global levels. ("There's a difference between changing the world and fixing the world. No one expects you to "fix" the world, but you can't be in the world without changing it in some way. The question is: What type of changes/impact will you make?") Then I simply asked them to list some of the problems they see in their community so we could brainstorm together ways to address them.

The most common answer was gangs. After carefully opining (as a "professional sociologist") on some of the root causes of gangs (poverty, teenage kids in search of identity, lack of other constructive social outlets/activities/groups), we discussed what the church could do to address the issue. We basically came to the conclusion of having Saturday neighborhood clean-up days. There are several artists in the group, so they decided it would be fun to paint over gang graffiti and blank/unsightly walls with Christian pictures/images. They also decided to help clean up trash around some of the streets and fulbito ("mini soccer") courts in an effort to take pride in their neighborhood and convince the other residents to do likewise. All in all, it wasn't anything revolutionary, but I still really enjoyed participating in the conversation and being a part of a group with goals and a plan to improve the problems in their neighborhood. After the talk was over, we all played some fulbito, ate lunch, and then visited the homes of some of the members of the jovenes group who hadn't been attending the worship services recently. I then left to go to the worship service of the Km 13 adolescentes. (Yes, they sang happy birthday to me).

Finally, today I preached at the sunday morning worship service for Km. 13's congregation (a pretty decent sermon about forgiveness, if I do say so myself). And afterwards... you guessed it. More singing. More cake. Pastor Hernando and Ramon (Director of Compassion at Km 13) both shared some very kind words about the work I had been doing with the church. Someone had also put together a slide show featuring pictures from my blog and picasa site (I haven't shared the address with anyone in Peru, but it wouldn't be hard to find -- there's a link to it on the Presbytery's blog and website). And finally, I also got another chance to express my gratitude for the friends I've made and hospitality I've experienced while in Peru.

Baby photos!

As promised, here are a few photos of baby Rodrigo, now 12 days old.

This is not a joke

So one of the elders on the Mission & Evangelism committee of Santa Isabel church asked me a few weeks ago if I could help out with a project that the committee is working on. He told me they wanted to inform youth and families in the church neighborhood about an important personal issue - something like sex or abortion or drugs. He asked if I had any suggestions about what issue they could host a lecture/discussion on, and if I could be the one to lead it (since I'm a "sociologist," as EVERYONE knows by this point...) He then showed me a survey about religious beliefs and people's attitudes towards family issues/problems that the committee had prepared and was planning on administering door to door in the neighborhood to create a "profile" of the community they want to evangelize.

My mistake was that I looked at the survey before I answered the question about participating in or leading the lecture/activity. On the survey, I immediately identified several questions that were unclear, others that didn't give appropriate answer options, and more still that were worded in a leading manner. After looking it over, as a college grad who's taken more than a couple statistics and research methods classes, I DEFINITELY felt qualified to give them suggestions to improve their survey's clarity and effectiveness. This confidence boost also led me to tell him, in what must have been some sort of stupor, "yes, I can give a talk about a family issue from a sociological perspective. How 'bout I talk about teenage sex and its side effects?"

Fast-forward to today (all of that happened two or three weeks ago). This lecture definitely IS going to happen (frequently, ideas like this "hatch" in a hurry, and then the enthusiasm fizzles). However, because of the lack of communication and maybe my own misunderstanding of some things, the topic has changed a little bit. I went to a Mission & Evangelism committee meeting last Friday and was shown one of two hundred copies of a promotional flyer. Half the flyer has all of the information about the event: "Saturday, May 30, 4pm at Santa Isabel Church [address] a video presentation, followed by a lecture by North American Missionary Alex Cornell (Sociologist) from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas on the topic of 'Sex Outside of Marriage and Abortion.' Entrance is FREE." The other half has a big, fat picture of me. As of this morning, these flyers are now posted on walls and telephone poles around the neighborhood.

Yes, I really am not sure when "abortion" got added to the lecture topic. I know next to nothing about abortion. If any of you know the secret number to Obama's blackberry, I'd love to have that so I can get some advice (the only problem is I won't be talking to north american catholic college students). The movie that serves as the "video presentation" that is being advertised is called "Punto y Aparte" ("Point and Apart"...? I dunno) which I haven't seen (I've been given a copy and I'm going to watch it this afternoon). It's apparently a Mexican film that tells the story of two sexually teenage active couples that get pregnant, one rich and one poor. So in the next (less than) two weeks, I've gotta watch this movie and figure out what the heck I can say for an hour that will somehow accurately inform a bunch of families and youth about their sexual choices without getting me kicked out of the church. ANY ADVICE IS WELCOME! In the meantime, I probably won't be going out much, since I'm pretty sure there aren't too many other white, 20s-ish looking males with brown hair and goatees in the neighborhood...

dos cosas

1. I neglected to mention that my most recent YAV newsletter (now over 3 weeks old, whoops) is posted on the Presbyterian Church (USA) website and available for viewing here.

2. In a blog entry from way back when, I talked about a pie graph that's sort of like an unauthorized version of what Peru's take on the ol' USDA food guide pyramid would look like. This picture is painted on the wall of the kitchen of Kilometer 13 church. It explains why I eat so much rice and potatoes and so few vegetables. I recently took a photo just to prove I didn't make it up. Check it out.

A Burial

Monday, the major event that happened was obviously baby Rodrigo coming home from the hospital. The second major event was that Duki, the family dog, was put to sleep.

Duki was a German Shepard that was 10 years old that lived on the roof of our house (this is not abnormal -- roofs in Lima are used for two things mainly -- it's where people hang their clothes out to dry and keep their dogs). Duki had an allergy to fleas, and with just one flea bite he would break out with skin rashes. Duki also had osteoporosis. On top of that, the medication he was given to fight the flea allergy was becoming less and less effective over time. Roberto spent lots of time washing Duki and putting medicine to alleviate his skin rashes. Finally, as everything was becoming more and more expensive, and Duki was suffering more and more, the family made the hard decision to put him to sleep.

So yesterday I helped Roberto dig a hole in the "back yard," which is really a patio area between the house and the houses in back and on either side (all houses are packed together very tightly). There, we laid Duki to rest.

I didn't have a particularly close relationship with Duki. I played with him some every time I went to hang my clothes up to dry. But not too much, because even though he loved to run around and play, it was terrible for his osteoporosis. Aside from that, he never really liked for me to pet/cuddle him much. I was mainly sad for Roberto and the rest of the family, who really did lose a "family member" -- they treated Duki much better than a lot of dogs around here are treated.

During lunch, Roberto (who's Catholic/not religious) and Javier (who's a member of Santa Isabel church, so he's Christian/evangelical) had a discussion about whether dogs go to heaven. They asked me what I thought. I said I hoped so, but I that I didn't know, mainly because I didn't really know of biblical evidence that suggested an answer one way or another. And any time you have an eschatological discussion from Javier, it's going to be based totally on the bible.

A Birth

Rodrigo Alejando Vega Fernandez was born at about 6pm last Thursday, May 7. He and Raquel are now back home and both baby and mother are in great health. Here's how it happened:

Last Thursday, Raquel came home from work early. She had evidently been having deep stomach pains since early that morning. As they became more intense, she realized that they were actually contractions. She came home with Melanie, a friend from her work, right after the family and I had finished eating lunch. As Javier was on his way out the door to return to work, he instructed me to go with her to the hospital. So at 2pm, Melanie and I left with Raquel to take her to the "Seguro" Hospital in nearby Comas. After examining her, the doctor instructed Raquel to go back home, do some walking, and return at 5:.

We did just that, all the while her pains getting stronger and stronger. Luckily, Keli, Javier's sister-in-law, and Blanca, Javier's mother were both home. Both being mothers, they helped Raquel calm down and helped her with the process. At about 4:15, Raquel really couldn't stand it any longer, so I went out, hailed a taxi and took her to the hospital (just the two of us this time). This time, she was admitted. And I was left in the waiting room.

Soon, Raquel's family arrived, and so did Javier as soon as he could leave from work. However, no one was allowed to go see/be with Raquel. No one. Not even Javier. Instead, we were instructed to go out and buy a couple things that the baby would need that weren't in the bag that we packed for Raquel in the hospital -- a different kind of soap and some special diapers. That's just the way things work at a public hospital in Comas. There also wasn't anybody who could definitively tell us how things were going. The hospital was simply too understaffed and under-resourced to operate effectively in such a poor, fast-growing area.

We were waiting in the same waiting area used for the emergency room. It was extremely crowded, with people standing around everywhere. None of them had serious injuries - they were mostly family members of patients, I think. But twice we did see someone burst through the hospital doors, crying hysterically after learning that a family member had passed away.

The initial, rough prognosis when Raquel and I arrived was that she would probably have the baby some time around midnight. At around 10pm, we (me, Javier and Raquel's sister, brother-in-law and niece) left to go eat dinner at a restaurant near the hospital. But having had the experience of waiting for so long and being frustrated over the lack of information at the hospital, we decided just to go home after finishing our meal. We knew going back would just mean more waiting, since no one "in charge" knew anything or was going to let us go visit Raquel anyway. We had also been assured that someone would call Javier when the baby was born to let us know. Javier decided that regardless, phone call or no phone call, he would go back to the hospital at 5am the next morning (when it would presumably be a lot less busy). I offered to go with him, and he told me he would wake me up so we could both go.

At 7:30 the next morning (Friday), I woke up naturally. Confused, I went to Javier's room, thinking he probably overslept (pretty silly in hindsight -- I'm sure he wouldn't have been able to sleep at ALL, looking back on it). It turns out at about 12:45am, the hospital called to tell him the baby had been born, and that both baby and mother were doing just fine. He had then gone BACK to the hospital with Keli and Raquel's family members (I was already asleep, so he didn't wake me up) only to be told once again that he wasn't allowed to go up and see his wife/new son. The reason we were given over and over again for being denied admittance was that the patient area upstairs was a "clean" area and they couldn't let people who weren't patients go in and contaminate it.

So even though no one had actually seen or talked to Raquel and we just had to take the hospital's word for it, we were all very relieved to learn that Raquel and baby Rodrigo were fine.

At 2pm that afternoon Javier, Blanca, Keli, Roberto (Javier's brother), Manuelito (Roberto & Keli's 9 month old baby) and I ALL went to the hospital during its "Official Visitation Hour" from 2-3pm, according to what Javier had just learned the night before. Raquel's family was already there when we arrived. We were all sure the hospital would probably only let us go in one at a time to visit, but decided to give it a shot. Of course, the hospital was too crowded, so all of us were once again denied entry.

So after that, I left to go spend some time with a few of the other YAVs in Lima for the rest of the night. The next day (Saturday), I learned that Javier and Raquel's family had stayed waiting at the hospital, and FINALLY late that afternoon they were allowed one by one to go visit with Raquel and Rodrigo. It was only then that we learned that Raquel had actually given birth at 6pm on Thursday -- just a little more than an hour after I got her to the hospital -- and not at 12:30 that night like we originally thought. Because Rodrigo was born a couple weeks premature, he had an irregular heartbeat and couldn't come home right away. He was kept for observation. Raquel came home that afternoon, but went back to the hospital that night to nurse the baby. On Sunday, she did the same thing, going back and forth. And yesterday, Monday, FINALLY Rodrigo was cleared to come home and I was able to see him for myself (still too terrified to hold him though...) He's adorable. Pictures will come soon.

Poverty

I’ve had one particular pair of khaki pants since high school. I bought them from Target. A couple of years ago, I wore them while painting a banner. Ever since, there’s been a small black paint stain on one side. Other than that, they’re a perfectly decent pair of pants. Before coming to Peru, I went through stages where at times I was self-conscious of wearing clothes that appeared stained or worn-out, while at other times I flaunted the artsy, “I don’t give a damn” look of wearing whatever was comfortable.

While packing to leave the US for Peru, I was in the latter of those two stages, so I packed my stained pants. “I’m going to be living and working amongst the poor,” I thought to myself. “No one is going to care if I have a stained pair of pants. People there will just be happy with wearing whatever they can afford,” an attitude reflected in the first full-length post of my blog.

While among many people living in conditions of extreme poverty, that attitude may indeed be prevalent, I have a feeling that anyone who’s ever spent a considerable amount of time working with the urban poor is probably laughing at my earlier logic. Even though there have been many days when no one seems to notice the pants, quite frequently when I wear them people tend to point out the stain. “What happened?” they ask sympathetically, assuming that I accidentally stained the paints earlier in the day and hadn’t had a chance to change. Or they try to be helpful: “Did you know there’s a stain there?” Many people don’t understand why I would wear a stained pair of pants.

So what’s the point in telling you all this? The point is, as it turns out, appearances matter. A lot. Many of the kids who attend the Compassion program at Kilometer 13 church wear pretty nice clothes. Some don’t. But many wear clothes that appear to be new and de marca (“name brand”). Several of the older kids (13-16) years old) also have relatively fancy cell phones. For birthdays and Christmas, nice clothes are probably the most popular gift. Yet, as I’ve described in my first newsletter, many of these children come from very poor families. They live in small houses where they sometimes share a single bed with one, two, three or more siblings. Their parents make their livings selling vegetables in the street market. Many already have broken, missing or decaying teeth because they can’t afford good dental care.

This reality obviously has many nuances that are unique to Peru, which I’ll hopefully get to describe in detail in a later entry. But in many ways, it’s not too different from what poverty looks like in large US cities. And most people reading this probably are already well aware that “poor people have nice cell phones and wear name brand clothes.”

To us well-meaning, soft-hearted, white, middle-upper class do-gooders and our “never ever blame the victim” mindsets, this is the type of poverty that frustrates us, pains us and baffles us. The painful, baffling frustration is perhaps epitomized by something that pastor Hernando of KM 13 church shared with me last weekend. He recently visited the home of a family with children who are enrolled in the compassion program. During the visit, discovered that they have cable TV. At a parents’ meeting for Compassion a few days later, these particular parents complained that it was hard to pay the 2 soles (about 70 cents) per week requested to help pay the small salaries received by the cooks and tutors that work at Compassion. “Right then I realized,” Hernando said to me “that a lot of the families with children who attend Compassion aren’t really poor. This is a problem.”

Since Hernando always harps to other people about me being a “professional” sociologist, I seized this opportunity to talk about what I think causes this issue. Deciding to ignore the fact that the family could easily be "borrowing" their cable from a neighbor, I explained to him the sociological concept of “symbolic capital.” Cell phones, name-brand clothes and cable TV are examples of symbolic capital. You don’t generally associate these things with poverty. And that is EXACTLY the reason that poor people have them. They’re symbols of wealth. They’re signposts of success. No one, except for me and my fellow “Irresistible Revolution”-ary, (formerly) middle-upper class white liberal Christian friends, is proud of being poor. Being impoverished is shameful. Everyone wants nice things for their families, especially their children. In our world, people left and right are seemingly pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps (or at least talking about how they did earlier in life, or about how their parents did, or how their grandparents did). This creates a culture where blaming the victim is exactly what we do. “Anyone can make it with hard work in America” proclaims the American Dream. The obvious corollary to this rule is “so if you don’t ‘make it,’ you obviously aren’t a hard worker.” Or “if you don’t make it, you’re not as good of a person as the rest of us, who have achieved success.” So to hide this shameful “failure,” people use what money they DO have to buy the appearance of success.

In my opinion, to really be able to “dig yourself out” of poverty, you have to be frugal and scrounge to get by on minimum necessities. That way, you can save whatever might be left over to invest in “real” capital – materials to start your own business or create some other income gaining/saving technique. But the downside to this is that because you’re only spending a minimum amount of money on just buying the basics, from the outside you tend to look rather ummmm, poor. "Low class." So instead, many people in conditions of poverty use their money to buy the "luxuries" they should only be able to afford AFTER becoming successful. Or to put it in fancy “I’m 22 and have a bachelor’s degree” language, they invest in symbolic capital rather than economic capital.