Pictures

As pictures are worth a thousand words as the famous saying goes, here are some images to go along with my long-winded entries.

The Cristo Rey hoops squad after the winning the championship game. No trophies. No dumping Gatorade jugs. Not even a scoreboard, but we took home the title nonetheless.

Floating islands in Lake Titikaka on the shores of Puno.

Crazy clouds in Puno.

Peruvian Sierra-Highlands.

Who says Ignatius was indifferent?

One of the things that I really love about the work at Cristo Rey is the opportunity that the placement offers to have an impact on the students’ lives outside of the classroom in a variety of different environments and diverse situations, including: camping trips, retreats, sport competitions, weekly trips to a nearby orphanage and underprivileged school with the youth group C.R.A.VE., and even the unforgettable Mes de Misión project. Classes had been going more smoothly since the beginning of the year (still I have much room for improvement and at best it is a work in progress!) so I’ve had more time to work on these other endeavors. As much as I do love the complexities, idiosyncrasies, and subtleties of the English language, (we’re working on the Present Perfect Simple with for/since time clauses, ex: I have had a wasp in my jacket since breakfast.) I feel as though I come alive through these other engagements.

About the same time as I was realizing how these other formational activities really heat up my inner flame, a massive cold front swept through the sierra-highlands of Peru like a thief in the night, robbing hundreds of lives in the process (mostly children and senior citizens). Hearing this on the morning news during the fifteen minute bus commute to school shocked me more than anything. It was hard to gage the reactions of my fellow commuters on the way beyond capacity filled mini-bus, hence I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who felt this way, or if this was a annual occurrence that has become numbly commonplace and disregarded such as the 10 o’clock news saturated with brutality back in the States.

However, my doubts were cleared almost as soon as I stepped onto the school campus when one of my less vocal CRAVE students approached me frantically. “Nate! Profe Nate!” he panted, “Did you hear what happened?!” Quizzically, I looked at him, not knowing what he was exactly talking about, quite honestly, I thought he was going to fill me in on the next American music group to make their way down to Peru on a global tour (so far both the Jonas Brothers and Kiss have made appearances to the capital city Lima), but even before I could answer he exclaimed, “We must do something! CRAVE has to help!” Now, I knew we were on the same page and onto something big.

With CRAVE students leading the way, along with tremendous support from the school administration and families, together we conducted a tremendously successful warm clothes drive for children and adults in the areas of Tacna’s sierra-highlands that were most affected by the dangerous drop in temperatures. To be a witness to the students’ excitement as this campaign was taking off the ground was truly awe-inspiring.

While this operation was gaining steam, we used it as a backdrop for another upcoming venture that we began the preliminary planning of back in mid-March – “el viaje de trabajo social” (roughly translated as a service immersion trip). The volunteer I replaced, Dermot Lynch, organized a similar trip last year with rave reviews from students, parents, and teachers alike and to continue this program was both exciting and overwhelming at times. The premise for this 10-day endeavor during “winter” vacations was to take a group of 12 to 14 city-slicker, Cristo Rey students in the final two years of secondary, out to a rural and poverty- stricken area (such as the many areas hit mercilessly by the change in climate) of the country to experience and live another Peruvian reality through accompanying this town’s inhabitants with home-stays, typical daily manual labor out in the fields of these families, tutoring and playing with the town’s local children, and nightly social justice and faith directed reflections.

After weeks of preparation and countless extra hours at school making logistical phone calls and emails, parent meetings, school board presentations, and number crunching, everything started coming together and the project began to take life. We were ready: list of confirmed participants – check, i’s dotted and t’s crossed on the itinerary – check, funds collected – check, contacts in the towns confirmed and up-to-date – check.

Apologies if this account has been as entertaining as watching water boil – I assure you there were many adventures along the way of preparation – but this was right when a monkey wrench went into the system and things got interesting.

Thursday afternoon I was sitting at my desk grading my 4th years’ recent dialog presentations, asking myself why on God’s green earth (or in Tacna, God’s beige sandy earth) are my students so entranced with using white-out liquid correction pens, and listening to the locally popular Cumbia rhythms blaring from the radio in the teacher lounge, when the broadcast was interrupted for an urgent news briefing. Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, was introduced and his voice jumped out through the speakers as if it was a bat out off hell. All within earshot of the radio, (the speaker volume was turned up obnoxiously high so the teachers in the quad over 60 feet away could listen to the Cumbia jams – haha, great work atmosphere I know) so pretty much all of Tacna heard the state mandate that all schools in the country were to be closed immediately for the next two weeks (actually turned out to be three and a half weeks when all was said and done) and all school activities were to be suspended during this time to prevent the spread of your friendly neighborhood AH1N1/“swine” flu. The Minister of Education and another high-ranking government official followed President’s Garcia’s declaration and issued similar statements, but with suspiciously different dates, reasons, and consequences for those who do not comply.

Instantly, my mind was filled with 5,342 questions...

What just happened?
Does this decree include private schools such as Cristo Rey?
What are the “real” dates of the suspension of classes?
Why were different dates given?
Is this really because of the “swine” flu? (Peru has been relatively un-hit, especially in comparisons to nearby Chile and Argentina) Or is it more politically motivated? (The recent political situation in Honduras, combined with local tensions with Peru’s government, the approaching of national holidays, and multiple strikes throughout the country, led many to believe that a similar “coup d'état” was very likely in Peru as well)
Is this really the best thing for the kids?
An astronomical amount more people are dying because of lack of protection from the cold, why doesn’t the government make more of a fuss about these individuals?
What is the phenomenon of white-out correction pens?
Who in the world does Alan Garcia think he is?
What is going to happen with the clothes drive donation trip?
Is the “viaje de trabajo social” going to be cancelled as well?

In short both the clothes drive donation trip and trip during our winter break were cancelled. I still hold onto hope that we can pull the service immersion experience off before the end of the year, but seems improbable.

We decided that there was no way we could wait for the students to return to school just to bring clothes up to the sierra-highlands. Every day the 26 bags, the size of 70 kilogram rice sacks filled with warm clothes, sat around and collected dust in the Pastoral Office, would be another day leaving many out in the cold. Yes, it would have been fantastic for the kids to have come along to put a face and conversation to the dilemma they helped alleviate, but the most pressing issue was getting the garments up to where they could be put in practical use.

Figuring what to do with the service immersion trip being grounded was much more complicated. After hyping up this experience to my students and feeding off their passion, how was I going to break it to them that this experience – an experience, according to their friends who participated in it the year before, that changed the way they see their Peru and dramatically affected the rest of their time at school – was not even going to happen? Almost without fail, everyday at school and at CRAVE meetings my students asked me with toothy grins and excited eyes (even by some of the same kids who fought Mes de Misión to the near bitter end before accepting it and letting it transform them) how the trip planning was coming along. Without a doubt, I thought, this would be one of the most emotionally draining things I have had to do in my time here.

Yet, when I broke the news to them, to my surprise, the majority did not seem phased by the trip’s cancellation. This completely baffled me! I wasn’t expecting tears or anything, but I’d say long and disappointed faces would have been a fair expectation. “How could this be?,” I asked myself over and over. I even talked with and confided in a few students whom I have developed closer relationships with as to why they did not seem as disappointed as I had imagined. According to CRAVE’s vice-president, Rodrigo, “This is Peru, not the U.S.,” he said, “Things like this happens all the time – we’re used to it. Another student, Carlos chimed in, “I usually don’t get my hopes up any more because I am afraid to be let down. It’s always like this, there’s nothing we can do.” I was left momentarily speechless, but then I fired back with the downheartedness of “not having hope out of fear.” I am near certain that this is not what they meant, and I probably read into and twisted their words around more than necessarily, but as dramatic as I know I was being, my goal was to get a rise out of Rodrigo and Carlos and spark the “Yes, I understand the situation, but it doesn’t have to be like this!” type talk. Still, I truly felt ripped apart.

My disappointment, maybe even anger, was very strong and weighed my down hard like the chains of the Ghost of Christmas Past as he went to bother old Ebeneezer. I looked deep into myself to see what the source of this emotion was, and through many graces was able to uncover some interesting things hidden inside. It was hard to not see the fruit of my late nights at school that kept me away from my community (that misses me so much!) come into fruition, but more so I was disappointed because even if the students couldn’t yet comprehend how radical this experience could have been in their lives, I felt so entitled that I could look into their crystal ball and see their future, and thus was letting them down and depriving them of becoming their full and best selves. Who knows what could have happened? The proverbial door (that I try to open for my students and hopefully watch them walk through on their own accord) was slammed in my face and locked with a key that was instantly thrust aside.

I expressed this guilt and frustration with the Jesuit, Juan Bytton S.J., in charge of youth ministries in southern Peru. “Surely he will understand where I am coming from,” I thought. Strike two – wrong again. To complicate things, he gave me what appeared to be an Ignatian riddle and I was not in the mood. Politely, I nodded my head, made understanding gestures to show mild comprehension despite the language barrier and then went home.

During a few long bus rides while traveling through Peru’s lush country side thanks to our unexpected and abrupt government mandated vacation, I had a lot more time to think about the situation with much more clarity. What Juan tried to share with me was the idea of “Ignatian Indifference”, much different from the deadly disease of indifference as Señor Webster defines it as “marked by a lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern for something; having no importance or value one way or the other.” According to St. Ignatius in the “Principles and Foundation” section of the Spiritual Exercises, “Human beings are created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by these means to save their souls.” Further explained by James Martin, S.J., in his book My Life with the Saints, “We should make use of things on earth that enable us to do this, and free ourselves of anything that prevents us from doing so…We should not be so attached to any thing or person or state of life that prevents us from loving God.” Very interesting and even confusing ideas.

In this sense and Ignatius’ time-tested world view, I was clinging so tightly to a successful trip that the fear of failure prevented me from following God. My attachment to this trip, despite it being directed to and for the best interests of the participants, may have separated me from seeing the big picture and God’s work each day within the preparation phase of the trip, my life, and even my students’ lives – something that Rodrigo and Carlos may have been on to.

A “trip” is not needed for these kids to encounter a Peru they never knew existed. I like to think it would have been an incredible experience for all involved, but there are many more powerful forces involved that I am trying to come to a better understanding of through this life and work that I am a mere witness to.