Back in December, Amy Van Buren, my friend from the
Psychology department called me and said she was going with the El Salvador
delegation over spring break. A faculty
spot had opened up, and she wondered if I happened to be interested. I said yes right away, without really
thinking things over. It just seemed
like such an important opportunity that I could not turn it down, even when the
doubts and fears began to creep in when I started to think about what I had
just volunteered to do.
I started to feel better when we started to have some
informational meetings about the trip and I met some of the students who were
participating. Everyone involved was so dedicated
and earnest about their desire to go and make some sort of difference that I
was inspired to think more about my own reasons for going on the trip. Like most of the others, I found my motives
coming from two different directions. On
the one hand, I felt the urge to give some of myself to others, to help out people
who enjoy fewer advantages than I do. On
the other, I felt the need to push myself, to test my limits by moving outside
of the cozy little zone of comfort that I had built up over the years.
The first shocks of the trip were relatively easy to
deal with. When we landed at the airport
outside of San Salvador, the tropical sun shone fiercely on our pale New
England skins, but we were ready to soak up some of that warmth after the deep
freeze of Connecticut February. Slathering on sunscreen, we piled into the back of the cattle truck that
would drive us to Tierra Blanca where we would be staying and working. Coming from the land of seatbelt laws and
injunctions against riding in the backs of open trucks, we were thrilled by the
prospect of roaring down the highway buffeted by the wind, and the novelty of
this mode of transportation never wore off during our week there.
The first thing we did after settling in to our new
home at the Romero Cultural Center was drive around the area and see the sites
where we would be working. Loaded once
again in the back of the truck, we bounced over rutted, rocky dirt roads to a
small chapel nestled in some trees. The
chapel was old and tiny, with roots from one of the huge trees pushing up
through the dirt floor. The area of
ground next to it was set aside for a newer chapel, and we would be digging the
foundation hole. After watching a group
of men chop down a huge tree that was in the way of construction, we drove a
few miles away where another clearing met us and where we would dig another
chapel’s foundation.
The work was hard, physically demanding, and done
under the glaring sun. Nevertheless, we
all pitched in, swinging our picks and hauling away wheelbarrows full of dirt
and rocks. The Salvadorans working
beside us laughed good-naturedly at our clumsiness with the tools and showed us
how to use them better. Although many of
us didn’t speak any Spanish much beyond “gracias,” we managed to communicate
with a lot of signs and smiles and help from those on the trip who did speak
the language.
Our work was not all physical. Most of our time, in fact, was spent
traveling to different communities to visit the people and listen to their
stories about the horrors and difficulties of the civil war years and the
continuing economic and social hardships they face.
One afternoon we drove up a winding rural road along a
river, up into the foothills to visit La Quesera, the site of a massacre of
civilians in 1980. We sat in the shade
of several large trees, hearing the river burble quietly below us, while
survivors of the civil war told us their stories. One woman told of stumbling down the hillside
behind us with her child in her arms as bullets flew overhead. An old man, his face set rigidly, recounted
seeing warplanes strafe his village, and told us that he never saw his wife and
six children again.
In a more somber mood, we went to the memorial built
at the location of the massacre. The
memorial is an arching wall, the roof formed by the protecting wings of a
dove. It stands on a small, flat area on
a bluff jutting out of the surrounding hills. As we wandered around the area, dark clouds blew through, casting
dramatic shadows and making the scene even more touching than it already was.
The trip, though, was not all melancholy. On our last full day, we took a trip to the
beach and invited several families from the surrounding communities to go with
us. We ate, we lounged in hammocks, we
played soccer on the sand. Because the
ocean waves were as warm as a bath, we had to splash around in the water. As I stood in ankle-deep water, one of the
little girls from La Gracia, a community near Tierra Blanca, grabbed my hand
and pulled me into the waves. I hefted
her onto my shoulders and waded into even deeper water, laughing and shrieking
with her as the waves hit us.
Here is where you can get more information on the El
Salvador trips, and even donate money if you are so inclined: http://www.sacredheart.edu/pages/2627_el_salvador.cfm