Only The Steps I Take
Global Missions Newsletter for May by Justin Haaheim
The last few weeks have brought hard times for the barrio San Pablo, and likewise for many parts of Buenos Aires. Three weeks ago the water pump that fills San Pablo’s water tank broke, and the barrio has been without water since then. The municipality has put out large movable tanks of water for the barrio, and the families come out with buckets and pots to bring water back to their house for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and for the bathroom. The residents were finally able to get support from the municipality to help cover the cost of replacing the pump, but now that the new pump has been installed the power company has cut power to the whole barrio. Without power the pump can’t work, nor can the electric heaters that keep the vast majority of the families there warm during the night. The weather is getting colder now, and many people, especially the kids, are getting sick.
Beyond that many schools in El Talar haven’t had classes this week because the rooms lack window panes, and because in various cases they are without electricity or water or gas. Groups of students in the Capital have started protesting because they’re required to go to schools where the temperature inside is just as cold or colder (because the buildings are all concrete) than it is outside.
On top of all of that, the increase in natural gas usage with the cold weather has caused a shortage, and the price of natural gas tanks used for cooking in homes has gone up 20% in the last couple days. Many of the cars in Buenos Aires and the surrounding province use natural gas as their primary fuel source (which, on an environmental level I was really excited to find out), but with the gas shortage and the threat of lines being cut-off many gas stations have closed all but one or two pumps. I walked home a couple days ago past a line of 30 cars outside the gas station, and it’s worse in the capital. Taxis are left sitting in the middle of the street because they run out of gas and have nowhere to refill. The taxi drivers are scrambling to find places to refuel, because without gas they can’t work and won’t be paid.
Though this may all sound pretty dismal (and believe me — it felt that way talking to some of the teachers at La LecherÃa on Friday), I believe things will get better. I wanted to write about all of this that’s happening now because it’s current and relevant, but also to share a little bit about what the not-often-seen impacts can be of these kinds of things on the poor and marginalized. It’s interesting for me to think that, for as present as all of this has been in my mind the last few days, there are people in the more upper-class barrios of the capital that might not know anything about all this. Please keep the people in the barrio San Pablo and all those that are struggling with these recent events in your prayers.
More Than Accustomed
Winter has come here in Buenos Aires. Even though the still-changing leaves seem to say its fall (and I think technically Winter starts with the solstice on the 21st), the cold each day is a sharp contradiction. The cold for me is also a reminder. It reminds me of September and October when we first arrived here. Of the distinct sensual impressions of Argentina that came during that time — all associated with a persistent cold. This “clima” is also a reminder to me of what part or stage of my year here I’m in — namely the last part. In two months I’ll be boarding a plane to go home, which is an intense and exciting and scary and foreign thought to me, all at once. In September here I learned to expect the cultural and daily parts of my life. I remember thinking one day as I had coffee with Pedro, “I could get used to this place. I could learn to love this place.” In November and December, I was becoming accustomed to the things here. I had routines here, and I knew what to expect during my day. I could ride the buses. I hung out with friends. I drank mate.
In January and February I saw this country in a different way as I traveled alone and later with our country group to the south. I found myself in different ways. I found some peace, and an intense appreciation for this place, and for the parts of this country that aren’t The Capital.
But now I feel myself as more than accustomed — as more than blending in to the daily flow of things. I feel sadness here. I feel tiredness and idleness. I feel happiness in daily and weekly swings. I have a distinct sense of home. I have a distinct sense of friends, of faith, of work. I experience everyday joys, and I experience everyday frustrations. I think in some ways I have only now finally started living here. In the absence of novelty and a certain degree of fascination, and in the absence of a powerful momentum filled with idealism that came from catapulting from college and the discernment weekend, to orientation, to the first weeks and months here, I feel a simple honesty with this country, with this culture, with my friends and my volunteer work, with my church, and most of all with myself. My being in Argentina has become not a distinct part of my identity, but a indistinct part of my identity. It is part of who I am — inseparable from any of the other fundamental parts of my life.
So as I think about going to the airport I’m filled with unclear feelings. I don’t feel a simple and strong desire to go home, because on an unconscious level the home I’ve known for nine months (nine months that could easily be 5 years with the density of my thoughts and experiences throughout) is here. I don’t know who I’ll be when I go back. I don’t know yet how to be one person having been so intensely formed by two distinct worlds.
The unclarity of my feelings has contributed to a greater unclarity for me recently. I’m realizing now looking back that I’ve been suffering from mild depression for months now, which has reached into many different aspects of my life to affect my well-being, my motivation, my sense of purpose and orientation, and my faith. I think only now am I making progress to overcome that depression having come to new terms with the violence that came at its beginning, and having gained new perspectives on some self-deprecating attitudes. Unfortunately I still haven’t re-found much of my conviction and purpose and orientation, nor have I felt particularly connected to my faith in recent weeks.
I’ve thought a lot recently that the emotional and personal place I’m in right now may have something to do with an unconscious ambiguity about what kind of service commitment this is. I’ve thought often about what it would be like if this were my life, or at least if this life and type of service were my commitment for the foreseeable future. Frequently the next thought is that I simply couldn’t do it, but as I explore that more I see that having to do with the pretenses under which I came here in the first place — namely of *leaving things*. In August I left my family, Dorea, friends, going to weddings, Gustavus, Minnesota, music, and our U.S. culture among other things to come here, and I left them with a clear sense of returning (leaving family, Dorea and friends of course in the physical sense, because I still keep in regular contact with them). That is to say that I very intentionally didn’t let go of them, but now as I’m entering the tenth month here I feel an internal tension. As a short-term missionary I had clearly defined for myself a notion of leaving and coming back, but I think that this amount of time abroad is long enough to begin to engender feelings of permanence and of staying. The changes I’m going through now are ones that I see as being some of the big and final steps to adaptation for the long term. From that I feel a clash with my sense of leaving and coming back — of short-termness. It’s as if part of me is saying, “but you’ve finally started to find your place here. You’re going so soon?” It’s part of the unclarity that’s dominating my thoughts these days.
(p.s. I know unclarity isn’t a word, but it seems to work, doesn’t it?)
Cariño (Caring)
Despite these long-lasting and general feelings I’ve had a number of moments of happiness here, of orientation and of purpose. I’ve felt the healing power of, and as Chaplain Brian once put it “the Christ presence in each child of God”, in the kids at the orphanage “La Casita”. A couple Mondays ago on my way to the “hogar” I had kind of a breakdown owing to lots of stress, frustration about my lack of progress on a number of different ideas I have, and upsetteddness with myself for being late to “La Casita” and not making my time there more of a priority. I felt out of control of myself and my thoughts, which is a relatively new feeling to me this year, and I kind of mentally drove myself into the ground. After a little while of just standing, frustrated and broken, I picked myself up and continued on to the “hogar”. Without really knowing what was happening I left there a few hours later feeling refreshed and renewed. From a group of kids who some might say have little to offer, I received unwittingly a precious gift: healing, and a better sense of wholeness.
This last Tuesday I had another really beautiful moment. I left La LecherÃa in the afternoon with a couple other volunteers to walk with a small group of kids from La LecherÃa to a nearby community center for some game-time. As we walked out of the door (feeling as I usually do when I leave: on-guard, and somewhat alienated and distant from the people in the barrio — especially the young males) three of the young girls who were coming with surrounded me and grabbed onto me excitedly. They shouted, “I want to walk with Shasti (Justin)!” They were looking up to me. They cared about me. I felt an unbelievable sense of being appreciated during the walk, which I think is a sign of both how sweet and important these kids are to me, and of how deprived I am of feeling appreciated. For as much as I sense or infer gratitude occasionally for my presence and my efforts, I very rarely receive concrete gestures of gratitude and appreciation, which I think was one of the things that slowly led me into depression in the last few months. If only those few girls knew how much their little hands in mine and their unqualified “cariño” (caring) meant to me — how much it sustains me and brings me happiness.
With all that said things are quite honestly going well for me here. My volunteer work at La LecherÃa is meaningful to me, even though to this day I still haven’t been able to put together some of my own bigger projects. I have been hoping since really some of my first weeks there to find some way to share my musical talents with the kids. The idea took shape early on to try to put together a band (with guitar, bass, drums, singer, etc) of kids at La LecherÃa, but this has proven to be aggravatingly slow and difficult. Carlos, a friend who plays guitar, was going to be one of the main members of the group, but he’s now going full-time to a technical school. Very few other kids his age have any sort of passable guitar skills, and the one promising other kid that I knew through a friend at La LecherÃa has yet to show up. In the meantime, I’m left feeling frustrated and on some level like I’ve failed.
Only A Path To Walk On
I continue to believe in the importance of simply my presence at La LecherÃa — a ministry of presence. I’ve stopped myself many times from worrying about what things I’ve done or haven’t done, what things I’m doing, and what I have to show for all of that. Nevertheless, I feel myself daily yearning to have something to hold onto. A product. A program. A band. I get so tired and frustrated making the excuses and explaining to people why there isn’t a band yet. Why there might not be one. So even though I know that a band as I had conceived it may not be a reasonable possibility anymore, I still am filled daily with an urge to have something to point to and say “there! That’s what I’ve done! Judge me on that!” Grade me on that. Let that be what justifies my presence here. Let that be what justifies the efforts and the money spent for my sake so that I can be here now. But the truth is that a music program or an English program or whatever is not what justifies my being here. I continue to believe that this time is about so much more than that.
I think I’ve finally articulated for myself why I shouldn’t think of my service this year as a job, and hence, why I should not judge myself (or be judged) on what I have *done*. It’s because this year is about discernment. It’s about seeing new things and learning new ways of living. It’s about sharing myself with people here, but even more about receiving the gifts of the kids in the barrio San Pablo, about receiving Jesus through the kids at the orphanage “La Casita”. It’s about, as Henri Nouwen puts it, “learning what I must have forgotten somewhere in my busy, well-planned, and very ‘useful’ life… that everything that is, is freely given by the God of love. All is grace.” As I think about the times here when I’ve felt like I’m going to any other job, I feel scared that I could’ve lost sight of the precious gifts I receive here. My tutoring English is only a path to walk on. My days with the kids in Shirley’s class nudging them along on their homework are only the steps I take. What is infinitely more important is what I see and feel when I pick my head up and don’t worry about the steps, about how fast I’m going, or even about where I’m going. Only with my head up and my eyes open can I begin to see the great spiritual and personal gift that the barrio San Pablo, the orphanage La Casita, Argentina, and Latin America have to give to me: the gift of being witness to those without power, and of finding myself at times without power. The gift of being with the marginalized, the discriminated, and the voiceless and feeling some intense truth about humanity in them. The gift of receiving their gifts, their hospitality and their love. The gift of finding myself with those in the shadows of this world and seeing a holy light burning within them.
Thanks be to God.
Pictures from my time here in Argentina. My newsletter Google-group website with copies of my previous newsletters. ELCA website with information on my program. And my photoblog: Light-on