“Who are you?” said the five year old, looking at me as she firmly placed her hands on her hips. Her eyes were deep and dark.
“My name is Juan. What is your name?”
“I am Brenda. Do you want me to tell you a joke?” She laughed openly even before the joke was over. I could see how open her heart was.
Children at the School Presidio Liberado
The sun was shining again over El Salvador. The devastating rains were over. The land was slowly beginning to dry. People have returned to their communities but children like Brenda are still struggling. After the joke Brenda looked at me seriously.
“You know what?”
“What?” I asked.
“You are not going to believe this,” her face was intense and filled with mystery as if trying to understand the story herself.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well, there was this old man in the community. He was always around here. He used a little stick to move around. Then, another man stole the stick, and you know what?”
I looked at her. I knew she was trying to tell me something but, as always, in indirect ways. I shook my head.
“You are not going to believe what happened,” she repeated.
“What happened?” I asked. She got closer to me.
“He died…of hunger.” Her eyes searched inside my soul to find my reaction. I shook my head again. She did the same. Hunger in the community is something she was probably seeing a lot.
When I joined the “medical brigade” for a trip to Bajo Lempa, I wasn’t expecting those communities to still be in such a bad shape. In the Bajo Lempa, the low-lying farming area near the Lempa River, the communities were completely flooded, destroying most crops. At the school Amando Lopez, where Brenda found me, I saw many families left to survive on their own, with many children and adults underweight, some severely malnourished.
“Brenda, do you like school?” I asked. She nodded.
“But you know what?” she added immediately, “you are not going to believe what happened.” She paused and looked at me, again searching to see if I was interested in this new story.
Lack of Transportation at Bajo Lempa
“What happened?” I asked, impressed with her storytelling techniques.
“Well, the rain came…and you know what?”
“What happened?” I asked patiently.
“There is no transportation!” She screamed it, with the exasperation of a five-year old, reporting the absurdity of that kind of news. We were both quiet again. She looked at me. I wondered if she wanted me to say something. But Brenda was not interested in pity. She wanted me to know. She wanted me to hear, to really listen.
After spending the day together, on my way back home, I was thinking that for those living a more comfortable life (like me), it was easy to pretend the situation has gone back to normal, but for Brenda’s community the situation would be dire for a long time. I checked the stories Brenda told me with a couple of teachers and they confirmed the one about children not being able to go to school. Others were just Brenda’s efforts to make sense of the hunger and the difficulties of life through stories she could share with us.
Children Fighting Malnutrition
At night, however, I couldn’t stop thinking about that little child. My dream was that someday we would be able to offer scholarships to bright, feisty children like Brenda. Teaching at the program Casa de la Solidaridad for a semester, I wondered if solidarity could ever be a comfortable “home.” The situation in the rural communities in the Bajo Lempa is extremely difficult, now more than ever. What is it we need to become so we can embrace and understand solidarity and the suffering of this world? I was thinking about the encounter with Brenda. Later at night I thought that maybe solidarity is not about you becoming something. It is about something much simpler. Like Jim Harrison says, it is about “everything and everyone becoming you.” I was inspired to act by the sparkling laughter of Brenda and her courage to tell the stories. Maybe a little bit of her is still with me. That beautiful child helped me to understand a little bit better the long road home, the road to solidarity.
Take a few minutes of mindful breathing to reflect on meaningful and sacred encounters in your own life. What people and conversations have moved you and change you in powerful ways? What kinds of stories do you need to tell and share with others? Write for as long as you can. Enjoy it!
Juan Velasco