On the other hand, I want to give you a glimpse of the need of the people as well the strengths and the amazing perserverance that they display.
A balancing view: The family with whom I am living during this training period has a computer and four televisions. My brother who is 25 just graduated with a bachelor´s degree of Industrial Psychology and is super involved in a local Youth Development Organization. I love chatting with him about politics and philosophy and he ¨takes me¨in just about every discussion that we have. This family is not ¨rich¨or really even middle class, it is just that they have pooled the resources of 6 working adults in order to live comfortably all together at a level that would be more or less acceptable to the common American.
I just finished visiting a city in the south of Ecuador called Machala for 3 days on a ¨Tech Trip.¨ The purpose of this trip was to get a better idea of our upcoming daily life and work. We did a few different group exercises with mothers and we did a sexual education class for a group of 7th graders. Additionally, we played soccer with kids and hung out with local teens at the office of the local volunteer. These are all typical activities that could have happened in Midland or Chicago or any other place, but instead they happened on top of an old trash dump which is now a neighborhood for thousands of people who build their wood slat houses on stilts and get their water from barrels filled by a water truck now and again.
I don´t know how to normalize that picture for you, but it really is not a very uncommon type of thing. The extraordinary thing is that the children and the families are just like every other child and family. The are smart and fun and mischevious. They have problems and I´m sure that hope is sometimes difficult, but there is also love and trust and support.
My job is not to come in and save people. My job is much harder. It is to attempt to get to know these people and allow them to get to know me. Then, if I am worthy of their friendship perhaps they will teach me about life, while I try to help them find ways to navigate a broken system in order to allow them to use the many strengths they already possess in a way to escape from a life without options, without opportunity.
posted by Steve @ 11:50 AM
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