miércoles, 26 de noviembre de 2008

strangers

We’re 2 foreigners in the community. We move in opposite directions, one towards survival, the other towards… well, I don’t know exactly, perhaps toward a grain of understanding. We converse in a tongue that is a second language to each. One is the backbone of the community’s agricultural economy. The other’s primary job right now is to go from house to house and drink coffee.

But we’re equals when we sit face-to-face as teammates at the domino table and we sweep 3 games against our Dominican opponents. And the Haitian farm worker can count up the scores on the fichas faster than the college math major.

And to the youngest kids, we’re both just people. The other day I saw the five-year old teaching the words to the latest bachata hits to 3 Haitian farm workers, learning a little more Spanish during their lunch break.

Third-World Living

I live in a 2-room wooden casita, a term that sounds quaint, but that really refers to the modest dwellings of those who can’t afford a more spacious, sometimes concrete, house. My room has one window, which opens to an outdoor kitchen where my doña cooks over a wood fire for an army, including her adult sons, innumerable niños, neighbors, and Haitian farm workers. In the other room, separated by thin boards at the bottom, poster board higher up, and nothing at the very top, lives a family of 4. The 3-year old wakes up crying at some point every night. Even more people live in the, albeit, larger house on the farm. This is third world living. But not quite – I don’t share a room with 3 other people.

viernes, 14 de noviembre de 2008

observ(ed)ation

“El Profe”, the exuberant school director recounted the history of the modest but handsome school building we stood outside of, explaining how its construction was made possible by funds from the U.S. and how grateful he was, as a way of introducing the awkward new Americano in town. Trying to initiate a discussion in front of the eager crowd seated in miniature school chairs about how with a history of exploitation from colonialism to neo-colonialism IMF and FTA style, the pittance given out in aid might not exactly be gracious, would have been difficult. “El Profe” continued, saying that the Americano was there to build to build an aqueduct. Whoa, whoa, whoa… suave. Here I had to interject. We’re here to build an aqueduct… together.

Really, we´re here together to build solidarity.

One of my assignments during my initial site visitation week was to “observe” the local school. Well, as with any other observation, any distinction between observer and observed is blurred, and what you really end up observing is yourself. My entrance into the classroom had to be a big spectacle, with the school director giving a long-winded address and then having each student stand up to introduce him or herself. And they insisted that I have a box of milk from the school milk program. And they’d already decided to end the already too-short school day an hour early for the water meeting.

Not the initial impact I wanted to have.

I’ll end with a quote from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

“This person (the radical) does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.”

How can the construction of a community aqueduct, with the hands of the persons in the community, be a process of liberation? How can I shape my role to allow this process to evolve, rather than perpetuating the traditional paternalism?