Sometimes the pain of this place hits me, and it hits hard.

     Most of my writing is fairly optimistic, as is most of my time here. Even when confronted by the negative aspects of life, I usually find a way to see the positive and focus on the beauty. Sometimes, however, I am struck by the ugliness of the poverty around me.

     It is very hard for me, as a North American who has never known any oppression or real financial strife, to know what to do with the situations I encounter. I do not always know how to emotionally, mentally, or spiritually accept what I see, hear, feel, and smell. Physically, I am fine. Cold showers, no showers, dust in the air in the dry season, rivers in the streets in the rainy season, sunburns, intestinal parasites – it is far easier to deal with these things than to know what to do with some of my other encounters.

     What kinds of encounters do I mean?

     I mean the kids walking through the streets without any shoes on, while the streets have sharp rocks and plenty of broken glass. Maybe the adults with no shoes can tough it out, but should the kids have to?

     I mean a young man I know, Fredy, who couldn’t enroll for his second year of high school because he and his family could not afford it. Registration was the equivalent of $20.00. The monthly fee would be close to $3.00. When he and I spoke, I had enough for his entire year of school sitting in my wallet. When we tried to get him enrolled, it was too late and he was told to wait until next year. How do I deal with the reality that, if someone had spoken with him three or four weeks earlier, he could be in school?

     I mean a certain stone block house I pass every day on the walk between my house and the church. There is no cement holding the blocks together. They are just laid on top of each other, and it does not look very sturdy. I lay here in my room at night wondering if there will be another big earthquake; their house looks like it would not survive even a tremor. Somehow, thank God, it always does.

     I mean the fifteen percent of the town’s residents who do not have running water at their own houses but have to use communal water sources. As for those of us who do have water, when the electricity goes out, which it does fairly regularly, the water cannot be pumped and the system takes a while to regenerate. I am not a sanitation expert, but I do know that easy access to clean water is vital for good health.

     I mean the military roadblocks. Getting pat down, having a gun pointed at me – these are not experiences that fit easily into what I know as normal. Or pleasant.

     I mean Hector Gregorio, the young boy I wrote about to whom I had given a yo-yo and with whom I shared a wonderful evening talking and finding us a late supper. He had told me that he was about to move and that it would be one of the last times I would see him. He lied. He did not move. I see him all the time, and he continues to beg from me. I pleaded that he not be considered a little beggar; I have a hard time myself not seeing him as just that.

     I mean the stories people share with me about their friends and relatives who "disappeared" in the violence of the 1980’s. What kind of response can I have? What can I say? All I can do is express some kind of sorrow and wait for the subject to be changed.

     I mean certain men I regularly see, men who have scarred their minds with alcohol or drugs. They obviously cannot take care of themselves, and they often approach me to ask for money. I do not know how to deal with them other than to hope someone else is taking care of them.

     I mean the vendors who set up their produce or pottery stands at 6:00 every morning and are there for the next twelve hours. I can’t let it get to me too often that these are moms and dads who, seven days per week, are away from their children for most of the day – because they have to be.

     I mean the encounter that sparked the writing of this chapter: I was helping the kids of Casa Feliz during their study hour when they had to complete a difficult assignment for school. They had to make a family tree. Many of these kids do not know their families, or have witnessed the end of their parents’ lives, or know their families but would rather not have to remember them. How was I to deal with that, I who still very much enjoy the support of my mom and dad and three living grandparents?

     I do not mean to be depressing, but there is no escaping that a lot of these situations are depressing. There is simply no way around that.

     By not dealing with it most of the time, I sometimes develop a numbness to it. As Father John Francis once worded it, "After a while you stop seeing the poor." I don’t want to believe him, but it is true. The bamboo houses, which must let in an incredible amount of rain and wind and dust, become normal houses. The thick smoke issuing from kitchens, smoke that causes one of the greatest health problems among women, becomes a normal condition. Children and adults in dire need of a good scrubbing become a regular, accepted sight.

     We long-term volunteers sometimes joke about how often we talk about foods we miss. (I have used iced mocha lattes, tiramisu, bacon, and artichokes as topics of conversation.) We then remark on how inane our communication is, talking about the shallowest of subjects. I think what is really happening sometimes is that if we go deep, we will quickly hit the very tender areas of ourselves that are trying, and often failing, to understand and respond to what is going on around us. Our shallowness buries the guilt resulting from that failure.

     The answer to how I should respond to the pain and poverty, the human misery that surrounds me, is simple. I am to come to know the people of San Lucas, build a friendship with them, love them, and offer them my prayer, my thoughts, my love, my hands. I am to give myself to them in big and small ways. That I do not understand, that I cannot accept, that I am angry, that I want to do more, that I cannot do more – these I need to give to God.

     God understands the most painful of situations and the most sorrowful of hearts. God accepts each of us, including those who have caused the oppressive situations that cause his children’s poverty. God is also angry, perhaps more angry than I am, yet he is forgiving. God wants to work in the lives of these people, as well as in my own life, and he can do more if I, if all of us, give him willing hands and willing hearts with which to do his work and build his kingdom.

     When I feel overwhelmed, I need to know that it is all right to feel that. After all, I came here to fully experience the community of San Lucas Tolimán. Poverty and pain are a part of this experience. To deny that would be no less tragic than to deny the beauty and richness that I have come to love here.