May 2009 Archives

                We awoke early that morning, ate breakfast, had a quick orientation, and then we were off.  Where we were headed, none of us really knew, but we realized that we were embarking on one of the most challenging experiences of our lives: Morazán province, the village life of La Hacienda and El Junquillo.  These people have touched my heart, and I doubt I will ever forget.  I have an image forever burned in my mind, and all because of two major things--their welcoming nature, and their open hearts and homes.

               On the day of travel, we ended up walking up half of the hill that was on the way to the village of La Hacienda.  Soon, we reached the top of the hill after a grueling and unexpected climb.  (It was so unexpected, that you should ask A.J. about those flip flops that he was wearing for the climb.)  At the top of the hill, we came upon one of the oddest things that I have ever witnessed.  There was a small congregation of people waiting for us, by no means the entire village, but they were there to welcome us and lead us into the village.  Not only were they waiting for us, but when we unloaded the bus, they shouldered the burdens of our water and our bags and carried them down the hill on the way to meet the rest of the village. 

When we reached the chapel, the entire village was out in force, waiting for us. They waited to welcome us into their village and into their homes to show us what they were doing in their lives.  Never before have in been welcomed into a place like I was then.  We were led into their chapel with all of our belongings, and we sat there for several hours as many of the members of the village introduced themselves to us.  Soon after, we were told who we would be staying with for two nights.  I was paired with Kyle and Mr. Broyles, and we were to stay with Basilia, the mother of the house at which we stayed.  As soon as we knew who our new house mom was, she whisked us and our items away to her house, where she showed us where we would stay, where the outhouse was, and then showed us where we could bathe.  It was intriguing to me when we stayed with these people that they were willing to literally share with us all of the physical possessions that they had, yet they had so few of them.

  As I lay in my hammock the first night, trying to sleep, I had considered whether I would be able to do that for a complete stranger in America, and I came to the conclusion that I probably could not.  I have so much, yet I doubt I would be able to welcome a complete stranger into my home for even two nights and share with them all that I have.

The second day in the villages was even more more interesting.  We spent the entire day with the village of La Hacienda.  We toured the village, which was a very interesting experience in which we entered many different homes to speak with many of the people who were going through their daily routines.   They all welcomed us into their homes and tried to teach us about what they did in their lives.  The told us how much it meant that we stayed with them, and yet when it was all said and done, I believe that they had far more of an impact on us than we had on them.  After seeing some of the wrongs, I know that I now need to make some rights, especially after that second day.  At one point, I was watching the children play games with some of the other members of this trip.  I watched them laughing and yelling and having fun, with complete innocence.  But then I thought about the opportunities that the kids have.  I considered it as I watched: how many doctors and lawyers and Bill Gates´s and Mozarts and scientists who will cure cancer do we lose because these children have no opportunities, and I realized that in the long run, my life dream is to somehow improve these children´s opportunity, give them an equal chance, because right now, the situation is so wrong here.

Finally, I want to tell you how much the time in La Hacienda meant to me.  The next morning, we walked a few miles to another village (called El Junquillo) that lies across the only road that goes through this area. It was a place very similar to La Hacienda, and the people welcomed us as they had in La Hacienda. After a great soccer game (we lost) and a fun dance, and a prayer service the next morning, it was time to leave. As we walked back to the road with the people of El Junquillo insisting on carrying our luggage for us, I noticed that the people of La Hacienda were there, out on the road, waiting to say goodbye to us.  Because of how welcoming the people were to me, as we left, I actually felt a loss in my heart, especially for Basilia and her children.  As we left, I looked out the window, and I saw them, and I smiled, and I waved, and I yelled ¡Adios! to them.  They waved to me, and I will forever have an image burned into my mind of Basilia and her family.  I now know that I will dedicate what I do in the long run to help people like this, with little educational opportunity, to have the opportunity to be more and to make the world a better place for all to live.

And as a final note, hey mom and dad, Mike and Matt, Katrina and the Maxcy family.  I´m doing well and having an amazing time.  I miss you all.  I can´t wait to get back and tell you all about the trip.  I love you all, and I´ll see you soon.

By Scott Franz

As far as my experience so far on this trip, I've been most interested in the political ideologies and economic viewpoints coming from the Salvadoran people. I´m fascinated by some of the things that these people say.

The one experience that I wanted to share was one that happened on the last night in the town of El Junquillo. I was with Mario Moreno, and we were talking with a guy from the community named Antonio. At first glance, he seemed like the stereotypical campesino, but as we talked with him, it turned out to be the equivalent of a lecture session with an economics professor with a specialty in El Salvador´s interaction with the rest of the world. 

His knowledge of the current events in the world was spot on. He knew that the United States has relations with countries like Venezuela solely because of the amount of oil that they provide for us. He knew that US protectionism prevents Salvadoran goods from being exported to help a struggling economy. He even asked us what we thought about government subsidies.

Why are such hypocritical policies being implemented in the United States today? Specifically with economics, our country generally says that they want to promote free markets and open up interactions with countries that we previously haven´t. We complain when we see China continue to raise tariffs on other foreign goods, hurting the US economy. And yet as we say that, we extend protectionism to places like El Salvador to try and reap the benefits from them while they foot the bill. 

By doing this, we end up suppressing the progression of people like Antonio, benefiting the people on top but hurting the people down low. I want the country I live in to start actually being the example of freedom and equality that it boasts, because I want to take pride in something that supports more than just aristocrats and oligarchs.

By AJ Steimel

Before I get into details of the experiences we have had during our first week here I want to thank all those for your good luck wishes and comments, especially my parents and grandparents. Thanks Mom, Dad, Grandee and Poppin! Love you guys! Oh! Can't forget my girlfriend, Thanks Jess! J

The anxiousness built up as the plane flew closer and closer to our destination, and for me I still wasn't sure what to expect. Reading The Massacre of El Mozote gave me an insight into some of the injustices that have occurred in the past, but for some reason it still didn't feel real. That quickly changed when our bus arrived at the villages of La Hacienda and El Junquillo. I can't go into complete detail of the past days but I want to quickly tie together two stories that I have experienced during this first week. The title of my second journal entry reads, "All We Need is Love." And as I look back upon that entry the vivid memories of why I titled it this come running back into my mind. 

While the people of La Hacienda were introducing themselves, the Scholarship Students that the Brophy Turkey Drive funds stood up and began to tell us their names, ages, and what school they attend. I couldn't help but stare at the shirt Jeiti had on that said, "All You Need is Love." 

I thought back to all the faces we had seen and people we had met earlier that day and I reflected on how happy, pleasant and welcoming these people were. I realized these people were not just acting for us, they truly were as extremely happy and loving as they appeared. I contemplated why and how these people were so happy although they had essentially nothing at all. And it soon hit me while I was writing my journal that night, it was simple, their lives were filled with love. They have love for their families, friends, communities, and themselves and it was then when I realized these people are not lacking in anything. 

Sure they don't have the materialistic things we make out to be a big deal, but spiritually these people have EVERYTHING! This had a huge impact on me and my view on these people who have now become my new families; I envy them for their loving, caring, hopeful, and persistent characters and only hope I can model my own character like theirs. There will never be a day that passes without me thinking about the people I met and faces I saw and the time I spent with my new families in La Hacienda and El Junquillo.

Unfortunately not all of our experiences have been as uplifting and happy as this story; in fact hours after we left El Junquillo I experienced one of the most heartbreaking realities thus far in my life. As we listened to Rufina Amaya's daughter speak to us about how her mother was able to be the lone survivor of the massacre in El Mozote, everything that I had read all of a sudden became so real. But it wasn't until I walked into the Garden of the Innocents when I truly broke down. The Garden of the Innocents is located on the side of the Church in El Mozote dedicated to all of the innocent children that had been killed that horrible day in December 1981. I simply sat down and stared at the names of the children and couldn't help but cry. I mean, the first name on the list was a girl named "Concepcion" Lopez who was three days old and did not even have a name yet. How could she have possibly been a threat to the Salvadoran Army? She wasn't a Guerilla fighter; she was an innocent helpless baby who was born three days earlier. It simply does not make sense to me how anyone with any sense of human dignity could kill a three day old baby with a Bayonet. 

Just one night earlier I had held Geronimo's baby during one of our talks and I was able to experience the beauty of life and the next morning I sat and realized the fragility of life as I stared the names of the innocent young children that were killed maliciously in El Mozote. This had such a profound impact on me I cannot even explain. But I do know that I will never look at life the same way ever again. We were all told to throw ourselves into the experience at the beginning of the week, and that is what we all did when we arrived here in El Salvador, whether we wanted to or not. The experiences that we have been through during the past week have been extremely difficult and very uncomfortable but we have all learned a lot about the people we have been with and also ourselves. As we continue on through this next week I ask everyone to keep us in your prayers, and I continue to ask God to help us keep our eyes, ears, and hearts open to everything we experience. We all miss you very very much! Love you Mom, Dad, Grandee, Poppin, Rest of Family, and Jess!

Hasta pronto!

AJ Steimel  

By Danny Wilson

May 30, 2009

Tuesday night I found myself sitting in my new "bedroom," one of three rooms in a small adobe house owned by a couple in the community of La Hacienda. As I tried to get comfortable on the hand-woven hammock that would be my bed for the next two nights, the owner of the home, Santos, and his ¨life-partner¨ Marta came in and sat down on small stools next to my roommate and me. His face lit solely by candlelight, Santos began to talk to me about how hopeful he was for change in El Salvador. Since the end of the Civil War that ravaged the country for most of the Eighties, the nation has been led by the ARENA party. On Monday, President-Elect Mauricio Funes of the FMLN party will take the oath of office, and for the first time in its history the country will experience a change in political leadership.

What startled me about this conversation was not the passion and political awareness Santo had for El Salvador but what he knew about the United States. Just minutes into the conversation, he began to talk about Barack Obama, and how fervently he hoped that with new governments in the United States and El Salvador there would be a better relationship between the two nations. He spoke for over an hour about economic and political issues not just in El Salvador but around the world - privatization, environmental destruction, corruption. His thoughts were in depth and specific, he could cite the names of banks in San Salvador that refused to loan money to poor campesinos (peasant farmers), the mining companies that organized projects that would lead to environmental exploitation in rural, poor areas of the country, and politicians who he thought had a negative effect on the well-being of his fellow Salvadorans.

I came to Morazán expecting to see abject poverty, devastating sickness, and neglect. What surprised me was how intently knowledgeable almost everyone I spoke with was. Despite the fact that in Morazán few spots north of the Torola River have electric power, the people of La Hacienda and El Junquillo talked about their desire for education, healthcare, and political influence, while never mentioning a want for electricity to provide for the modern amenities we enjoy in the United States. The people of these two communities are organized and willing to stand up for the goals they have. They want nothing more than to see that their children have better lives than they do.

I was awed by how structured each community is. When we arrived in both La Hacienda and El Junquillo, the leaders of the towns stood at the front of their humble capillas (chapels) and present committee after committee. The people of both towns are ready to stand up for what they want, and they don´t want much. They have family, community, and awareness. What they do want is deceptively simple, and seeing just how little it would take to give them that breaks my heart. Both towns have schools, but they receive just too little funding. They have a community medical center, but visits from trained medical professionals are too few.

The people in these two communities don´t need to be told how to live. They don´t need to be told how to organize, and they certainly don´t need to be told how to love. They simply need to see that future generations just have a chance - the chance to own a business, to go to school, to play a role in society. I was shocked by how organized these two communities were when I arrived, and I left shocked at how little they need to thrive, and how dead-on the goals they fight for are. 

Greetings Family, Friends, Faculty, and other supporters!

It is hard to believe that this coming Monday our group of eighteen departs for El Salvador! The group includes me, Mr. Fisko, Mr. Halpin, Sean Brady, Eric Chalmers, Kevin Curley, Scott Franz, Luke Gresser, Sean Hanson, Mario Moreno, Connor Peagler, Anthony Ricci, Bryan Saba, Nicholas Shore, AJ Steimel, Kyle Underseth, Michael Weinberger, and Danny Wilson, all Brophy seniors who were selected to be members of our sixth Brophy El Salvador Immersion Experience. We are dedicated to making this a yearly pilgrimage of learning and growing, of questing and questioning, of being changed and challenged by the reality of the poor.

The purpose of this weblog is to keep all of you informed of our adventures in El Salvador as we experience them. Our plan is to post a journal entry on as much of a daily basis as possible. We arrive in El Salvador Monday night, May 25, and return on June 5th. If all goes as planned, we'll have pictures and text so that all of you at home can stay informed of where we are and what we are doing and get a feel for the experiences we are having. For the first several days of our trip we will be in the "campo," and will not have internet access, so we'll begin posting late on the 29^th or the morning of the 30th. Each of the guys will have a chance to contribute to the blog as we go through the experience. We invite you to log on and come along with us. You can even write comments back to us. We look forward to hearing from you!

Our hopes for this trip are many. First of all, we pray for a safe trip. We would ask all of you who are reading this to pray for us as we move through the experience. We also hope that this experience gives us a greater sense of the interconnectedness of the world we live in. Oftentimes we become so focused on our own lives that we can tend to forget about other places and peoples. In these times of war and economic hardship it's especially important to gain perspectives from more than just one window in the house we call the world. So it's with that in mind that we travel to El Salvador: to see the world and ourselves in it from a new perspective, and to see the God who made it from the eyes of the poor. Please pray for us!

Well, that's all for now. We'll see you in El Salvador!

Hasta Pronto,

Tim Broyles