Lynnette Arnold
Letters from the Bajo Lempa, Usulután

August 10, 2002
April 25, 2002
February 20, 2002
December 27, 2001
November 13, 2001
October 5, 2001

August 10, 2002

Dear Friends,

Too much time has passed since I last wrote you – almost four months full of new activities and experiences. In this report, I will try to sum up some of the most impacting of these, and share with you my plans for the next months, as my first year here in El Salvador draws to a close.

June brought on the beginning of the rainy season, or “winter” as people down here call it. Don’t be deceived – the heat remains, worsened by the constant humidity, and the swarms of mosquitoes and flies. But we are in harvest season – the farmers are harvesting corn and beans, and getting ready to sow the second crop of the year. Everywhere people are enjoying tamales, and atol – two traditional foods made out of fresh corn. So it is a time of thanksgiving, and I have much to be thankful for – not the least all of your support in letters and prayers that I know are sent my way.

Delegation Work
I have spent most of my time over the past months with delegations, a very different experience from life in my community, but no less valuable. Through the delegates, I was able to see El Salvador again for the first time, as they were seeing it. Often this was difficult, because it meant loosing the sense of comfort that I’ve developed over the last months, and softened my heart to be constantly touched, and occasionally wounded, by what we saw.
One day I went with a group of high school students and seminarians from a parish in the United States to visit the little village of Panchimalco . The bus took us up into the mountains, on a steep, narrow, very eroded dirt road, almost blocked in places by recent mudslides. Out in this isolated spot we found families, living in tin shacks on the edge of the mountain. In the earthquakes, almost all of them lost their homes to landslides, and many have recently lost their jobs in the coffee plantations due to the drastic fall in coffee prices on the world market. They don’t own the land their houses are perched on, or the rocky slopes where they try to cultivate a few ears of corn. Their only source of water is a stream – over a mile away down a cliff-like slope. The students were shocked by this extreme poverty – as was I, and that night many of us felt frustrated, knowing there was so very little we could offer. But the next day we returned to Panchimalco and spent the afternoon at the school, playing and sharing with the children.

My time working with delegations has often been like those two days we spent in Panchimalco. Many times I would become frustrated by my own inablity to change people’s attitudes and situations, but when I remembered our common humanity, and our shared spirit, I began to see the beginning of the answer.

Community Life
My life has been going through many transitions recently, especially within my two communities of CRISPAZ and Amando Lopez. In May, the CRISPAZ team was joined by seven new volunteers who had arrived to spend their summer here in El Salvador . They doubled our numbers, but now the end of their stay is arriving. It will be sad to see them go, but more difficult for me has been saying farewell to three members of our long-term team who returned home after a year’s service. However, I received a wonderful month-long visit from my brother, and was left feeling newly inspired by yet another gesture of support and solidarity with my work.

Within Amando Lopez, I have been spending much less time in the community than I would have liked, due to my job. But the time I spent there has been full of changes as well. The women’s committee I’ve been supporting recently completed the construction of their building, a space we hope to use to start a sewing cooperative, as well as to develop other activities for women. Everyone is very excited, and I’m looking forward to increasing my participation in their work. On a more personal level, a close friend of mine, a young mother of four, recently lost her fifth child – a three-week old daughter – to the flu that has been prevalent since the start of the rainy season. At the same time her grandmother and mother are both very ill, and it’s been a challenge to know how to best support her.

So it’s been a time of changes, which has been difficult, but has also led me into a process of reflection about my presence here in El Salvador , and has confronted me with many difficult questions, many of which remain unanswered. I am constantly reminded of a message someone once sent me, which I didn’t understand at the time, but have recently grown to love.

I can’t change the world,
But I can change the world in me
IF I REJOICE.

Dreams for the Future
This whole process has led me to think a lot about what my next steps should be – about how I continue after a year in El Salvador . I have felt increasingly strongly the need to spend more uninterrupted time in Amando Lopez, learning to become vulnerable, like the people there. They are vulnerable in a physical sense – they are too poor to have the type of material security that we all enjoy. Because I am so blessed materially, I want to become vulnerable in another way – to open myself to feel their suffering, pain, and frustrations, and so try to struggle with them to build a better world.

That is my vision, and I have already taken steps to make it a reality. I have renewed my volunteer commitment with CRISPAZ for another year, and am excited about continuing to build community with those volunteers who remain, and the new ones who come to join us. In Amando Lopez, I am moving into my own house, which will allow me to be a more natural part of the community and have a little more control over my food. (I have been suffering bouts of parasites every three months or so, and hope to lessen that by preparing my own food). Most importantly, I AM PLANNING A FUNDRAISING TRIP TO THE STATES IN OCTOBER. I am really looking forward to seeing as many of you as I can possibly fit in to the time I have!

So that is a very brief, very general overview of what my life has been like in the past months. If you have more questions, I’d LOVE to hear from you – especially about what’s going on in your lives. I hope you all have a great last few weeks of summer before school starts again – enjoy the apples, and the colored leaves, and the fall weather for me!

Paz y Esperanza, Lynnette

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April 25, 2002

Looking back at the months of March and April which I wanted to tell you about, it’s hard to know where to start, and how to organize this telling. So much time has passed and so much has happened that this report looks like it will turn out to be as much a summary of highlights as anything else.

Much of my time these past months was spent with the four different delegations to which I was assigned through my new job with CRISPAZ. Coming from a variety of different backgrounds, each group had its own dynamics and reasons for wanting to visit El Salvador . That often made things difficult for me, stretching my leadership skills and diplomacy to the maximum. But I am happy to report that my ability to translate has far exceeded my expectations. Although I am in a new situation, I continue improve my Spanish, and learn more about El Salvador and myself with each day that passes.

The best experience by far was bringing a group of seven students from Aquinas College to visit the community of Amando Lopez, where I have been living for the past six months. We spent an enjoyable afternoon swimming and playing in the nearby Lempa River with some of the youth of the community, followed by a dinner of pupusas (a traditional Salvadoran dish) prepared by the women’s committee that I’ve been working with. That night, the students all went to different houses to sleep – both they and their host families nervous about probable communication problems. The next morning, it was beautiful to see them arrive at the bus, accompanied by the children of their host families – holding their hands or riding on their shoulders, communicating without any spoken words. For me it was exciting to bring these two parts of my world together, and see the wonderful things that came out of this encounter.

Other delegations that arrived came for the anniversaries of the deaths of Rutilio Grande, and Oscar Romero. Both were Catholic priests (Romero was Archbishop) assassinated during the early years of the armed conflict here in El Salvador for speaking out against the injustice and allying themselves with the suffering of the poor. Oscar Romero’s anniversary this year coincided with Palm Sunday and the visit of President Bush to El Salvador . That Sunday, the capital erupted as masses of people flooded in from the countryside to commemorate Romero’s life and death, and to protest against the free trade agreement that Bush had come to negotiate. With a delegation, I walked from the place where Romero was assassinated to the Cathedral of San Salvador where he is buried. The square in front of the church was a jumble of faces – the darker ones belonging to the Salvadorans, and the white-becoming-red of us overheated foreigners – against a background of palm fronds and placards denouncing neoliberalism.

The rest of my Easter week I spent recuperating from two months of delegation work. Accompanied by some friends of mine, I spent a day at the beach, and then returned to my community of Amando Lopez after a too long absence. There I joined the virtually the entire community in daily pilgrimages to the river in an attempt to escape the heat! (To the date, it’s only rained twice in Amando Lopez, and the heat continues to build, making sleep difficult, and draining energy.) On Easter Saturday they held the traditional night-long Easter vigil. This year the youth of the area had prepared everything – the music, the Bible readings, and the refreshments. It was a wonderful experience – full of the unexpected delays so typical to Salvadoran existence, which only served to make the experience more real.

Since then I’ve been in Amando Lopez, and so happy to be back. Many things continue the same, but there are also exciting new opportunities that continue to develop. This month I’ve started to co-teach English classes to the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades four times a week. I help to plan the classes, adding original games to make the subject more interesting, and also try to work with the pronunciation. I’ve also gotten involved with a group of eight young people who have just started their University studies in the nearby city of Usulutan. I first met them in August of 2000 when they were in their first year of high school and I was their English teacher. I was also privileged to be at their high school graduation back in December. Since starting at the University, they’ve encountered numerous financial difficulties, and are also facing the challenge of living in the city, and being away from home for the first time. So the sense of community that they have in the house that the eight of them share is very important. To that end, I’ve committed to meeting with them once a week to work on communication and community building within the house. I’m honored to be a part of the history these young people are making – all of them are the first ones in their families to ever have had the opportunity to study at the University level.

So I guess that’s some of the highlights, and a little of what has been keeping me busy. There are so many other things I could tell you all, so many new stories that I hear every day, but I guess you’re probably all read out by now. So I’ll let you go for now, and as you know, I always appreciate any responses!

Paz y Esperanza, Lynnette

February 20, 2002

Saludos from El Salvador!

Once again, I owe you all many apologies for the long silence since my last report. Many things have happened over the past two months, as reflected by the 45 pages journal writing I have done. This New Year has already brought many changes to my life, and I will try to share some of the most important with you.

Crispaz and other work-related experiences
( No, this section is not as boring as it looks!)
The single most drastic change in my life is that I have gotten a job. CRISPAZ, one of the organizations that has been supporting me as a volunteer, hired me in mid-January as a part-time delegation leader. My job started at the beginning of this month and includes translating and otherwise facilitating six delegations. I have spent this month mostly in training. The whole first week of February was spent in the annual CRISPAZ board meeting, a combination of the routine financial issues and exciting strategic planning for next year. After the Board Meeting I spent a week accompanying a delegation that was led by another staff member to get a better idea of what a typical CRISPAZ delegation is like. This week I am in a more intensive orientation so that I will get a better grasp of my specific responsibilities, and getting ready for my first real delegation to arrive on Friday.

When I came down here in September I never expected to find a paying job so quickly. While I am very excited about the many possibilities this opens up for me, I am going to miss being out in my rural community where I have developed a real sense of belonging over the past months. But I will be spending more time in San Salvador, and hopefully interacting more with the other CRISPAZ volunteers when they come in to the capital. So, as with any big change, this is bringing me consequences both exciting, and a little more difficult.

OTHER WORK
(The many other inventive ways in which I have been staying busy)

I spent the last few days of the old year with a Voices on the Border delegation. The participants were students from Austin College in Sherman Texas, and many of their churches, or family members and friends have been involved in a sister city relationship with my community of Amando Lopez. It was exciting to be with these young people and re-experience what it is like to see El Salvador for the first time.

In early January I also worked to facilitate the visit of a young woman from England, who has been working in the area where my community is located for the past several years. She is planning to start a music project which will focus on bringing together young people from different communities to learn musical instruments and form music groups. I was privileged to be able to help her get the project off the ground in Amando Lopez, and to be a part of the enthusiasm of the many young people who will be involved.

Another coincidental contact through a friend of a friend gave me the opportunity to learn more about the stories of the people of my community. I met a student from the United States who is here in El Salvador doing her thesis for a doctorate in sociology. She needed to conduct a certain number of interviews in communities all over El Salvador , with a focus on how the role of women in Salvadoran society has been changed because of the war. I was able to introduce her to the wonderful people of my community and helped her conduct a survey, as well as twenty full-length interviews. Such work has always fascinated me, and although I find listening to people’s stories very emotionally draining, they always have so much to teach me about faith, hope, courage, and humility.

STORIES
As always, living here in El Salvador is more than the sum what I do. Every day I hear stories and see things that shock or surprise me, and touch my heart in many different ways. I want to share some of them with you.

I spent Epiphany, (January 6) the day which marks the end of the Christmas season, at a soccer tournament. (Not so strange when you consider that I spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve swimming in the Lempa River, and Christmas day at the beach!) All three soccer teams from my community had piled in the back of a cattle truck and driven over an hour to get to another rural community, the site of the tournament. I sat down with my back against a tree to watch the proceedings and suddenly felt the tree begin to shake. Looking at the faces of my young friends around me, I saw the horror caused by yet another tremor – and almost a year after the first earthquake hit on January 13, 2001.

Some of you may remember my little friend Chepa from my last report – the seven-year-old whose lives with her deaf-mute single mother. Last month, Chepa’s mother was arrested. The police arrived at her house at two o’clock one morning, took her into custody, and brought her all the way to San Salvador, leaving her seven young children alone and frightened. Very few people knew what had happened until the next day when she was on the news, an eight-month pregnant deaf-mute single mother of seven, accused of collaborating in a kidnapping. Upon hearing the news the local priest went in to San Salvador and got her released, based on the ridiculous nature of the charges against her.

While helping to conduct the interviews in my community, I heard many heart-rending stories. One of the most difficult to listen to was Don Pilar, a 78 year old grandfather and carpenter by trade. He lives with his various children, a few months at each house because none of them really have the ability to support him, and often feels unwanted and disoriented. But the hardest thing for him is that he is loosing his sight, and along with that the ability to work and to recognize his friends and neighbors. “It is so hard, when one has once seen, to loose that gift little by little” he told me, speaking of the agonizing process that leaves him seeing less every day.

And then there’s another friend of mine, 16 year old Mabel whose younger sister is 6 months pregnant by a married man from a neighboring community. Her father is often drunk, and thinking to give her a diversion one day, we went to the river. As we were walking, another young girl approached. She and Mabel began to fight – pulling each other’s hair, punching, kicking, and in the end wrestling on the ground before I could pull them apart. They both stormed off in different directions, sobbing, leaving me feeling helpless and hopeless. Later I found out that there is a long-standing feud between their two families, of which this was simply the latest manifestation.

Salvador, a young man I often work with, just lost his father. He was attending a community meeting, but while he was speaking had a sudden heart attack and died in the pick-up truck on the way to the nearest doctor. Don Eusebio’s young son also died, hit by a car as he was crossing the street to visit his brother in jail.

Adding up all of these tragedies, it’s easy to become frustrated or disheartened. After all, what can one person do to change a system in which the most defenseless are systematically victimized by the rich and powerful? There are many days when all of these problems become overwhelming, and I wonder what I am doing down here, and what makes me want to stay. But these questions are really not answerable in a logical, realistic sense. There is nothing I can do but let the pain, the frustration, and the tragedy change me. By letting myself be touched by these stories, I grow in understanding and compassion, and begin to realize the urgency of sharing such experiences. So I share with you, and the people who come on delegations, and I continue to look, listen, hear, smell, and feel the reality of El Salvador, and let it act its potent change in my life.

Paz y Esperanza, Lynnette

December 27, 2001

Belated Christmas Greetings and Blessings for the New Year to all of you from El Salvador.

Dear Family and Friends,

As I sit down to write you this Christmas message, my heart is empty of the cheer and good spirits inherent to this season. Instead I am feeling vulnerable and helpless in the face of situations so difficult they stun me. Let me share some of them with you.

I have a seven-year-old friend called Chepa - a sweet little girl with a wonderful smile. She is the fifth of eight children, her mother cannot hear or speak, and is pregnant yet again. None of the various fathers of the children supports them in any way, and they are all emaciated-looking, the younger ones with protruding bellies. In order to grind corn to make tortillas, the mother has to beg money from her neighbors - who are poor enough themselves. On Christmas Eve, I saw Chepa’s father for the first time – lying in a drunken stupor on the side of the road, while his children starve for lack of the food that he could have bought with the money he wasted on drink. Chepa and her younger siblings come over to the house where I eat every day and watch me, their eyes begging me for food.

And then there's another friend of mine, Dora, a beautiful fourteen-year-old. She lives with her mother, who supports four children alone, and several unemployed uncles, who have a reputation in the community for violently mistreating Dora and her family. One afternoon, I had gone to the nearby river to swim with a group of teenagers, including Dora. She played as hard as any of us in the game of tag, and enjoyed herself as much. But then one of her uncles appeared, demanding that she return home at once. She immediately became sullen and subdued, but refused stubbornly to go back with him - a refusal that seemed to me to stem from fear. And rightly so because her uncle proceeded to wade into the river and tried to drag her out by the hair. She fought him - ferociously and silently, every inch of the way, and he resorted to beating her with the stick he carried. Eventually he let her go, but for her the afternoon was destroyed, and she cried all the way home not knowing what he would do to her once she arrived. I don't know what happened later - I can only guess, and would hesitate to even imagine the type of abuses she may be suffering.

Encountering things like this, which are so foreign to my own experience, leaves me with so many seemingly unanswerable questions. What should I do? How can I help Chepa and Dora, in a culture where drunkenness and domestic violence are generally accepted outlets for frustration? Is there anything I as an individual can do to address the despair caused by poverty and unemployment? The complex corruptness of the world’s injustice is overwhelming, and leaves me feeling powerless, because in reality there is so little I can do.

But on Christmas Eve, watching the Nativity Scene put on by the young people of my village, I really saw for the first time the newborn baby lying in the straw. What a mystery, that the all-powerful chose to come in such absolute helplessness, and made himself so totally vulnerable to those around him. But there is also an amazing power in this coming, that makes me think of the strength of such weakness. That is my wish, for myself, and for all of you in the New Year – the vulnerability of letting the pain that we encounter hurt us as well, the helplessness of admitting that we do not know what to do, and the strength that comes from relying on something bigger than ourselves. And the faith, no matter what, to still believe in

PAZ y ESPERANZA, Lynnette

November 13, 2001

It has been awhile since I last wrote about what I have been doing here in El Salvador, and I have many things to write about. I have been learning and growing and changing so much – and have been happier than I can remember being in a very long time. I wanted to try and share some of these impressions with all of you, to try to share with you some of the happiness I have found.

MY NEW COMMUNITY, Amando Lopez, is located in the same area where I spent four months last year, and returned to in April with a work brigade of high school students. The community is made up of about 110 families – or around 600 people, with over half of them being children and teenagers. During the war, most of the adults were either refugees in Honduras or combatants with the FMLN. The youth were born as the war started, and grew up in the refugee camps of a country that was not their own. Today, these people are struggling to build a thriving community out of land that was once a cotton plantation, but during the war was left to grow into jungle. Their land borders on the Rio Lempa, the largest river in El Salvador. They always have water and the land is flat, rich, and fertile. But the inhabitants are easy victims of flooding and earthquakes. These people depend on the land for their living. Most families have a small plot of land where they grow corn, sugar cane, or graze cattle. Life is far from easy, but there is a peaceful tranquility which I love – barefooted children playing simple games in the streets, women hanging clothes up to dry on the fences, men with machetes going out to work in the fields, ox-drawn carts with wooden wheels piled high with corn, and at night the sky full of stars – thousands of which I have never seen before. Like an endless black paper with holes pricked in it, letting the light behind it through, and so full of holes that it is about to break. Sitting in my room at night, watching the moon through my window as it moves across the sky, I write my diary by candlelight.

I live in the storage room of the brand new clinic which was built after the old one collapsed in the earthquakes. There I can have friends visit or be alone when I need to write or think or work. And then I spend many hours with my host family – father, mother and three young children (Denis – 6, Cecilia – 4, and Victor – 2) who love me as much as I love them. I’ve been teaching them to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “You are my Sunshine” in English. Every time I see them, they want to sing, and won’t let me go until we’ve repeated each song at least three times!

MY NEW JOB has been slowly defining itself over the past three weeks. I have spent most of my time working with Libros Para Niños (Books for Children), an organization that works to help increase children’s creativity and ability to think for themselves by the use of stories which emphasize values. Libros Para Niños has a story corner in my community, a space for children to come and read stories, draw, paint, play with puppets, and find other ways of expressing their feelings and opinions. The story corner is beautiful – or it is now, since I’ve washed down the murals on the walls, scrubbed bat-droppings off the floor, got rid of thousands of spiders and their webs, sanded and varnished all the wooden furniture, and cleaned up all the garbage that was pile outside! On Monday, November 12, we re-opened the story corner with a party and piñatas, games, a small play, and refreshments. Over 100 children were there, as well as 80 or 90 teenagers and adults who came to watch the festivities. From now on I will be working at least two and a half days a week, either in the story corner, or with the three day care centers in nearby communities that we coordinate activities with as well.

The other part of my work has been developing much more slowly. I am working with the recently formed women’s committee. It is really exciting work, to be able to participate in their growth as a group and help them strengthen their organization as I can. They want to start a sewing cooperative, so our current work is the planning of the construction of a building that they will use as general “women’s space” – for meetings, workshops, and of course the sewing cooperative.

WHAT ELSE do I do to stay busy? Well, I’ve been meeting people, visiting their houses, and getting to know their families. I’ve been learning to play guitar, and learning many new songs with a group of young people who formed a choir. I’ve been playing soccer, learning how Salvadorans play, and how to avoid heat exhaustion! I’ve been getting used to bathing outside, with an always present audience of young children whose sense of privacy is so different from my own. I’ve been getting used to living on beans, tortillas, rice, and the occasional egg or chunk of cheese. There have been many things to adjust to, but I have been loving every minute of it. I love the weather – the heat, the sun, the wind, the greenness and brilliant flowers of Salvadoran spring. I love the peace, the tranquility, the immensity of the starry sky at night. I love traveling in the back of pick-up trucks, and in buses crammed full of people. I love singing in Spanish, and playing guitar. I love my host family and the wet kisses and sweaty hugs of the children. I love the children, youth, and adults who stop me in the streets, visit me in the story corner, or in my room, just to talk to me. I love the feeling of welcome and acceptance – despite my blue eyes and pale skin, despite my strange Spanish and unusual behavior. And although I know that this contentment, this pleasure will not last for ever, and that I will experience problems in the future, I am happy. I am working hard at work that I love, and living life to the full among people who understand completely the richness of life.

Paz y Esperanza (Peace and Hope), Lynnette

October 5, 2001

The events of September 11 left me feeling afraid, and for the first time in my life, vulnerable. I didn’t know what would happen next, but I was sure that my life would be changed. And it has. The past three weeks since I arrived in El Salvador have been ones of personal growth and change. I have begun to glimpse, through the Salvadorans I meet every day, what it must mean to live every day feeling vulnerable and afraid.

Upon arriving in El Salvador, my first reactions were of total happiness at finally being back. As we disembarked the plane, the song “I can see clearly now the rain is done” was playing on the intercom – ironic as it was dark and pouring down rain – but heartening nonetheless.

My first week here was one of almost complete system overload – there were so many new people to meet, new ideas to think about, and new feelings to process. The time was spent in orientation with CRISPAZ, (Christians for Peace in El Salvador) one of the organizations I will be working with this year. For me they are a resource for technical support – they have years of experience working with volunteers here – and also provide a center for myself and a whole group of volunteers. There are seven of us, and I will introduce them to you now, as well as other members of the CRISPAZ community, as I’m sure I will mention them again in the course of the year. First Miranda, the energetic and cheerful volunteer coordinator, our fearless leader through the week of orientation. Jeanne and Rachel work in the CRISPAZ office. Kelly is the only volunteer from last year who has stayed on – a veteran 23 year old with lots of good advice for beginners. The oldest of the new volunteers is Mary Jane, a 58 year old Catholic nun. Then there is Mary, who at 39 is the quiet, serious one on the team. Kirk is next – the only man on the team – a 29 year old who is studying in the Presbyterian seminary. Then Cindy, who at 26 is a single mother with two young children (Ellie – 8, and Tony – 2) who came with her to El Salvador. Next is Cory, 24, who grew up in the US but was adopted from Korea. Last, the baby of the group, is yours truly. All of us are placed in various programs all over the country, and have committed to stay for at least a year. We get together once a month for team meetings, but often will see each other when we come in to San Salvador and stay at the team house. It is a great building – two stories – with plenty of space to have guests (family and friends from home) visit us! Some impressions from the week:

A strong aftershock just as we were beginning our first meeting – a violent up and down movement of the earth which left me feeling disoriented and slightly unsteady on my feet – repeated two more times in the next week.

A meeting with members of a labor union at a maquila – the Salvadoran sweatshop – where a workforce of mostly young women sweat in inhuman working conditions to provide their daily quota of pieces for companies like Gap and Cherokee. The union members showed amazing courage and hope; they have risked being fired and blacklisted for trying to improve their working conditions.

Visiting the rose garden, where six Jesuit priests were murdered on November 15, 1989, in the pouring rain, and feeling tears warm on my cheeks for all the innocent people who have been killed – twelve years or twelve days ago.

Going to the United States embassy, a huge, heavily-guarded, imposing compound – a world unto itself in the poverty and crowded, but very human, squalor that is El Salvador.

A vigil with other North American people working here, held in the Chapel where Oscar Romero was shot, to remember all those who have died, and to pray for peace in the world.

The wedding of a former CRISPAZ volunteer and a Salvadoran – the amazing force of love that can unite such differences.

The final reflection of our orientation week, in the ruins of a church that had been bombed during the war. Now grass is growing out of the hard stone walls, and the floor inside boasts a brightly colored garden of beautiful flowers.

The closeness of our group of volunteers, standing in a circle with lighted candles, reciting the prayer of St. Francis – “Make me an instrument of your peace”. The wonderful feeling of being supported and loved by others, and of being able to offer them support and love in return.

The next week, I went out to the campo – the countryside – to the community of Nueva Esperanza where I lived for four months last year. It was wonderful to see all my old friends again, and to realize that their hope is still holding strong – even after two earthquakes, numerous aftershocks, and a drought which have left them more destitute than ever before. Many of them who sole income is agriculture, have lost half of their harvest; others continue to live in houses with cracked walls or a partly missing roof even as the rain has finally begun to fall heavily; and everyone is still afraid of the aftershocks which continue even now, eight months after the earthquakes. I was also able to:

Build connections that were started by a work brigade of young people that I accompanied to Nueva Esperanza in April. Many of the young people who came in the brigade sent letters with me to Salvadorans they had befriended, and many of the Salvadorans wrote back – an exchange I am happy to facilitate by mailing letters and receiving and distributing responses.

Visit the bridges built by the work brigade. I managed to take some pictures too, after a grueling trek which involved crawling through three barbed wire fences during which I succeeded in tearing a hole in my dress!

Spend an afternoon at Amando Lopez, the village where I will be living and working this year. I got a tour from the vice-president of the community, and met many of the teachers and other people I will be working with. Everyone sounds excited that I will be coming, and it looks like there will be plenty of work for me to do.

That weekend I was finally able to make it to Chalatenango, a mountainous part of the country near the Honduran border, which is famous for its natural beauty. I went with a group of university students from Nueva Esperanza for the patron saint festival of the little village where many of their families lived before the war displaced them. It was a long journey in crowded buses over bumpy roads, but well worth it. Unlike the part of the country that I know, which is fairly flat, Chalatenango is one mountain after another – some with jutting cliffs, others more rounded and covered with trees that bear all kinds of exotic fruit. Farmers plant their corn on steep slopes between the rocks, and build their houses on any relatively flat piece of ground they can find. Winding trails connect the houses and fields, the main road which has several streams running across it, is very lightly traveled. Sitting out by the stream in the early morning, I felt like the only person in the world – it was so quiet and peaceful – a perfect place for rejuvenation after two very busy weeks.

This week has been one of work – Spanish classes in the mornings, and afternoon spent doing homework and meeting with the various groups that I will be working with. Next week will be more Spanish study and a visit to Kelly’s community so we can learn from her experiences. (Remember? – She’s the volunteer that’s been here for a year already.) That should be a lot of fun, but I’m looking forward to starting work for real by the week after that.

Many thanks to all of you who have written or emailed me so far. It means a lot to hear from you and know how you’re doing. Please know that even if I don’t always respond right away, or somehow miss writing back, I receive your messages and greatly appreciate all your support.

Con Paz y Esperanza, Lynnette

Lynnette Arnold
Letters from the Bajo Lempa, Usulután

August 10, 2002
April 25, 2002
February 20, 2002
December 27, 2001
November 13, 2001
October 5, 2001

August 10, 2002

Dear Friends,

Too much time has passed since I last wrote you – almost four months full of new activities and experiences. In this report, I will try to sum up some of the most impacting of these, and share with you my plans for the next months, as my first year here in El Salvador draws to a close.

June brought on the beginning of the rainy season, or “winter” as people down here call it. Don’t be deceived – the heat remains, worsened by the constant humidity, and the swarms of mosquitoes and flies. But we are in harvest season – the farmers are harvesting corn and beans, and getting ready to sow the second crop of the year. Everywhere people are enjoying tamales, and atol – two traditional foods made out of fresh corn. So it is a time of thanksgiving, and I have much to be thankful for – not the least all of your support in letters and prayers that I know are sent my way.

Delegation Work
I have spent most of my time over the past months with delegations, a very different experience from life in my community, but no less valuable. Through the delegates, I was able to see El Salvador again for the first time, as they were seeing it. Often this was difficult, because it meant loosing the sense of comfort that I’ve developed over the last months, and softened my heart to be constantly touched, and occasionally wounded, by what we saw.
One day I went with a group of high school students and seminarians from a parish in the United States to visit the little village of Panchimalco. The bus took us up into the mountains, on a steep, narrow, very eroded dirt road, almost blocked in places by recent mudslides. Out in this isolated spot we found families, living in tin shacks on the edge of the mountain. In the earthquakes, almost all of them lost their homes to landslides, and many have recently lost their jobs in the coffee plantations due to the drastic fall in coffee prices on the world market. They don’t own the land their houses are perched on, or the rocky slopes where they try to cultivate a few ears of corn. Their only source of water is a stream – over a mile away down a cliff-like slope. The students were shocked by this extreme poverty – as was I, and that night many of us felt frustrated, knowing there was so very little we could offer. But the next day we returned to Panchimalco and spent the afternoon at the school, playing and sharing with the children.

My time working with delegations has often been like those two days we spent in Panchimalco. Many times I would become frustrated by my own inablity to change people’s attitudes and situations, but when I remembered our common humanity, and our shared spirit, I began to see the beginning of the answer.

Community Life
My life has been going through many transitions recently, especially within my two communities of CRISPAZ and Amando Lopez. In May, the CRISPAZ team was joined by seven new volunteers who had arrived to spend their summer here in El Salvador. They doubled our numbers, but now the end of their stay is arriving. It will be sad to see them go, but more difficult for me has been saying farewell to three members of our long-term team who returned home after a year’s service. However, I received a wonderful month-long visit from my brother, and was left feeling newly inspired by yet another gesture of support and solidarity with my work.

Within Amando Lopez, I have been spending much less time in the community than I would have liked, due to my job. But the time I spent there has been full of changes as well. The women’s committee I’ve been supporting recently completed the construction of their building, a space we hope to use to start a sewing cooperative, as well as to develop other activities for women. Everyone is very excited, and I’m looking forward to increasing my participation in their work. On a more personal level, a close friend of mine, a young mother of four, recently lost her fifth child – a three-week old daughter – to the flu that has been prevalent since the start of the rainy season. At the same time her grandmother and mother are both very ill, and it’s been a challenge to know how to best support her.

So it’s been a time of changes, which has been difficult, but has also led me into a process of reflection about my presence here in El Salvador, and has confronted me with many difficult questions, many of which remain unanswered. I am constantly reminded of a message someone once sent me, which I didn’t understand at the time, but have recently grown to love.

I can’t change the world,
But I can change the world in me
IF I REJOICE.

Dreams for the Future
This whole process has led me to think a lot about what my next steps should be – about how I continue after a year in El Salvador. I have felt increasingly strongly the need to spend more uninterrupted time in Amando Lopez, learning to become vulnerable, like the people there. They are vulnerable in a physical sense – they are too poor to have the type of material security that we all enjoy. Because I am so blessed materially, I want to become vulnerable in another way – to open myself to feel their suffering, pain, and frustrations, and so try to struggle with them to build a better world.

That is my vision, and I have already taken steps to make it a reality. I have renewed my volunteer commitment with CRISPAZ for another year, and am excited about continuing to build community with those volunteers who remain, and the new ones who come to join us. In Amando Lopez, I am moving into my own house, which will allow me to be a more natural part of the community and have a little more control over my food. (I have been suffering bouts of parasites every three months or so, and hope to lessen that by preparing my own food). Most importantly, I AM PLANNING A FUNDRAISING TRIP TO THE STATES IN OCTOBER. I am really looking forward to seeing as many of you as I can possibly fit in to the time I have!

So that is a very brief, very general overview of what my life has been like in the past months. If you have more questions, I’d LOVE to hear from you – especially about what’s going on in your lives. I hope you all have a great last few weeks of summer before school starts again – enjoy the apples, and the colored leaves, and the fall weather for me!

Paz y Esperanza, Lynnette

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April 25, 2002

Looking back at the months of March and April which I wanted to tell you about, it’s hard to know where to start, and how to organize this telling. So much time has passed and so much has happened that this report looks like it will turn out to be as much a summary of highlights as anything else.

Much of my time these past months was spent with the four different delegations to which I was assigned through my new job with CRISPAZ. Coming from a variety of different backgrounds, each group had its own dynamics and reasons for wanting to visit El Salvador. That often made things difficult for me, stretching my leadership skills and diplomacy to the maximum. But I am happy to report that my ability to translate has far exceeded my expectations. Although I am in a new situation, I continue improve my Spanish, and learn more about El Salvador and myself with each day that passes.

The best experience by far was bringing a group of seven students from Aquinas College to visit the community of Amando Lopez, where I have been living for the past six months. We spent an enjoyable afternoon swimming and playing in the nearby Lempa River with some of the youth of the community, followed by a dinner of pupusas (a traditional Salvadoran dish) prepared by the women’s committee that I’ve been working with. That night, the students all went to different houses to sleep – both they and their host families nervous about probable communication problems. The next morning, it was beautiful to see them arrive at the bus, accompanied by the children of their host families – holding their hands or riding on their shoulders, communicating without any spoken words. For me it was exciting to bring these two parts of my world together, and see the wonderful things that came out of this encounter.

Other delegations that arrived came for the anniversaries of the deaths of Rutilio Grande, and Oscar Romero. Both were Catholic priests (Romero was Archbishop) assassinated during the early years of the armed conflict here in El Salvador for speaking out against the injustice and allying themselves with the suffering of the poor. Oscar Romero’s anniversary this year coincided with Palm Sunday and the visit of President Bush to El Salvador. That Sunday, the capital erupted as masses of people flooded in from the countryside to commemorate Romero’s life and death, and to protest against the free trade agreement that Bush had come to negotiate. With a delegation, I walked from the place where Romero was assassinated to the Cathedral of San Salvador where he is buried. The square in front of the church was a jumble of faces – the darker ones belonging to the Salvadorans, and the white-becoming-red of us overheated foreigners – against a background of palm fronds and placards denouncing neoliberalism.

The rest of my Easter week I spent recuperating from two months of delegation work. Accompanied by some friends of mine, I spent a day at the beach, and then returned to my community of Amando Lopez after a too long absence. There I joined the virtually the entire community in daily pilgrimages to the river in an attempt to escape the heat! (To the date, it’s only rained twice in Amando Lopez, and the heat continues to build, making sleep difficult, and draining energy.) On Easter Saturday they held the traditional night-long Easter vigil. This year the youth of the area had prepared everything – the music, the Bible readings, and the refreshments. It was a wonderful experience – full of the unexpected delays so typical to Salvadoran existence, which only served to make the experience more real.

Since then I’ve been in Amando Lopez, and so happy to be back. Many things continue the same, but there are also exciting new opportunities that continue to develop. This month I’ve started to co-teach English classes to the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades four times a week. I help to plan the classes, adding original games to make the subject more interesting, and also try to work with the pronunciation. I’ve also gotten involved with a group of eight young people who have just started their University studies in the nearby city of Usulutan. I first met them in August of 2000 when they were in their first year of high school and I was their English teacher. I was also privileged to be at their high school graduation back in December. Since starting at the University, they’ve encountered numerous financial difficulties, and are also facing the challenge of living in the city, and being away from home for the first time. So the sense of community that they have in the house that the eight of them share is very important. To that end, I’ve committed to meeting with them once a week to work on communication and community building within the house. I’m honored to be a part of the history these young people are making – all of them are the first ones in their families to ever have had the opportunity to study at the University level.

So I guess that’s some of the highlights, and a little of what has been keeping me busy. There are so many other things I could tell you all, so many new stories that I hear every day, but I guess you’re probably all read out by now. So I’ll let you go for now, and as you know, I always appreciate any responses!

Paz y Esperanza, Lynnette

February 20, 2002

Saludos from El Salvador!

Once again, I owe you all many apologies for the long silence since my last report. Many things have happened over the past two months, as reflected by the 45 pages journal writing I have done. This New Year has already brought many changes to my life, and I will try to share some of the most important with you.

Crispaz and other work-related experiences
( No, this section is not as boring as it looks!)
The single most drastic change in my life is that I have gotten a job. CRISPAZ, one of the organizations that has been supporting me as a volunteer, hired me in mid-January as a part-time delegation leader. My job started at the beginning of this month and includes translating and otherwise facilitating six delegations. I have spent this month mostly in training. The whole first week of February was spent in the annual CRISPAZ board meeting, a combination of the routine financial issues and exciting strategic planning for next year. After the Board Meeting I spent a week accompanying a delegation that was led by another staff member to get a better idea of what a typical CRISPAZ delegation is like. This week I am in a more intensive orientation so that I will get a better grasp of my specific responsibilities, and getting ready for my first real delegation to arrive on Friday.

When I came down here in September I never expected to find a paying job so quickly. While I am very excited about the many possibilities this opens up for me, I am going to miss being out in my rural community where I have developed a real sense of belonging over the past months. But I will be spending more time in San Salvador, and hopefully interacting more with the other CRISPAZ volunteers when they come in to the capital. So, as with any big change, this is bringing me consequences both exciting, and a little more difficult.

OTHER WORK
(The many other inventive ways in which I have been staying busy)

I spent the last few days of the old year with a Voices on the Border delegation. The participants were students from Austin College in Sherman Texas, and many of their churches, or family members and friends have been involved in a sister city relationship with my community of Amando Lopez. It was exciting to be with these young people and re-experience what it is like to see El Salvador for the first time.

In early January I also worked to facilitate the visit of a young woman from England, who has been working in the area where my community is located for the past several years. She is planning to start a music project which will focus on bringing together young people from different communities to learn musical instruments and form music groups. I was privileged to be able to help her get the project off the ground in Amando Lopez, and to be a part of the enthusiasm of the many young people who will be involved.

Another coincidental contact through a friend of a friend gave me the opportunity to learn more about the stories of the people of my community. I met a student from the United States who is here in El Salvador doing her thesis for a doctorate in sociology. She needed to conduct a certain number of interviews in communities all over El Salvador , with a focus on how the role of women in Salvadoran society has been changed because of the war. I was able to introduce her to the wonderful people of my community and helped her conduct a survey, as well as twenty full-length interviews. Such work has always fascinated me, and although I find listening to people’s stories very emotionally draining, they always have so much to teach me about faith, hope, courage, and humility.

STORIES
As always, living here in El Salvador is more than the sum what I do. Every day I hear stories and see things that shock or surprise me, and touch my heart in many different ways. I want to share some of them with you.

I spent Epiphany, (January 6) the day which marks the end of the Christmas season, at a soccer tournament. (Not so strange when you consider that I spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve swimming in the Lempa River, and Christmas day at the beach!) All three soccer teams from my community had piled in the back of a cattle truck and driven over an hour to get to another rural community, the site of the tournament. I sat down with my back against a tree to watch the proceedings and suddenly felt the tree begin to shake. Looking at the faces of my young friends around me, I saw the horror caused by yet another tremor – and almost a year after the first earthquake hit on January 13, 2001.

Some of you may remember my little friend Chepa from my last report – the seven-year-old whose lives with her deaf-mute single mother. Last month, Chepa’s mother was arrested. The police arrived at her house at two o’clock one morning, took her into custody, and brought her all the way to San Salvador, leaving her seven young children alone and frightened. Very few people knew what had happened until the next day when she was on the news, an eight-month pregnant deaf-mute single mother of seven, accused of collaborating in a kidnapping. Upon hearing the news the local priest went in to San Salvador and got her released, based on the ridiculous nature of the charges against her.

While helping to conduct the interviews in my community, I heard many heart-rending stories. One of the most difficult to listen to was Don Pilar, a 78 year old grandfather and carpenter by trade. He lives with his various children, a few months at each house because none of them really have the ability to support him, and often feels unwanted and disoriented. But the hardest thing for him is that he is loosing his sight, and along with that the ability to work and to recognize his friends and neighbors. “It is so hard, when one has once seen, to loose that gift little by little” he told me, speaking of the agonizing process that leaves him seeing less every day.

And then there’s another friend of mine, 16 year old Mabel whose younger sister is 6 months pregnant by a married man from a neighboring community. Her father is often drunk, and thinking to give her a diversion one day, we went to the river. As we were walking, another young girl approached. She and Mabel began to fight – pulling each other’s hair, punching, kicking, and in the end wrestling on the ground before I could pull them apart. They both stormed off in different directions, sobbing, leaving me feeling helpless and hopeless. Later I found out that there is a long-standing feud between their two families, of which this was simply the latest manifestation.

Salvador, a young man I often work with, just lost his father. He was attending a community meeting, but while he was speaking had a sudden heart attack and died in the pick-up truck on the way to the nearest doctor. Don Eusebio’s young son also died, hit by a car as he was crossing the street to visit his brother in jail.

Adding up all of these tragedies, it’s easy to become frustrated or disheartened. After all, what can one person do to change a system in which the most defenseless are systematically victimized by the rich and powerful? There are many days when all of these problems become overwhelming, and I wonder what I am doing down here, and what makes me want to stay. But these questions are really not answerable in a logical, realistic sense. There is nothing I can do but let the pain, the frustration, and the tragedy change me. By letting myself be touched by these stories, I grow in understanding and compassion, and begin to realize the urgency of sharing such experiences. So I share with you, and the people who come on delegations, and I continue to look, listen, hear, smell, and feel the reality of El Salvador, and let it act its potent change in my life.

Paz y Esperanza, Lynnette

December 27, 2001

Belated Christmas Greetings and Blessings for the New Year to all of you from El Salvador.

Dear Family and Friends,

As I sit down to write you this Christmas message, my heart is empty of the cheer and good spirits inherent to this season. Instead I am feeling vulnerable and helpless in the face of situations so difficult they stun me. Let me share some of them with you.

I have a seven-year-old friend called Chepa - a sweet little girl with a wonderful smile. She is the fifth of eight children, her mother cannot hear or speak, and is pregnant yet again. None of the various fathers of the children supports them in any way, and they are all emaciated-looking, the younger ones with protruding bellies. In order to grind corn to make tortillas, the mother has to beg money from her neighbors - who are poor enough themselves. On Christmas Eve, I saw Chepa’s father for the first time – lying in a drunken stupor on the side of the road, while his children starve for lack of the food that he could have bought with the money he wasted on drink. Chepa and her younger siblings come over to the house where I eat every day and watch me, their eyes begging me for food.

And then there's another friend of mine, Dora, a beautiful fourteen-year-old. She lives with her mother, who supports four children alone, and several unemployed uncles, who have a reputation in the community for violently mistreating Dora and her family. One afternoon, I had gone to the nearby river to swim with a group of teenagers, including Dora. She played as hard as any of us in the game of tag, and enjoyed herself as much. But then one of her uncles appeared, demanding that she return home at once. She immediately became sullen and subdued, but refused stubbornly to go back with him - a refusal that seemed to me to stem from fear. And rightly so because her uncle proceeded to wade into the river and tried to drag her out by the hair. She fought him - ferociously and silently, every inch of the way, and he resorted to beating her with the stick he carried. Eventually he let her go, but for her the afternoon was destroyed, and she cried all the way home not knowing what he would do to her once she arrived. I don't know what happened later - I can only guess, and would hesitate to even imagine the type of abuses she may be suffering.

Encountering things like this, which are so foreign to my own experience, leaves me with so many seemingly unanswerable questions. What should I do? How can I help Chepa and Dora, in a culture where drunkenness and domestic violence are generally accepted outlets for frustration? Is there anything I as an individual can do to address the despair caused by poverty and unemployment? The complex corruptness of the world’s injustice is overwhelming, and leaves me feeling powerless, because in reality there is so little I can do.

But on Christmas Eve, watching the Nativity Scene put on by the young people of my village, I really saw for the first time the newborn baby lying in the straw. What a mystery, that the all-powerful chose to come in such absolute helplessness, and made himself so totally vulnerable to those around him. But there is also an amazing power in this coming, that makes me think of the strength of such weakness. That is my wish, for myself, and for all of you in the New Year – the vulnerability of letting the pain that we encounter hurt us as well, the helplessness of admitting that we do not know what to do, and the strength that comes from relying on something bigger than ourselves. And the faith, no matter what, to still believe in

PAZ y ESPERANZA, Lynnette

November 13, 2001

It has been awhile since I last wrote about what I have been doing here in El Salvador, and I have many things to write about. I have been learning and growing and changing so much – and have been happier than I can remember being in a very long time. I wanted to try and share some of these impressions with all of you, to try to share with you some of the happiness I have found.

MY NEW COMMUNITY, Amando Lopez, is located in the same area where I spent four months last year, and returned to in April with a work brigade of high school students. The community is made up of about 110 families – or around 600 people, with over half of them being children and teenagers. During the war, most of the adults were either refugees in Honduras or combatants with the FMLN. The youth were born as the war started, and grew up in the refugee camps of a country that was not their own. Today, these people are struggling to build a thriving community out of land that was once a cotton plantation, but during the war was left to grow into jungle. Their land borders on the Rio Lempa, the largest river in El Salvador. They always have water and the land is flat, rich, and fertile. But the inhabitants are easy victims of flooding and earthquakes. These people depend on the land for their living. Most families have a small plot of land where they grow corn, sugar cane, or graze cattle. Life is far from easy, but there is a peaceful tranquility which I love – barefooted children playing simple games in the streets, women hanging clothes up to dry on the fences, men with machetes going out to work in the fields, ox-drawn carts with wooden wheels piled high with corn, and at night the sky full of stars – thousands of which I have never seen before. Like an endless black paper with holes pricked in it, letting the light behind it through, and so full of holes that it is about to break. Sitting in my room at night, watching the moon through my window as it moves across the sky, I write my diary by candlelight.

I live in the storage room of the brand new clinic which was built after the old one collapsed in the earthquakes. There I can have friends visit or be alone when I need to write or think or work. And then I spend many hours with my host family – father, mother and three young children (Denis – 6, Cecilia – 4, and Victor – 2) who love me as much as I love them. I’ve been teaching them to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “You are my Sunshine” in English. Every time I see them, they want to sing, and won’t let me go until we’ve repeated each song at least three times!

MY NEW JOB has been slowly defining itself over the past three weeks. I have spent most of my time working with Libros Para Niños (Books for Children), an organization that works to help increase children’s creativity and ability to think for themselves by the use of stories which emphasize values. Libros Para Niños has a story corner in my community, a space for children to come and read stories, draw, paint, play with puppets, and find other ways of expressing their feelings and opinions. The story corner is beautiful – or it is now, since I’ve washed down the murals on the walls, scrubbed bat-droppings off the floor, got rid of thousands of spiders and their webs, sanded and varnished all the wooden furniture, and cleaned up all the garbage that was pile outside! On Monday, November 12, we re-opened the story corner with a party and piñatas, games, a small play, and refreshments. Over 100 children were there, as well as 80 or 90 teenagers and adults who came to watch the festivities. From now on I will be working at least two and a half days a week, either in the story corner, or with the three day care centers in nearby communities that we coordinate activities with as well.

The other part of my work has been developing much more slowly. I am working with the recently formed women’s committee. It is really exciting work, to be able to participate in their growth as a group and help them strengthen their organization as I can. They want to start a sewing cooperative, so our current work is the planning of the construction of a building that they will use as general “women’s space” – for meetings, workshops, and of course the sewing cooperative.

WHAT ELSE do I do to stay busy? Well, I’ve been meeting people, visiting their houses, and getting to know their families. I’ve been learning to play guitar, and learning many new songs with a group of young people who formed a choir. I’ve been playing soccer, learning how Salvadorans play, and how to avoid heat exhaustion! I’ve been getting used to bathing outside, with an always present audience of young children whose sense of privacy is so different from my own. I’ve been getting used to living on beans, tortillas, rice, and the occasional egg or chunk of cheese. There have been many things to adjust to, but I have been loving every minute of it. I love the weather – the heat, the sun, the wind, the greenness and brilliant flowers of Salvadoran spring. I love the peace, the tranquility, the immensity of the starry sky at night. I love traveling in the back of pick-up trucks, and in buses crammed full of people. I love singing in Spanish, and playing guitar. I love my host family and the wet kisses and sweaty hugs of the children. I love the children, youth, and adults who stop me in the streets, visit me in the story corner, or in my room, just to talk to me. I love the feeling of welcome and acceptance – despite my blue eyes and pale skin, despite my strange Spanish and unusual behavior. And although I know that this contentment, this pleasure will not last for ever, and that I will experience problems in the future, I am happy. I am working hard at work that I love, and living life to the full among people who understand completely the richness of life.

Paz y Esperanza (Peace and Hope), Lynnette

October 5, 2001

The events of September 11 left me feeling afraid, and for the first time in my life, vulnerable. I didn’t know what would happen next, but I was sure that my life would be changed. And it has. The past three weeks since I arrived in El Salvador have been ones of personal growth and change. I have begun to glimpse, through the Salvadorans I meet every day, what it must mean to live every day feeling vulnerable and afraid.

Upon arriving in El Salvador, my first reactions were of total happiness at finally being back. As we disembarked the plane, the song “I can see clearly now the rain is done” was playing on the intercom – ironic as it was dark and pouring down rain – but heartening nonetheless.

My first week here was one of almost complete system overload – there were so many new people to meet, new ideas to think about, and new feelings to process. The time was spent in orientation with CRISPAZ, (Christians for Peace in El Salvador) one of the organizations I will be working with this year. For me they are a resource for technical support – they have years of experience working with volunteers here – and also provide a center for myself and a whole group of volunteers. There are seven of us, and I will introduce them to you now, as well as other members of the CRISPAZ community, as I’m sure I will mention them again in the course of the year. First Miranda, the energetic and cheerful volunteer coordinator, our fearless leader through the week of orientation. Jeanne and Rachel work in the CRISPAZ office. Kelly is the only volunteer from last year who has stayed on – a veteran 23 year old with lots of good advice for beginners. The oldest of the new volunteers is Mary Jane, a 58 year old Catholic nun. Then there is Mary, who at 39 is the quiet, serious one on the team. Kirk is next – the only man on the team – a 29 year old who is studying in the Presbyterian seminary. Then Cindy, who at 26 is a single mother with two young children (Ellie – 8, and Tony – 2) who came with her to El Salvador. Next is Cory, 24, who grew up in the US but was adopted from Korea. Last, the baby of the group, is yours truly. All of us are placed in various programs all over the country, and have committed to stay for at least a year. We get together once a month for team meetings, but often will see each other when we come in to San Salvador and stay at the team house. It is a great building – two stories – with plenty of space to have guests (family and friends from home) visit us! Some impressions from the week:

A strong aftershock just as we were beginning our first meeting – a violent up and down movement of the earth which left me feeling disoriented and slightly unsteady on my feet – repeated two more times in the next week.

A meeting with members of a labor union at a maquila – the Salvadoran sweatshop – where a workforce of mostly young women sweat in inhuman working conditions to provide their daily quota of pieces for companies like Gap and Cherokee. The union members showed amazing courage and hope; they have risked being fired and blacklisted for trying to improve their working conditions.

Visiting the rose garden, where six Jesuit priests were murdered on November 15, 1989, in the pouring rain, and feeling tears warm on my cheeks for all the innocent people who have been killed – twelve years or twelve days ago.

Going to the United States embassy, a huge, heavily-guarded, imposing compound – a world unto itself in the poverty and crowded, but very human, squalor that is El Salvador.

A vigil with other North American people working here, held in the Chapel where Oscar Romero was shot, to remember all those who have died, and to pray for peace in the world.

The wedding of a former CRISPAZ volunteer and a Salvadoran – the amazing force of love that can unite such differences.

The final reflection of our orientation week, in the ruins of a church that had been bombed during the war. Now grass is growing out of the hard stone walls, and the floor inside boasts a brightly colored garden of beautiful flowers.

The closeness of our group of volunteers, standing in a circle with lighted candles, reciting the prayer of St. Francis – “Make me an instrument of your peace”. The wonderful feeling of being supported and loved by others, and of being able to offer them support and love in return.

The next week, I went out to the campo – the countryside – to the community of Nueva Esperanza where I lived for four months last year. It was wonderful to see all my old friends again, and to realize that their hope is still holding strong – even after two earthquakes, numerous aftershocks, and a drought which have left them more destitute than ever before. Many of them who sole income is agriculture, have lost half of their harvest; others continue to live in houses with cracked walls or a partly missing roof even as the rain has finally begun to fall heavily; and everyone is still afraid of the aftershocks which continue even now, eight months after the earthquakes. I was also able to:

Build connections that were started by a work brigade of young people that I accompanied to Nueva Esperanza in April. Many of the young people who came in the brigade sent letters with me to Salvadorans they had befriended, and many of the Salvadorans wrote back – an exchange I am happy to facilitate by mailing letters and receiving and distributing responses.

Visit the bridges built by the work brigade. I managed to take some pictures too, after a grueling trek which involved crawling through three barbed wire fences during which I succeeded in tearing a hole in my dress!

Spend an afternoon at Amando Lopez, the village where I will be living and working this year. I got a tour from the vice-president of the community, and met many of the teachers and other people I will be working with. Everyone sounds excited that I will be coming, and it looks like there will be plenty of work for me to do.

That weekend I was finally able to make it to Chalatenango, a mountainous part of the country near the Honduran border, which is famous for its natural beauty. I went with a group of university students from Nueva Esperanza for the patron saint festival of the little village where many of their families lived before the war displaced them. It was a long journey in crowded buses over bumpy roads, but well worth it. Unlike the part of the country that I know, which is fairly flat, Chalatenango is one mountain after another – some with jutting cliffs, others more rounded and covered with trees that bear all kinds of exotic fruit. Farmers plant their corn on steep slopes between the rocks, and build their houses on any relatively flat piece of ground they can find. Winding trails connect the houses and fields, the main road which has several streams running across it, is very lightly traveled. Sitting out by the stream in the early morning, I felt like the only person in the world – it was so quiet and peaceful – a perfect place for rejuvenation after two very busy weeks.

This week has been one of work – Spanish classes in the mornings, and afternoon spent doing homework and meeting with the various groups that I will be working with. Next week will be more Spanish study and a visit to Kelly’s community so we can learn from her experiences. (Remember? – She’s the volunteer that’s been here for a year already.) That should be a lot of fun, but I’m looking forward to starting work for real by the week after that.

Many thanks to all of you who have written or emailed me so far. It means a lot to hear from you and know how you’re doing. Please know that even if I don’t always respond right away, or somehow miss writing back, I receive your messages and greatly appreciate all your support.

Con Paz y Esperanza, Lynnette