Yon Hui Bell
La Mora, Cuscatlán
(Reprinted from Salvanet)

Literacy Education in La Mora

Yon Hui Bell, a CRISPAZ volunteer, worked with the Committee for Reconstruction and Socio-Economic Development of Cuscatlán (CRC) in Suchitoto, Department of Cuscatlán as a literacy facilitator.

There is one main street that goes through La Mora, Suchitoto. Life in these parts during the hot summer is an unsuccessful daily battle with dust. Hourly buses and the steady stream of trucks loaded with sugarcane make fine sand of the unpaved road. All the trees and plants and houses and children are covered in dust. Everybody has water for only a few hours a day because it’s the dry season and the region suffers from heavy deforestation. I yearn for the rain, but a lot of my friends here don’t because rain brings mud and illness.

Earlier in the day I sat outside on my host family’s porch sharpening pencils for the literacy class I facilitate. The breeze was strong and scattered the shavings as they overflowed from the pencil sharpener. Bare-chested men sat on horses that clopped up the street. Straw-hatted Don Chentillo waved as he passed me in his ox-drawn cart full of wood. Women with dusty feet and jugs of water on their heads glanced at me shyly.

Yesterday about eight people showed up for the literacy class I facilitate in the large, one room community house. Because we are using a new, Freireian-based method, we use no books and spend the first hour of every week discussing an issue: family, health, community organization, the environment. Yesterday we discussed the problem of illiteracy, why they didn’t go to school. As we talked and laughed, I began to see these men and women in more detail. I began to see the blood, bones, laughter, tears, passions that give body to faces and figures, movements and wrinkles.

66-year-old Don Chentillo’s father died when he was young. The oldest of eight, he worked to feed his brothers and sisters. There was no time or money to go to school. Wiliam, who is 19, is in the same situation. Mima was orphaned and went from house to house doing domestic work. She stayed with one family for a number of years, but they only sent their own children to school and never thought about sending her. Reina just didn’t see the importance and quit after the second grade. Jesús and Víctor grew up during the war and spent their childhoods in different refugee camps and communities fleeing the army. Lorenza, Luis, and Griselda studied for three years, which is one year more than the average campesino. Not all are tecnically illiterate, but all think they are.

We talked of the embarrassment they feel for being “uneducated,” of community roles they shy away from, of jobs they can’t apply for. They talked of not being able to help their children with their homework, of family members in the States they don’t write to, of not being able to go to the capital because they can’t read the bus numbers and destinations. And all expressed their desire to study. Mima prays every day that God give her the ability to learn how to at least write her name.

After the discussions, we write. I did not study because of the war. I did not study because I had to work. We write about our lives, opinions, experiences, the things that give us body and soul, and share with each other our humynity. In learning to read and write we come to know ourselves, each other, and our social situation. Our dusty vision is gradually cleared as we give name to the things around us, the things that unite us, and the things that oppress us.

Today we did not have class. A brigade of North American and Salvadoran doctors came to give free consultations in the community house to hundreds of people from surrounding communities. Some stood in line all day and left without being seen. Those fortunate enough to be seen were given packets with plastic toys, cold medicine, tylenol, and pamphlets asking, “Do you know Jesus Christ?” I spoke briefly with a slightly overweight, glassy-eyed doctor from Massachusetts. At some point we began talking about liberation theology. He told me, with a serene smile and soft voice, that he knew very little about liberation theology, but what he knew, he didn’t like. He didn’t like it because it twisted the word of God and made it political. Politics were not going to change anything, only faith and belief in Christ.

He and the others left in the Salvadoran President’s wife’s van, accompanied by her head secretary. A fine shower of dust settled on those of us who watched them leave.

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