P.S.

Here's the website for the group I'm w/ currently... more in the next post on their mission and on my role here!

lot2545.org

Boys at home with Amanda, the home's founder, at one of the boys' birthday parties.
(I arrived several hours later from the US at 3am!)

Back to Uganda

Before I graduated from college I decided that I wanted to live in El Salvador for a few years and then spend time in Uganda again. Three years later, I am sticking to this plan, as I promised many people in Uganda that I would, indeed, come back.

In my 3-year stay in El Salvador, I could very clearly see the ways in which I continued to learn a great deal each year both linguistically and experientially about the complexities and nuances of Salvadoran culture, history, and current socio-political context. Looking back, it is clear that after one year (and even after 3) I barely scratched the surface and have much more to learn.

Given this realization, I began to doubt my decision to come back to Uganda for 9 months before (hopefully) going to grad school in Peace Studies next fall. Was it worth it to just barely scratch the surface again, given that my presence here would not be a sustainable one? Was it selfish to invest myself here in the lives of 20 boys who have lived for many years on the streets, knowing that I would soon pack up again and leave? Was I wasting money on my plane ticket that could have otherwise been spent on any number of sustainable peacebuilding projects?

 As I got off of the plane in Uganda at 3am, these questions still had no answers. However, when I reached the boys home where I will be staying (more on the home in my next post!), several of the boys woke up at 4am to welcome me. One of these boys was Joseph, a boy I had known 4 years ago in the slums when he was still living on the streets. His face lit up when he saw me, and he gave me a big hug. I began asking him how all of the other boys are that I knew. Most of them are still on the streets, others he lost track of, and still others have died.

Just as I was going to go to bed, he took my hand and said “Webale kuddayo, Auntie Nakyanzi” (Thank you for coming back Auntie Nakyanzi -that’s my Ugandan name-). There are many people in need of accompaniment in this world and I will certainly continue to wrestle with questions of sustainability/best investment of myself given the complexities of race/nationality/privilege. However, in that moment, Joseph’s thank you was all the affirmation I needed that right now, I am right where I need to be. 

Joseph at home on our front porch.

A Glance Back Before Moving Forward...

Greetings from Uganda!

 I’m realizing that it’s been nearly a year since I wrote on this blog—yikes! That is quite unfortunate given the fact that there were countless stories to share in my final 8 months in El Salvador. I got caught up working on the publication of two books of poetry/artwork by the incarcerated youth I was working with, and didn’t keep up on the blogging end of things. In any event, I will try to be better about it this year in Uganda, as it is entirely selfish and a disservice so many who share their stories and lives with me to keep them all to myself.

Before delving into my first few weeks here in Uganda, I want to share a reflection I wrote for CRISPAZ, the organization that supported me as a long-term volunteer in El Salvador for the past 3 years. While I generally failed at writing regularly, this gives a bit of an inadequate summary of some of the lessons I learned in my time there. Read ahead if you wish!

CRISPAZ (Christians for Peace in El Salvador) Long-Term Volunteer Reflection

I hesitate to begin to write this article, because there is simply no way I can adequately sum up three years of insights, heartbreak, relationships, and stories from my time in El Salvador. I will give it a shot, however, with the hope that in a later update I can post the link to the books of poetry by imprisoned youth that I am currently working to translate. The books will provide a much more complete picture of the lives of the youth I’ve spent the past three years accompanying.

Jovenes Constructores

Having spent time in El Salvador as a high school and college student, I knew that I would want to end up there after graduation. With a Fulbright scholarship and a subsequent Crispaz long-term volunteer position, I began a three-year part-time internship with Fundación Quetzalcoatl: Ideas y Acciones para la Paz, an associate of Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

Throughout the majority of the internship I worked alongside program facilitators leading youth groups in communities controlled by gangs and facilitating life skills/violence prevention workshops through the Jóvenes Constructores (Youth Build) program. This program began in the United States in 1978 and has since spread to 20 countries world-over. The program focuses on training vulnerable youth to become leaders in their communities through life skills and vocational skills training.  At Quetzalcoatl I, too, received training in various educational pedagogies that we utilized in our workshops including movement-based education, popular education, constructivism, and solutions-based systemic education. I also received training in HATCH Teaching Methods for Opportunity Youth through Mockingbird Education, which focuses on the importance of understanding cognition and memory in order to design effective teaching methods.

 In three years time I was able to accompany over 300 youth through their six-month learning experiences. I learned an incredible amount about the challenges that youth face in El Salvador because of the layers of structural violence at play, which limit their opportunities long before they are born.  I witnessed the many ways in which the capitalist system and US influence in El Salvador continue to exacerbate poverty and violence in a multitude of both visible and invisible ways. Additionally, I learned a great deal about the workings of non-profits that depend on international donor agencies for funding.

Our organization, Fundación Quetzalcoatl, was funded by Catholic Relief Services, and the relationship was rocky, to say the very least, between CRS and our under-staffed and over-worked team of inspiring individuals who were hired to carry out the Jovenes Constructores project.  Throughout my time with Quetzalcoatl, I gained first hand insight into the unrealistic demands of donor agencies, whose standards often come from different countries and contexts and have not been appropriately adjusted to the Salvadoran reality. I also witnessed a great deal of the corruption that results when donor funds reach the hands of the desperately impoverished as well the self-righteous and greedy.

Proyecto Cuentame

While with Quetzalcoatl, I became acutely aware of the lack of opportunities for incarcerated, and formally incarcerated youth. USAID restrictions on donor funds prohibits that formally incarcerated youth participate in our violence prevention/vocational skills training programs. This policy is counter-intuitive, to say the least, but goes to show the ways in which youth caught up in the justice system have even fewer chances for success in a country that marginalizes and fears them (as do its “peacebuilding” donors).

Having glimpsed the ways in which incarcerated youth are stereotyped, misunderstood, and generally abandoned, I decided to co-found Proyecto Cuentame, a creative writing initiative based on self-exploration, critical thinking, and humanization of the incarcerated population. I co-founded the initiative with fellow Crispaz volunteer, Maria Hoisington.

In essence, through Proyecto Cuentame, I spent two and a half years in two juvenile detention centers practicing empathetic listening and creating space in my heart for over 100 young people’s stories and confessions, long silenced by fear and rejection. Through this process of accompaniment and documentation, I learned more about the complexity of gang culture, violent trauma, and redemptive love than I had ever imagined.  I co-published two volumes of the incarcerated young men and women’s writings and artwork, which have been made available to youth, schoolteachers, government officials, NGOs, and judges alike. They serve as tools for violence prevention and relay a cry for a deeper understanding of the “delinquent” youth whom the current justice system dehumanizes and re-victimizes. They are the building blocks for the restorative justice program I hope to start one day.

As I stayed in touch with youth who had been released from prisons, I merely waited for all too familiar patterns as their fear-filled, liminal existence so often ended in either their violent deaths or their abrupt, unfounded arrests. It is ultimately for these youth that I plan to pursue a Master’s degree in Peace Studies with a focus on conflict analysis and transformation in order to expand my knowledge of this field. After all, in countries like El Salvador, characterized by decades of polarization and accumulated social trauma, unless there is a dramatic shift towards restoration of right relationship, youth’s lives will continue to be defined by violent crime and tragic deaths long after “peace treaties” have been signed.

Colonia Dolores Medina

            Throughout my three years in El Salvador, my lifeline was undoubtedly the community, Dolores Medina, in which I lived and shared every night after long, exhausting days. I lived with two remarkable women and their three children and became close to every one of the 40 families that make up the former refugee community. As a member of this community, I was exposed to the reality of abject poverty, when dollars simply don’t add up to put food on the table. I bore witness to the machismo that plays out inter-generationally, the failure of the healthcare system to attend to sick children and adults, the violent deaths of ostracized youth… the list goes on and on. I also experienced the daily joys of still being alive... of playing soccer with a women’s team, attending prayer services with relentlessly faithful women, putting on community celebrations with our youth group for Mother’s Day, Christmas….. this list, too, goes on and on.

            Just as I was preparing to leave El Salvador, grace worked in such a way that I was able to start a college scholarship program for youth in Dolores Medina, thanks to generous donors of both money and time in the US and El Salvador. This program, Nueva Esperanza will begin in January, 2014 with its first 4 students, who will be pursuing technical degrees in various fields.  The program couples supporting youth in one’s home community with the pursuit of higher education. Ideally it will be a pilot program that expands to include more aspiring students, since opportunities for higher education in El Salvador are scarce, to say the least.

            I thank all who support Crispaz for making it possible for me to spend the past three years learning a great deal and sharing in the lives many Salvadorans.  I can assure you that my volunteer experience was not in vain, as my life of accompaniment and work in the field of peacebuilding is just beginning.

Youth from Calle Real on a camping trip excursion in 2011.