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.

Rehabilitation or Dehumanization?

Hello! I hope this blog post finds you well wherever you might be.

I wanted to share an experience that happened recently to a family in my community, as it illustrates the way in which prisoners´ lives here in El Salvador (and world over I would argue) are marked by dehumanization and neglect rather than rehabilitation and transformation.   

Five of my dearest friends in my community have been waiting for 6 long years for their father (I´ll call him Hector) to be released from prison. Hector worked at a mechanic shop and was locked up for working on stolen cars. The details remain quite blurry as to whether or not he was aware that he was working on stolen cars, but since he could not afford a lawyer, he was sentenced to 7 years in prison.

Hector began his sentence in a prison designed for 2,000 inmates which is “home” to more than 8,000 men. Prisoners sleep on the floor and constantly suffer from fungal skin diseases as well as malnourishment and abuse from fellow inmates.

Legally, prisoners have to be assigned a social worker, a psychologist, and a legal advisor. However, as the number of detained persons here has skyrocketed, the number of staff working in each prison has remained the same, leaving startling ratios of staff to inmates. In Hector´s prison, there is one social worker and one psychologist assigned to 2,000 inmates. Since it is impossible to provide professional attention to so many individuals on a regular basis, the majority of inmates have never met once with any professional staff member.

Hector was given a psychological exam shortly after being imprisoned 6 years ago. The results characterize him as a violent person who neither works nor studies in order to make the most of his time in prison. This is not surprising given that imprisonment in itself produces depression and violent behavior in individuals who have been uprooted from their communities and (justly or unjustly) forced to face any number of years in places that must look just like hell, should hell exist.  

In the last 5 years of his imprisonment, Hector has dedicated his time in prison to woodshop. He constantly makes tables, mirrors, benches, and picture frames for his wife and 9 children to sell. Since his wife makes 3 dollars a day on a good day selling his wares at the market, his children have been forced to drop out of school because they can hardly afford food, much less schooling. Hector began to study for a time in prison, but he dropped out because he would frequently faint from hunger in class.

Though he has a 7 year sentence, the judge gave he and his family hope that he would be able to get out on parole after 6 years. Since last Monday was his long awaited follow up court case, his family spent all weekend cleaning their small home preparing for his arrival.

When the day finally arrived to go to court, his children and grandchildren waited anxiously to see him. He was brought into the courtroom, handcuffed and chained at his feet. The judge proceeded to tell him that his psychological report (which was taken 5 years ago) declared that he was a violent individual who neither worked nor studied and was thus not apt to reenter society. The same psychological report has been used repeatedly as grounds for his continued imprisonment, though he has never had a follow up exam. His wife yelled out through her tears that he works, and that she sells his woodwork, but the judge wouldn´t believe her since she didn´t have “proof”. No one in the prison system had thought to write on his record that he has been working in woodshop for the past 5 years. He is another number. Another offender. Another criminal unworthy of living his life. He will be released, at best, 1 year after his sentence is completed, since the justice system is so backlogged here that inmates often wait at least a year after their sentence to finally be released. This is the cherry on top of the psychological torture that is long term imprisonment.

Hector´s children, wife, and grandchildren walked up to meet him, crying after the trial and were told by the guards that they were not allowed to touch him. They couldn´t believe how skinny, grey haired, and worn he looked. Hector managed to hold back his tears and ask the names of the five grandchildren he was meeting for the first time. They asked him innocently why he was tied up by his hands and his feet and he responded that he played in the street too much (their most frequent offense as small children).

He was quickly led back to his holding cell where his wife got in line to leave food for him. The guards revise the food and eat anything they wish to eat (generally all of the meat left for inmates) before passing it along to them. When Hector´s food reached him, the guards refused to take off his handcuffs, and he was forced to eat with his mouth, kneeling on the ground as if he were a dog.

Prison, in theory, is a place for rehabilitation. It is supposed to serve to prevent recidivism. Hector receives no psychological attention and no character evaluations. He was not allowed to touch his children or grandchildren. He ate handcuffed on the ground like a dog. Rehabilitation? Transformation? Prison here (and most everywhere) serves to break the human spirit by inflicting people to a life of constant humiliation. Inmates are deemed criminals. Period. Black and white. We are the good guys, they are the bad guys. Yet these individuals were almost certainly victims far before they were perpetrators. They almost certainly were plucked out of marginalized communities that we prefer to drive through with our doors locked and our music blaring, so as not to enter their world even in our imagination, much less with open, compassionate hearts willing to invest our lives in the struggle to end this segregation and incessant incarceration.

As Hector´s family trudged back to the bus stop to head back to the home they had again cleaned with high hopes only to have them dashed, his youngest grandchild Paty tugged at his wife´s sleeve. She set her big brown inquisitive eyes on her grandma and with the heartbreaking innocence that only a 3 year old can muster she asked in a timid voice, “Grandma, did they kill grandpa yet?” Hector´s wife broke down sobbing. In the logical mind of this 3 year old, if a man with an assault weapon escorts your grandfather away from you, chained by the hands and feet, he is going to kill him.

Though Hector´s wife tearfully responded that no, they were not going to kill her grandfather, she likely wondered if Paty had discovered the secret of mass incarceration here in El Salvador. In many ways, these years of dehumanization have already killed him. They have killed his hopeful spirit, as well as those of many who love him and continue to wait for his return.

If you have a moment, volunteer in a prison near you! You will find similar stories that will surely break your heart and call into question the practice of imprisonment that many take for granted as just and necessary.  If you are interested in learning more about prison reform/abolition I recommend you read Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Y. Davis. 

Tuesdays

Hello!

Below I´ve posted a poem I wrote recently that attempts to describe my Tuesdays at the male youth detention center in a way that prose just can´t. Enjoy!

Tuesdays

Only their plastic kites

manage to escape

the confines of infinity

where their youthful spirits

live trapped in a mud-coated hell

Where I write their words

but not my own

listen to their hearts

but rarely my own

and bathe them in a love

that is not my own.

It comes some days

overflowing

from God

knows where

and others it is all dried up

but mostly

it is always there

at least subtly

soothing sages

who long to be heard

though it can offer

little hope,

just a gaze

that has never seen them

slice or shoot

and thus embraces

their tired eyes in a tenderness

that on a good day

transcends the surrounding filth

in moments that will stay

at least with me

until my mind

quits remembering. 

Orchestra Behind Bars

 

 I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time about a beautiful experiment that took place several weeks ago in the young women’s detention center where I do poetry workshops.

On July 30^th there was a revolt within the Center, which nearly resulted in the violent deaths of an entire sector of girls affiliated with a certain gang. Luckily the police were able to intervene in time, but the result has been an unprecedented division between inmates. Whereas for the past 5 years the girls have studied together, gone to workshops together, and eaten together in the Center regardless of gang affiliation, they have now been divided such that they have no contact at all.

Now, slightly less than half of the population is stuck in a corner of the Center where they have no outdoor space and thus never feel the sun’s rays. The girls have expressed that they feel more incarcerated than ever before and that they cannot stand the thought of being cooped up in this tiny space for so many years.

 While the incident was certainly not one to be taken lightly, I still can’t help but see the decision to separate the girls as a huge step backwards. It seems like a cop-out of sorts, resorting to the all too familiar habit in El Salvador of creating yet another division and deeming impossible attempts at dialogue, peace-keeping circles, negotiations, and creative attempts to construct peaceful coexistence. However, since there never seem to be adequate funds, personnel, or peacebuilding training to think outside of the box, the decision has been made and seems to be irreversible.

 It is into this quite hostile context that 3 passionate, energetic orchestra instructors from Chile and Argentina (who had no idea of the pre-existing conflict and recent division) came onto the scene. They had received a donation to purchase 30 cellos, violas, and violins to teach an intensive 2-week music coarse in the Center. I was extremely skeptical of such a short-term initiative, but sure enough, 25 girls were reunited for the first time since the division as they took up an instrument for the first time in their lives and practiced rigorously without a single outbreak of conflict between them.

When the day came to bring the girls to an auditorium to perform together with the youth symphonic orchestra of El Salvador, the excitement in the Center was electric (literally). All of the girls were straightening their hair and dressing to impress for the big event, when the Center’s director came in to announce that not all of the girls would be allowed to participate in the concert. For “poor behavior” several of their judges had sent a last minute fax informing that 7 of the girls would not be allowed to perform.

As I watched tears roll down the faces of the girls who were forced to stay behind, I couldn’t help but think that this is the exact opposite of what a “rehabilitation center” should do. This would likely be the only chance these girls will get to perform on a stage in their lives, so to take this away from them at the last minute after their dedicated commitment for two weeks seemed ridiculous at best.

One of the girls who was most devastated by the news burst into sobs because she had worked so hard for two weeks in vain, and her friends had promised to go see her perform. Her prison sentence ends in November of this year, and I can’t help but think that it was simply the judge’s last chance to screw her over while she is still under his control. The punitive system is so focused on punishment while personal/emotional development, trauma therapy, and affirmations are rarely part of the picture. Given that

Disappointments aside, the concert was absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t help but cry as I watched the girls stand up on stage and play the few songs they had learned with such pride. I have loved these girls so deeply for the past two years, and their stories and secrets have moved and shaped me in a thousand ways.

 It was overwhelmingly beautiful to see them standing gracefully on stage, outside of the detention center walls, even if just for a fleeting moment. I feel so blessed to be able to share in some small way in their lives.

To know and love them for who they are becoming and who they have been.

To know them as human beings with deep scars, dark secrets, and softly spoken dreams.

To have the chance to know with certainty that despite popular consent, each one of them is so much more than just another delinquent youth who deserves what she gets.

As I scanned their faces I thought of all of the tremendous situations they have been forced to live in their short lives and was startled by their resilience and beauty, though they (we) have certainly caused their fair share of harm.

As they were handcuffed and lead off of stage, I run up to hug them and gift them each a rose. It wasn’t until later that I realized that one of the only parents that had made it to the event (it was late at night in an inaccessible part of the city by public transportation) was told he was not allowed to hug his daughter for security reasons. Good thing I didn’t ask questions.

The government’s cultural department did of course fail to contract music teachers to carry on the course beyond the 2-week initiative, so my friend is working her contacts to try to ensure some sort of follow up. However, in spite of its shortcomings, this program thoroughly impressed me. It goes to show what can happen when passionate teachers who pay more attention to the magic of music than to stereotypes and fear are united with girls whose desire to learn and to succeed far overrides their conflictive tendencies.

Back to reality...

I’ve been back for two weeks now and in just two weeks have managed to be floored again and again by the lives of the youth I work with in prisons. It has been a sobering and heartwarming homecoming to return to the prisons here. I have re-encountered the same youth that I left two months ago, exactly where I left them, with yet more of their young lives swallowed away by the same 4 walls, the same faces, the same mindless routine.

They’ve welcomed me back into their cells and their hearts and have given me an even closer look at the fury, fear, resentment, and longing for love that reside there and struggle for power each long day locked up. The more I work with these young people, especially with incarcerated males (who have much grimmer prospects of “making it” based on the politics of repression and elimination that are practiced by “anti-gang” squads here), the more I am enraged and saddened by the fact that most of them will simply not make it.

The youth who manage to get out of jail whom I’ve kept up with and who have genuine interest in turning their lives around end up simply running for their lives each day. Ironically enough, this is not primarily because rival gang members will kill them (thought that is a very real threat), but because the police force will do so first. If the police do not manage to “disappear” these youth coming out of detention centers, they will detain them upon spotting them in the street (or drag them from their homes in the middle of the night) and pin them with any crime that has happened within a credible radius. These youth will then be sent off (likely without fair trial) to spend 30+ years in the hellholes that are the overflowing adult prisons here.

 I wish I were exaggerating, yet this has been the story of even the most studious and driven young gang members that I have met in this ministry thus far.

 Loving and working with these youth means answering their startled phone calls telling me that the police opened fired on them for no reason at all, and that they barely escaped the bullet-spray. It means listening to their whispered fears that as soon as they get out of jail to finally live with their young wives and infants they are terrified that the police will pull them out of their beds at night and take them far away from the children they’ve so longed to love in a way they were never, ever loved. It means watching them grimace, lost for words, while describing the way they’ve witnessed slow deaths, wishing I could erase it all and rewrite the whole script. It means giving them constant affirmation, because it just might be the first time they’ve ever heard anything of the sort.

Blog entries are probably supposed to end on some upbeat quote like Disney movies, but many of these young lives end on no such note. I just ask that you find them and love them in cities near you and listen to their lessons and longings.