Lauren - The Challenge of Community

For some reason, over the summer before I started JVC, I had convinced myself that all my roommates were going to be closed minded, belligerently conservative Catholics. So when I first met my community and everyone turned out to be kind, open-minded, and easy-going, and I was relieved. I came to love them even more throughout orientation as we bounced around all kinds of ideas about composting, farmers markets, prayer before meals, chore wheels, even a social justice movie club. I was ecstatic. To me, we seemed like the perfect community. But of course, no community is perfect, and my first struggle in community was accepting that. My second great challenge was and is, accepting that I was not placed in this community to bring us to perfection.

The first challenge hit pretty quickly after orientation. Going into the year, I had very high expectations for us. I really believed that we were going to be able to implement all the ideas we talked about at orientation. So when we wouldn’t make a point of doing spirituality night, or we’d buy something I didn’t deem very simple, or there was tension over chores, I’d feel anxious and disappointed. How were we ever going to grow into a strong community if we couldn’t even meet some of the basic goals we’d set for ourselves? But as I came to see all the good that was coming out of our community, that anxiety started to disappear. Things like everyone coming together to cook even when there wasn’t a scheduled family dinner, or coming home at night to see everyone in the living-room knitting and watching baseball, or all the ridiculous but affectionate nicknames that emerged, all showed me that even though we may not be living up to all the specific expectations we had established, we were still building a great community.

But even after establishing we could be a good community even if we weren’t perfect, I was left with a second personal challenge: getting out of the mindset that I was in this community to push us closer to perfection. I didn’t even realize I was thinking this way until our Area Coordinator was giving us his suggestions after a week long visit and said, “In our individual conversations, each of you expressed your desire to go deeper into this experience as a community.” Hearing him say that woke me up to the reality that we’re all equally invested in our community. It has helped me re-orient the way I spend my energy thinking about community. Instead of thinking, “I know what we need to do to best live as a community, how can I share this?” I am trying to set aside my pride and think, “We all want to build community, how can we use all our different perspectives to build it collectively?” It’s a challenge I’ll probably work on all year, but luckily, together we’ve already laid the base for a warm, supportive, and trusting community, where we can all work together overcoming the many individual and community challenges of a year in JVC!

Kathleen - On the Job

Flexibility. That is the key.

It is difficult to explain what my job entails, much less a “day in the life.” Every day is different and something unexpected often comes up. My job entails many different responsibilities and it’s often a juggling act.

One highlight of my week is the ESL class. As a not-for-profit women’s center, we don’t have too much money for English books, and I haven’t found an ESL book that I like—most are aimed at kids and don’t incorporate the day to day English we use. So I am always thinking about the language and terminology I use. It’s pretty easy in El Paso; I just ask myself if I know how to do everyday things in Spanish, and create a lesson out of that. How do I find out the bus route I need to get to work? How can tell a doctor when I don’t feel well? How can I sell something to a customer? After brainstorming lesson ideas, I start piecing together a lesson plan with handouts and activities. Often, they are so itching for knowledge that I spend the class answering questions. A big one is the pronunciation of words that sound similar, such as: beer, bear, bird, board, bored, and border. Sometimes I wonder if they actually are learning as I contort my face with the different vowel sounds and try to think of motions to help them remember—beer has a guttural sound, so I act like I have a big belly; bird has an airy vowel sound, so I flap little wings as I say it; bored sounds like a yawn. It all makes me think of our language as mouth candy and understand why it is confusing to go from a language that has five vowel sounds to one that has numerous sounds with different spellings (ever think about how you pronounce bought, through, and rough differently even though they all have “–ough” at the end?).

Taking programs to other agencies in El Paso has also been a wonderful part of my week. Mondays, I ride my bike to the bridge (maybe 1 ½ miles), walk across to Cuidad Juaréz, and take the bus out to Siglo XXI (a neighborhood in Cd. Juaréz that lacks infrastructure) to meet with the women there. It is always strange to ride the bus along the Rio Grande, staring at El Paso’s skyscrapers looming behind the fences, trains, and Border Patrol cars. I cannot imagine what it would be like to see the disparities every day—to hear that education in El Paso is affordable, to know that some food in El Paso costs less because they have Wal-Mart, to see El Paso’s buildings seem cleaner and well-maintained—and all that naturally separates you is a river.

The women meet in a little chapel when they can to make crafts, watercolor, or just talk about life. They are a support to one another, and I have been so fortunate that they let me walk with them. They are teaching me a lot about how Americans are viewed and how the border and American economic policies affect their lives.

Another group of women have also let me into their lives to see the challenges they face. Twice a week I facilitate an arts and crafts class at the Opportunity Center, a shelter that essentially takes in the most marginalized—those who have been turned away from other shelters in El Paso. Some days, the women are in bad moods. It’s hard to have nearly 20 women sleeping on mats in a space the size of my living room. Those days, I might make some origami by myself or paint with one other woman. Other days, the women are happy and talkative. It helps that I am not on staff at the Opportunity Center; they have nothing to lose by unloading on me. I hope they enjoy the time to just do something with their hands and be creative, since many say they don’t have much going on. They give me a lot to think about as far as the connection between mental health and homelessness and prison, as many of them have chemical imbalances.

I have been inspired by the strong women I meet with for our self-esteem workshop. They all have so much power. My role is to pose questions or do different activities to get the women thinking about their lives and talking to one another. I am not there to tell them what they need; they have it already in each other. I have been so fortunate to be alongside these women as they share personal stories and encourage one another to use the power they have.

There is so much more to this job than I can fully describe in a blog, but the women I have had the pleasure of accompanying have given me much more than I could ever give them.

Learn more about Kathleen here.

Kathleen - Life on the Border

El Paso is really unlike any other city I have seen. With the downtown right on the U.S./Mexico border, it is truly an international city. For 35 cents, we can walk across a bridge to Cuidad Juárez and with 30 cents (exact change) and a license we can cross back to El Paso. Yet, while the international boundary line divides these sister cities, they really operate more as one large community—with one being a part of the so-called “First World” and another in the “Third World.” The dividing line between these two cities is clear, and disparity in economic and structural wealth is readily apparent.

As part of our local orientation, two of the JVC support people—local residents of the JVC city who are there to assist the JV’s throughout the year—took us to a part of the border fence in New Mexico. Within seconds of parking, a Border Patrol agent drove over and asked what we were doing at the fence. In our conversation with him, he said he had seen some pretty difficult things at the fence—especially the children trying to cross. But, he added, his training taught him to leave his heart at home and that is what he has to do.

As the conversation ended, some children ran up to the fence. We chatted with the five boys for a while, then, spying my water bottle, one boy asked for a drink. Through the chain links, I offered the boys my tap water—clean, safe, and free. Two thoughts immediately hit me: how lucky we are to have that necessity running through our taps whenever we need it, and how I wished I could just touch them. It just felt wrong to have people fenced off from one another because they happen to be born on one side of this arbitrary line. Those were my brothers standing on the very same soil as I, but we could not embrace, or hold hands, or play games.

I cannot stop thinking about this first encounter with the border. And I cannot stop thinking about the immigration debate in Washington taken up, for the most part, by people who have never actually seen this border and how much these cities depend on each other economically, with thousands crossing every day for work and to visit family. Certainly, the whole immigration debate in our country is a complex issue, and it appears very different on the soil of El Paso/Cd. Juárez. It is not an easy question to answer; nor is it a simple issue to comprehend. I just keep thinking of the dignity we owe to one another, whether that person is on the opposite side of the fence or guarding that fence.

Learn more about Kathleen here.