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In one of his novels, Peter DeVries (a Calvin grad, I recently discovered) writes about a display at an art gallery.  Except that there are no paintings, sculptures, or anything of the sort.  Only stands, platforms, and blank canvases.  The visitors to the art gallery are invited to create the art in their minds out of their own experience; they see a blank wall onto which they draw a painting with their minds.  The beauty of the art begins with emptiness and is completed by the experience of the observer.  In the novel, the visitors can’t  help but leaving the gallery satisfied.  They saw exactly what they wanted to see, after all, because they completed each painting as they saw fit.

As absurd as this sounds – and it is absurd, since one of my previous art shows of this sort was catastrophically unsuccessful – this isn’t too unlike the experience of most Westerners who visit orphanages in developing countries.  In the name of doing a good deed, and with nothing but good intentions, benevolent Westerners travel to far-away places to hold, cuddle, feed, and play with small children.  Of course, the children can speak no more to their experience than the blank canvases of De Vries’s art gallery.  On their innocent faces, we can draw whatever we want.  They’re cut.  They’re innocent and passive.  They’re appreciative of our presence.  They don’t talk back.  They can’t explain their situation or the social or political factors that got them there.  In short, innocent children dying in orphanages cannot provide us with any kind of opportunity for listening and learning beyond their ability to reinforce our stereotypes about the poor.

This doesn’t mean that visiting orphanages in developing countries is inherently bad.  But when such visits are inspired by the idea that orphaned children are the problem, not the symptom, then the visits are a waste of thousands of dollars of travel expenses (which could probably be put to better use in other ways anyway).  The children are orphaned because of corruption, injustice, and a myriad of other socio-economic and political decisions that have put them there.  Visiting orphanages without exposing ourselves to the external factors that have put the children there in the first place only inflates our assessment of ourselves – look at the good we do! – and isolates us from the real issues.  The children then become blank canvases upon which we write and draw our own experiences.  Our primary task in these contexts is not to bring a message, but to listen, open ourselves, and participate in God’s redemptive work.  Our mandate to help the widow and the orphan means much more than holding and loving them; it also includes inspiring both a just anger and a reaction against the factors that put them there.

Uzodinma Iweala tells us to stop trying to save Africa. He laments that “…Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West’s fantasy of itself.” He also writes that “not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West’s prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.” He wonders why the West lauds Bono, for example, for the One campaign without acknowledging the work of Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo. Or why American politicians usually receive more credit for trying to fix Sudan than the countries of the African Union who are investing numerous resources and extraordinary energy toward ending the genocide and returning the refugees to Darfur.

Iweala’s critique is aimed at celebrities and politicians, but I suppose it could apply to the church as well. Why do Western Christians bemoan the struggles of the church in Africa (or Guatemala City) while ignoring pressing local concerns, all while patting themselves on the back for their humanitarian support? Maybe it’s because we in the U.S. need an image of a continent in disrepair in order to satisfy our status as the ones who hold the dominance and control. Or maybe we need an image of a continent in disrepair to divert our attention from the pressing local problems for which we are not only responsible but also in the best position to fix. After all, it’s easier to lament a far-off problem like the crisis in Sudan than address a local one like MLK park in Grand Rapids or poverty in migrant camps near Lynden.

What if Africa emerged as the global leader that the U.S. is now? How would we Americans respond? I imagine that U.S. foreign policy, for example, might change from the policy of compassion (with a few exceptions) to one of suspicion (China) or hostility (Iran, North Korea, etc.).

Or what if African Christians acted the same way as their Western counterparts? I doubt we in North America would react too well to the groups of Africans spending billions of dollars each year on travel expenses in order to stop by our churches each week on short term missions trips, running day camps for our children in our buildings in foreign languages, and viewing us with nothing more than the pity by which we had viewed them.

We arrived at the prison on Tuesday after an hour-long ride to the outskirts of Guatemala City. I rode in the front seat next to Joel, who briefly introduced me to the gang situation in Guatemala, since the prisons here are divided by gangs. The two most powerful and prominent gangs in Guatemala are the 18th Street gang and the MS-13 gang, both of whom originated in Los Angeles. Many gang members were deported from Los Angeles in the mid-1990s as civil wars in Central America ended. U.S. immigration policy has helped spread these gangs and their rivalries across the U.S. and across the world. After a quick internet search a few days later, I found out that the MS-13 gang controls a portion of the southwest side of Grand Rapids whose center lies at an intersection less than half a mile from where I lived this past year. (Remember the stabbing at the Woodland Mall in Kentwood earlier this year? Not unrelated to the MS-13 gang.)

I asked Joel how the church in Guatemala treats and ministers to the gangs. He didn’t give me a straight answer, but he did say that these prisoners are “modern day lepers.” The church ignores them. Their families don’t visit. They are rejected and forgotten.

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Since I became interested in linguistics a few years ago, I’ve come to believe that making English the official language of the United States (or any country, for that matter) makes about as much sense as putting crabgrass on the endangered species list, as I once read somewhere. Our language is doing just fine without legal protection. Attempts at saving it with legislation, I tend to think, are usually borne out of American elitism and racism, and only serve to highlight the embarrassing fact that Americans are some of the last people in the world to achieve even basic competence at a second language.

You can probably imagine how I reacted, then, to a forum linked from Language Log entitled “Speak English, Your In America Now.” Grammatical blunders aside, the first post in the forum reads:

We, the Legal American workers of the USA, need to stand together NOW, to keep English as our only native language.

Foreigners are saturating the USA & are slowly trying to modify our national language to include Spanish, so it will be easier for them to live & work in this country.

Qualified US citizens who need to support their families are being refused employment in their own country because they don’t speak Spanish. This is happening on a daily basis. The unemployment rate is up and the government offices are making suggestions that we learn Spanish so we can get jobs.

This is wrong & something needs to be done. If we do nothing, in 10 years we will all need to know Spanish and have to push 2 to hear it in English! Please help stop the madness before it goes any farther.

We can not allow any modification of our national language.

The forum blathers on about a few other things before proposing a “petition to NOT modify our native language to include any foreign language.”

Mark Liberman points out, in reaction, that

“this 12-word slogan has the lovely self-refuting property that (according to the OED) all six of its content words are borrowed from other languages: petition from Spanish peticionar, modify from French modifier, native from French natif, language from French langage, include from Latin inclaudere, foreign from French forain.“

I wonder if it ever occurred to the organizers of this petition (who are worried about American job loss) that the knowledge of a second language might be enormously beneficial to those trying to obtain gainful employment. Not to mention that a second language exposes us to the lives and perspectives of people from other cultures, from whom we all might have something to learn. Maybe we’re just afraid of what they might tell us about ourselves.

The group from Denver hosted an arts camp last week, which culminated in an arts show this past Saturday. One of the local schools provided the facility in el basurero (the garbage dump). While their children are in school, the parents of these children spend each day foraging through the garbage for scrap metal they can sell. They’re often unsuccessful, since the garbage collectors have done this prior to bringing the trash to the dump. Many of these parents came to the show on Saturday.

Before the show began, we opened with prayer. After the “Amen,” I heard the kids yell something, but I couldn’t decipher what they said. I don’t know Spanish well, and a hundred small children tend not to enunciate well when screaming in groups. So I asked Shelly what they said.

She told me, “Cristo Vive,” which means “Christ lives.” They shout this refrain each time they pray at the school.

I got an earful of “Cristo Vive” that day. These children know little about their future – uncertainty about obtaining dinner tonight, uncertainty about whether their parents will find the requisite $5.00 worth of scrap metal for survival, uncertainty about how long their dad will live (not long, if he conforms to statistics here in Guatemala). After each of these uncertainties, they echo, in unison, and loudly, “Cristo Vive.” Their uncertainty is tempered by this one thing they do know.

I’m confident that these children believe it more strongly than I do, because they have nothing else upon which to put their faith.

A group from Denver, Colorado has been visiting for the past week. They’re staying at the Lideragzo Juvenil next door to our apartment. All of them are either African-American or Mexican. They were also most affected when the public school system in Denver cut its funding for the arts a few years ago. To compensate for the loss, they host an arts camp each summer in Denver that allows students to explore photography, video, drawing, drama, and dance – all with the assumption that exploration of the arts constitutes not only  an act of worship, but as another way of reflecting God and God’s world. (General revelation, anyone?)  They’re spending two weeks here in Guatemala running an arts camp for kids here.

Sam is among the more boistrious members of the group. He’s from Mexico. Sam told me that if we want to work toward racial reconciliation, we need to see the colors of each other’s skin differently. He took the first step.

“Kent, you’re not white anymore.”

“Huh? Yes I am.”

“No you’re not. Beige is closer to brown, so you’re beige, and I’m brown. You’re my beige brother and I’m your brown brother. And when the sun hits you just right, you’re taupe.”

So now Sam calls me Beige.

Except for when the sun hits me just right – then he calls me Taupe.

I don’t much care for the latter.

Since I’ve been remiss in blogging, I thought I’d offer a quick update and an apology for not writing as much as I’d promised. This post, I hope, will be a clearinghouse for those interested in what we’ve been up to, a mish-mash of disconnected thoughts and events from our time here so far.

Our mornings usually begin with the sounds of jet engines, since our single-pane windows and paper-thin walls don’t muffle much of anything. Our apartment is located only a very short distance from the international airport, much to the delight of this airplane enthusiast, but to the chagrin of his wife. She hasn’t quite yet acquired the Hendricks penchant for waking up at 5:00am (thanks Dad and Grandpa!) or my irrational obsession with aircraft.

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I recently had my first honey-can-you-kill-that-bug experience. Not that Shelly is that kind of girl (except when it comes to spiders). Either way, a guest was in our bathroom, uninvited, as the pitch of Shelly’s “ewww” seemed to indicate.

It was a larger-than-normal cockroach.

It scurried behind the cabinet before we could compromise its existence with the bottom of my sandal.

June 30, 2007

We got up at 7:00 to get breakfast before leaving to hike up a volcano at 8:00. We came near the end of breakfast. The bus arrived at 8;00, and Shelly and I took the front seat. My favorite part of international travel is seeing the city and country, so I wanted a good seat. We traveled for around an hour to the south of the city (I think – I’m still a little disoriented) to the volcano – Volcan Pacaya, one of several volcanos that surround the city. We drove further and further into the mountains, and drove through a few small villages along the way. The last village we came to was at the base of the hiking trail – no doubt rural Guatemalan were hoping to capitalize on foreign tourists (such as ourselves) who would stop there to climb. We paid Q40 to hike the volcano and some members of our group paid for hiking sticks. Along the trail, locals with donkeys and horses kept asking “Taxi, Taxi?” as they rode immediately behind us.

Joel told us that the first part of the climb would be steep before leveling off as we got closer to the top. We found, however, that the whole climb was steep – not unlike climbing Church Mountain near Mount Baker. Normally, that’s not a problem, but Shelly and I are quite out of shape (student teaching and wedding planning don’t do much for our fitness). We brought water and lunches – the former leaked in our bag, the later we gave to Sue (from Maranatha CRC) who stayed at the end of the line, which meant that we had no food until we reached the top. The entire climb took about three hours.

After we broke through the treeline we saw the top of the volcano – steam emitted from vents in the crater, and large lava rocks tumbling thousands of feet down the mountain. We saw some climbers running from these rocks as they fell. They were the size of small cars, they later told us.

We climbed as high as was safely possible. The rocks were hot – the ground we walked on felt like the surface of a hot car hood. No sandals allowed, Joel had told us the night before. As we hiked, we encountered steam vents that emitted hot air and steam. We took out hot dogs that we packed and roasted them over hot spots in the rocks, sitting right over the magma chambers. Volcano dogs were the best hot dogs in the world, “right after the hot dogs in Tiger stadium,” Joel said. Joel is an avid Tigers fan.

The hike down was a race against the rain and lightning. It’s rainy season here in Guatemala, which means that each afternoon the sky darkens in anticipation of a heavy downpour. We donned our raingear and reached the base of the mountain just as the rain started.

The ride home was tiring. The seats on the bus were too uncomfortable for sleep. Johann, who I shared an office with this past spring at Faith Alive, told me before our trip that school buses from the United States go to Guatemala to die. The streets here are filled with old buses. Our bus was no exception, no doubt used for several years by a school in the United States before finding its way to Guatemala City for use as a public transit bus. The transportation came cheaply, but not comfortably. Our sore legs didn’t help, either.

We arrived back at the Liderazco Juvenil late in the afternoon, exhausted and hungry. Since Shelly and I still had not bought groceries, cleaning supplies, or other basic essentials for our apartment, we decided to do that before we ate dinner with the group. Joel drove us to Paiz, the local grocery store. I would have preferred the smaller shop within walking distance of our apartment, but Joel insisted. On the way, he explained that Paiz was recently bought out by Wal-Mart, and then launched into a Wal-Mart rant. I applauded (my dad’s a small business owner).

After an hour in Piaz and Q624 (about $82) later, we returned to our apartment with our newly-acquired supplies, including a nine-piece set of pots and pans for less than $10. While shopping, I learned the distinction between “con pulpa” and “sin pulpa” – orange juice “with pulp” or “without pulp.” This brief lesson proved useful in church the next morning when people said strings of Spanish words that I didn’t understand, but I did understand the ends of many of their sentences – “con Dios” or “with God.” These were our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We had dinner with the group from Maranatha CRC – chicken, rice, and a chicken broth. And real quesadillas – not the packaged kind, but the ones made fresh each morning in the bakery. We also ate a vegetable that resembled a potato, but wasn’t. Someone told me that we were actually eating a kind of fruit, but I was too tired to decide whether or not I should believe them.

After dinner, Shelly and I walked back to our apartment and went to bed, still tired from travel, but especially exhausted after a day of climbing. We would leave for church early in the morning with Joel and Martita, our landlords, and members of the church where we would be working, El Mensaje de Vida – literally “The Message of Life.

June 29, 2007

We left Grand Rapids at 5:30am and arrived in Guatemala City at around noon. Our gate was changed after we landed, so we waited for a few extra minutes on the plane. The airport was under construction, so we were navigated around construction zones. After finding our luggage and clearing immigration we followed everyone else into the arrival hall of the airport. My heart sunk when we rounded a corner and saw a sea of Guatemalans waiting to pick up others from the airport, so densely packed that Shelly and I could have crowd-surfed our way through them. We were looking for someone named Marvin, and he was looking for us – neither knew what the other looked like.

A man came up to Shelly and said, “Taxi?”

Shelly didn’t hear him. “Marvin?”

“Maybe.”

“No taxi,” I interrupted.

A few minutes later we found the real Marvin. He wasn’t driving a taxi, either.

Marvin brought us to our apartment, which turned out to be small and cozy. One room has a small kitchen, dining area, and sitting area. The other room is a large bedroom with a balcony, closet, and bathroom. It’s quaint, but comfortable. The apartment, we found out later, is owned by Joel and Martita (we don’t know their last name) who live next door, on the other side of the gardens. There are a few other apartments near ours.

We took a short nap (exhausted from travel) before Joel (who works for Christian Reformed World Missions) stopped by to show us around. He walked us through the apartment, and showed us, among other things, the showerhead that we must not touch, lest we get electrocuted. I’ve encountered these showerheads before – last summer in Indonesia I shocked myself awake every morning in the shower. Joel explained to us that showers in Guatemala are cold, unless you (or we, as the case may be) have a special showerhead with a coil in it that conducts electricity and heats the water. This isn’t much unlike taking a shower with a hair dryer, and demands equal vigilance.

We left the apartment for a fast tour of the neighborhood – good shops and restaurants, places to exchange money, grocery stores, and the like. Joel has a charismatic personality, so the tour went quick. We remembered the essentials and we hoped to do more exploring on our own later. Joel also showed us the Liderazco Juvenil – the organization he leads. Our apartment is located in the same gated complex.

After our tour, we had a couple free hours before the expected arrival of the youth group from Maranatha CRC in Holland. Joel would give them an orientation to the facilities and his ministry, and he invited us to listen in. In the meantime, we went to the bank to exchange money. Shelly’s Spanish proved useful.

The group from Maranatha arrived in the evening. We listened to Joel’s orientation with them before eating dinner together. We also spent an hour tying up loose ends – where we get clean water, how to get past the locked gate (turned out is was stuck), etc. We also met a few of the students and most of the leaders. We went to bed early after a long day of travel and a whirlwind introduction to the city.