Mothers Day and Basketball

Greetings! Some notes on recent events here in Chimbote:

MOTHERS DAY
Photos of our parish event honoring mothers, organized and put on by the youth and young adults of the parish, are ready to view by clicking the photo link at right. The event was a great success: our youth council planned, coordinated and decorated well; children`s catechesis groups, Confirmation youth, and both choirs contributed musical/dance/singing/skits/recited poems, we raffled off a few food baskets, and the moms seemed to have a good time. Nicole, Emily and I chuckled at a couple of the dance acts, knowing they would have caused at least a little scandal in our US parishes. I especially enjoyed the folkloric music by some members of my choir and also by a joint group of parish choir members, and I was proud of the organization by our JUMIFRA members. I helped out, but was by no means in charge. Honoring moms is a big deal here, as most schools held similar type events on Friday or Saturday before Mothers Day.

MADELEINE`S FAMILY
In a story also related to Mothers Day but of a different tone, I had the chance to meet and spend time with Madeleine, a 12-year-old girl, and her family in the days leading up to May 11. On the Saturday previous, she and her grandmother knocked on my door in the evening and asked if I could help her translate a song into Spanish (Hotel California) so she could sing it at her parish`s (San Felipe) Mothers` Day event. Her grandmother also explained to me how they had no food to make anything to eat all day, and she was suffering with obvious neck and shoulder pain. I said I would help, we agreed that I`d stop by their house on Monday, and I sent with them some pasta, dried beans, a little frozen chicken, and a few ibruprofen tablets. On Monday I found their house after wandering a bit, the first impression being how dark it was inside -- only a small window near the door. After my eyes adjusted, they pulled up a stool for me to sit in the small front room with a very cute 4-year-old girl and her nine year old brother, who was busy drawing cartoon figures. His grandmother wasted no time in pulling out a number of his previous drawings to show off for me, and they were pretty good. He was currently in the process of drawing two soccer players in action from a newspaper photo, but substituting cartoon figure heads for their human ones. This front room and a bedroom next to it had concrete floors, but the kitchen behind (and the one or two additional rooms) had hard-packed dirt floor, with a door opening out the back to a small yard where they banished the dog when I came in. Madeleine and her mom, Rosa, brought me a couple cassettes of English rock ballads, one with Hotel California, and I proceded to transcribe first the English lyrics and then translate them into Spanish, with Rosa and Madeleine looking on. They brought me coffee and bread afterward, and I offered to re-work the lyrics to bit the music better and return in a couple days. I had to quite firm to leave without accepting another mug of coffee, as my English class would be beginning soon. During my visit a hush fell on the house during the few minutes that Rosa`s uncle came and left -- he obviously inspires fear and both the mom and grandma mentioned how they couldn`t wait to move out of Chimbote, back to their home area near Pisco in south Peru.

Translating a song is a bit complicated, having to sacrifice exact meaning for rhyme and flow, but I enjoyed the experience and returned to Madeleine`s house a couple days later in the late morning. She was dressed in her school uniform, but soon after arriving I was informed by her mom that she wouldn`t be going to school that day since she was afraid they`d charge them for copies (which they apparently do on occasion) and there wasn`t the couple soles to pay. The little girl with the big brown eyes continued to be fascinated by me, and kept telling me things very adamantly that I could only partly understand. They offered (made me take) some of the fried dough they were having for lunch, and apologized a few times for not being able to offer me a regular meal. I ate as many as I could, then put a few in the bag I was carrying. Though I had been planning to just deliver the song, I soon found myself offered (directed) to sit down, and Rosa began showing me and the family her photo album of happier days, gradually breaking into the story of how she had moved here when she was 11, was mistreated by and hated her father, and had her husband abuse her and steal her young son, who would be about 7 by now. I was at this point feeling a mixture of discomfort at hearing the story of her troubles, a little cramped in the stomach, and just plain tired from the barrage of Spanish that was the story that Rosa obviously badly wanted to tell me. After over an hour and a half, I managed to break in to say that I needed to be going, and the grandma returned in time to send me home with bagged milk and bread that they gave out at the school as part of a government food program. They obviously needed the food more than me, but I was powerless to resist taking it (or a few more fried dough pieces, which she kindly put in a plastic bag for me to take). As they walked with me back to my house, Rosa and Madeleine described how they planned to leave town for the south in the middle of the night the following week, but also that I should come back to visit them if they were still around.

The entire experience left me glad to be out of the situation, humbled by their generosity, and saddened by the story and situation of life. I have not been back yet to visit, but am slowly working up to it.

BASKETBALL
The past couple of weeks I have had the chance to play and coach a lot of basketball, which I have enjoyed. Our Saturday morning sessions with children (mostly a few boys, but one 8-year-old girl named Elizabeth also is consistent and we practice until she gets tired and then just hang out). On Friday afternoons I help my friend Elmer and his friend Jaime coach a group of 13-15 year olds as they hope to form a team that can play other local private school teams. In fact, we had our first scrimmage this past Saturday. I and Elmer need to work out some differences in coaching strategy/philosophy (for example, I think that all who have practiced should get a good chance to play, whereas he wants the best five to play most of the time). I have mostly given in, but we are meeting to discuss things this week and I hope we can work out a compromise. Being around basketball and playing a bit here and there has been a good, fun release. Except for my inability to loudly yell instructions during a game, I think I have a lot to offer in terms of teaching fundamentals and strategy. Communicating to the team in Spanish continues to be a bit of a challenge, though it is pushing me to learn new terms and phrases that just don`t appear in dictionaries.

CEVICHE AND SPORTS
Partly as a celebration of the Mothers Day event`s success, our youth council and the parish put on a morning of sports and ceviche at the parish for our young people. I helped by accompanying a small group to buy fresh fish at the pier at 6:30 am Sunday morning and helping to chop/prepare the favorite local dish of raw fish, lime juice, garlic and ajì (chili). On the side come sweet potato, fried corn kernels, seaweed and onion. A couple of girls from the council directed the operation, and our sub-coordinator organized a number of group games. After ceviche, the guys had a few intense soccer games in the small parish courtyard before we returned home at about 2 pm.

NEXT YEAR
A little news about what next year will bring, as Meg, our assistant director, let us know last week that there will be three new Incarnate Word Missionaries (all women) here in Chimbote next year to replace Nicole and Emily, who will be leaving in early September. Their names are Courtney, Julie, and Jane -- Courtney and Julie have nursing/medical training and will likely be assisting at the clinic or the hospice, while Jane will be a ´free-lancer` like me, seeking to assist in the parish or in other local ministries. I am happy to know that I will again have company to share the experience with, and it also means I will be staying in the same house for the next year as well.