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A glut of photos
April 20, 2009 | posted by Lars under el salvador, guatemala, honduras, mexico, nicaragua, photos, updates | Comments (1)
For those who haven’t already seen them, we’ve recently posted quite a number of photo albums in our gallery for a visual synopsis of our journey.
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Managua for Easter
April 20, 2009 | posted by Lars under nicaragua, reflections | Comments (6)
On Holy Saturday, we made ride against the winds off Lake Managua to the capital of Nicaragua. I had called Efrain Hernandez, the pastor of the Brethren in Christ church we were planning to stay with in Managua, but was only able to leave a message, so we set off across the city with the Managua-style directions we had (”go two blocks south from the hardware store on the north highway…”). About two-thirds of the way to the neighborhood where the church is located, a taxi driver yelled out of his vehicle at us, telling us to wait for him to turn around. Accustomed to having people yell at us, we disregarded the incident, laughing that if we wanted to talk with a taxi driver, we could hang around. Several blocks later, a car pulled up beside us and the driver told us through the passenger-side window, “I am Pastor Efrain, from the church. Follow me; I’ll lead you to the church.” We needed that taxi driver more than we thought, and spent several days with him and his church.
With our arrival in Managua, we marked a significant point in our journey - with 3 months and around 3,750 miles behind us and the same ahead, we celebrated being at the midpoint of our journey to Asunción. However, while I know the fact at some level, I don’t feel like I’m halfway to Asunción. Not that I know what biking halfway to Paraguay feels like, but at this point, it just feels like I’ve been biking for a really long time. (As a bit of a celebration of the milestone (no pun intended!), though, Jon & I split a half-gallon of Neapolitan ice cream for a snack the next day in the saddle, pulling on Appalachian Trail thru-hiker tradition. I guess that means we’re really are closer to the end than the beginning…)
The day after we arrived, the church gathered for an Easter Resurrection Service at 5:00 a.m., culminating a week of preaching and prayer meetings with a similar, highly amplified service. Still in a bit of a morning stupor from too little sleep after a day of biking, I wondered to myself whether the disciples could really comprehend what had happened when Jesus came among them on that first Resurrection Day. the whiplash of emotions seems so incredibly dramatic, it would leave anyone in a daze. What were their thoughts during those days, when Jesus appeared to them, ate breakfast with them, taught them? While skepticism and pain surely turned to joy, so much of that time seems to point ahead to the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church.
It’s easy to see the parallel of the crucifixion and resurrection as a midpoint in God’s story of redemption. It’s rather apparent that we live in a world that still endures pain in many ways; but we also have an image of God’s way of interacting with us, in Christ. So, it seems that in moving from Lent into the season of Easter, we’ve been freed from waiting… in order to wait. This time, though, we set our eyes on Pentecost, remembering the coming of the Holy Spirit, which fills and moves the people of God. It seems like a theme to me - waiting, prayer, hurting, waiting, prayer, healing, waiting, prayer, action, repeat. Maybe someday I’ll begin to understand that, and to live it well.
What are people for?
April 1, 2009 | posted by Lars under lent, mexico, reflections | Comments (4)
This reflection based on Mark 12:20-33 was first published on EMU’s Lenten Reflections ‘blog.
As I’ve traveled through Mexico over the past several weeks, I haven’t been able to get the idea of self-sacrifice and self-sacrificial love out of my mind & soul. There are many ways this text interacts with my recent experiences, but this seems to stand in stark contrast to the rest. It’s so contrary to any other voice in the history of the world, and it nestles itself right at the core of the Gospel.
I’ve seen huge Aztec temples built and inaugurated with the sacrifices of thousands of laborers and captive warriors; read of massive corporate riches amassed at the cost of millions of people’s pensions and retirement funds; and participated in the incredible luxury afforded to those at the core of the developed world while those at the periphery sew it together and move from home to the ‘misery belts,’ or try to fight their way closer to the core. Where did we ever get the idea that this is what people are for? Did we somehow forget that we, too, are human?
Jesus seems intent to remind us what it means to be truly human. He compares humans and their lives to seeds, whose sole purpose it is to give their all to allow for new life to spring forth. That’s the biology of a seed: it comes with just enough energy for germination, and when that is done, its job is over.
Jesus says in his own baffling way that that’s the essence of the glory of the Son of Man - the truly Human One. He says, in the words of Eminem, “Just lose it.” As he speaks, he’s not without fear, but he knows - as the voice from the reiterates - that his glorification will continue throughout future generations. Love can lead in no other way. This will be both the eternal glory of humanity and the unending shame of “the prince of this world.”
It’s the perfect culmination of the process of selflessness. The world cannot understand a life devoted entirely to Shalom, and so exposes its own lack by raising up - by crucifying - Love. Yet, we have no room for indignation. It is we who have not understood; it is we who have set the nails to Christ’s body. We, the residents of this world, must live - for now - in this twilight. We must recognize our complicity in both the evil and the holiness of this world. For, if we are willing, it will be the soil of our transformation.
LORD God –
We await Your Spirit
of Patience, as we live with ourselves, both holy and detestable; and
of Humility, as we offer ourselves daily, by Your love, to Your world.
Open our eyes,
that we may see Your color and design in ourselves.
Unstop our ears,
that we may hear Your melody and harmonies in the world in which we live.
For it is by Your Son that we are healed,
Amen.
People of … Maseca?
March 30, 2009 | posted by Lars under guatemala, lent, mexico, reflections | Comments (6)
In Central America, the tortilla is more than just a food staple, it’s a way of life. Corn has been cultivated in the region since before the first European encounter; according to the Maya creation story, humans are literally “people of corn” - it was from corn, not soil, that God formed the first beings. Traveling in culture with this collective history, when eating the occasional tortilla-less meal, Jon and I have been asked if we want any, because for many, if tortillas aren’t present, you haven’t eaten.
As a result, tortillerÃas - or tortilla ‘bakeries’ - are everywhere. I remember from my cross-cultural semester in Guatemala the sound of the women in these shops patting out the dough by hand over the comal and a low-burning fire. Fresh tortillas, made at home or in one of these corner stores, were present at most meals.
But throughout Mexico, the picture was different. There was no light clapping overflowing into the streets, only the faint whirr of the occasional tortilla machine and the painted Maseca logo on the outside of the store. “Quality & Consistency,” they promised - a promise as valid in southern Mexico as it is in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where you can also buy the flour. Three years ago in Guatemala, the corn for tortillas had come from the farms in the countryside and was made into nixtamal (or hominy, an intermediate step in making tortilla dough, a process which incidentally enriches the corn with essential nutrients) in the same neighborhood where it was eaten. There had been no national corn processing company so prominent as Maseca; that was the work of many smaller-scale farmers and corn processers.
Our last evening in Mexico, I asked our host, a restaurant owner and partner with INESIN, about Maseca. Sometime in the past, tortillas must have been made by hand in Mexico, and now they’re not. I had my strong suspicions that the shift was connected to the 1994 beginning of subsidized corn imports from the United States through NAFTA, but I wanted to hear the story.
The change in her town began “somewhere around ten years ago,” she told us, when it became cheaper to buy the 20 kg. bags of ground corn than to grow and process the corn grown locally. She emphasized that the taste of tortillas made with Maseca is notably more bland; but since farmers have stopped sowing corn because they can’t get a good price for it anymore, they’re becoming the only option.
Regardless of the reason, for a culture so closely connected to cultivating and consuming corn, this is a significant shift. Clearly it has implications for farmers who no longer are able to farm; but what happens to a culture which once understood their Creator through their work and food when those are exported and imported? How is the health of a people affected when the staple of every meal contains more starch and fewer necessary nutrients? Increased diabetes rates may be the simplest of the outcomes.
In Guatemala, I still hear tortillas being made; but then again, CAFTA is still very young.
Thought kernels: Where do we fit into this picture? Where do we find our identity? How do we understand our God?
Can we just get along?
March 25, 2009 | posted by Lars under lent, mexico, reflections, updates | Comments (7)
If you’ve been following our route map recently, you’ve noticed that we’ve made some tracks, and regardless, we’ve had a recent drought of postings. We’re doing fine, and Jon’s bike is back on the road, we just haven’t had the internet access or energy (we’ve been in southern Mexico and Guatemala, after all!) to post. We’re now in Guatemala City at SEMILLA, the Anabaptist seminary here, but the past two weeks are worth some collective thought, so we’ll take it in steps.
While in San Cristóbal de las Casas (Chiapas, México), we stayed at INESIN (Institute for Intercultural Studies and Investigation), an ecumenical Christian center which promotes peace in Chiapas through intercultural and interreligious dialogue. It’s important work in a region as torn as Chiapas has become - the religious landscape shows some of these, with Christianity, both Roman Catholic and ‘evangelical’ - neither of which recognizes the other as ‘Christian’ - and pantheism, woven deeply into the fabric of many indigenous communities. Add in politics, community organizations, international missionaries & corporations, and indigenous rights movements and it’s a picture which demands more historical background to be even marginally understood.
Geographically, the state of Chiapas lies on Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, is about half coastal plain and half rugged, heavily forested mountains, and contains nearly 40% of Mexico’s water resources. Thanks in part to these mountains, for several centuries after the Spanish conquest and into Mexican statehood the large indigenous population of Chiapas (which shares more common history & culture with indigenous Guatemalans than with those in the rest of Mexico) remained largely unified - poor and Catholic - and voted as a single block, as well. Over the past century or so however, foreign missionaries, strong community leaders, movements for land reform, the introduction of a multi-party political system, and the Zapatista National Liberation Army splintered the state - and its communities - along so many deeply inflamed conviction-etched lines that in many places communities exiled their members who believed differently than the majority, leading to at least 400,000 internally displaced persons in Chiapas in the mid-1990s - fully 10% of the entire state. Military massacres throughout the ’90s in response to the Zapatistas’ uprising in 1994 (when they demanded what had been promised but not given to the indigenous peoples for centuries) contributed to increased instability and distrust, and brought the perfect storm into the international spotlight. All the while, the government signs away rights to the region’s biodiversity and plentiful water to multinational pharmaceutical and bottling corporations.
While the situation now has cooled enough that people aren’t dying, the divisions still run deep and painful. It’s in this context that INESIN operates, offering workshops in their facility and in communities, allowing people to study the Bible and get to know each other in a setting not aligned with one political party or denomination, and teaching elements of sustainable agriculture, conflict transformation, and prevention of family & gender violence to interested community members. It’s a small effort, rooted in the community and led by a handful of chiapeños and international volunteers (including a couple with MCC), but it’s been a while since I’ve seen something truly worthwhile happen fast. Maybe someday, community by community, Chiapas will celebrate and find strength in its diversity.
Maybe someday, the church, too, will find similar strength and reason to celebrate. “We all have strengths,” director MartÃn Guerrero reminded a group while we were there, “we at INESIN don’t believe that the many churches should lose their identity to be one church - it’s that diversity reminds us of the many forms of God’s grace.” Their message seemed clear: ecumenical doesn’t mean floating in and out of whatever church serves your needs - it means being rooted and it means finding common roots; it means being able to celebrate and learn from the unique ways each community of faith follows Jesus Christ. It means the hard work of learning to live together.
But this is our work.
The heartland… of México
March 7, 2009 | posted by Lars under mexico, photos | Comments (3)
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San Luis Potosà to México, MéxicoFebruary 25-28, 2009 |
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México to Puebla, MéxicoMarch 1-5, 2009 edit: captions added! |
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Wandering in the Wilderness
February 27, 2009 | posted by Lars under lent, mexico, reflections | Comments (16)
Two days ago, in San Luis PotosÃ, we marked Ash Wednesday, the beginning of a new season in the church year - Lent. For many of those in the Roman Catholic majority, the day was the beginning of a time of fasting, marked by ashes on the forehead from the hand of the priest. (Paradoxically, it was also the day of a late-night carnival downtown…) The day was a significant milestone for us in our journey for several reasons, as well. From setting out on January 6, we had been on the road for 50 days prior to Wednesday. We began our journey on Epiphany, the day celebrating the visit of the magi to the newborn Jesus. It’s a day and a season, it seems, where the gold & incense play a secondary - if allusive - part to the realization that even as an infant, Christ has come as “a light to all nations,” and that even in its infancy, His reign is one which turns power on its head, distressing a grown king at the birth of a peasant boy, and causing wise men to travel thousands of miles to visit this boy. In the season of Epiphany, we celebrated not just the mystery of God incarnate, but the revelation that this Savior is for all the world and presents a very different reign than this world can comprehend.
Now, after a quick slip in to Ordinary Time, we find ourselves in Lent, the 40-day season preceding Easter. Forty days, like the years of the Israelites’ wanderings and the duration of Christ’s fasting and temptations. It’s a time to remember our own humanity, our own weakness; a time to wander into our own deserts with God, so that He may also lead us out. It’s a time to find our wounds and press into them, make them hurt, make them bleed, so that we are prepared to be healed by Jesus’ own wounds and blood. The healing is certain - we will be made whole - but first we must prepare ourselves by probing deeply into our need.
So, we wander (we hope more metaphorically than physically) in order to explore our humanity and our brokenness, in order to be tempted by apothecaries who promise remedies other than that of the Healer. During this season, Jon & I have decided to allow for at least 15 minutes of silence for prayer before setting out each day as we embark on this journey through Lent, knowing that before we arrive at Easter in Managua, God will lead us through the wilderness, through our own wretchedness, to the brutality of the passion and beyond, so that we, with Christ, may experience the resurrection from the dead.
Thirty-seven days to Managua.
Thought kernels (thoughts from the past several days): • How do I measure time, and how does that point to what I value? What ‘calendars’ do I use? • What are my wildernesses?
The Monterrey Challenge
February 22, 2009 | posted by Lars under mexico, updates | Comments (4)
Don’t worry, this challenge doesn’t have to do with tenting in the second largest metropolitan area in Mexico or punishing ascents into the mountains of the country’s interior. We were well cared for in Monterrey, and the climbing, while more than we had experience to that point in the trip, wasn’t terrible. It relates to a statistic we learned from our hosts in Monterrey, and an attempt to understand our host culture a bit better.
Okay - brace yourself. This is mind-blowing, so you’d best sit down. As we biked through the suburbs of Monterrey, we could tell we were entering a world-class city, but to learn from our hosts that Monterrey tops the world in soda consumption per capita, tipping the glass at 2 liters per person per day was unimaginable to us. For a city of 3.8 million, that’s 3 Olympic-sized swimming pools filled with soda each day! Needing to be sure, we asked others we met, with the uniform response of “oh, at least.” For the statistically-inclined, we might consider that the median is actually higher than 2L - that most people drink more thank that, with those who drink none pulling the average down. Incredible.
Our experience anecdotally confirmed what we had heard. Coke and Pepsi, alongside apple, grapefruit, and other sodas stood on most tables at mealtime, with slogans like “a place in your kitchen” (that’s Coke, for the curious).
With soda as the drink of choice for lunch, snack, and supper, it’s little wonder that there are so many signs advertising “new, cheaper diabetes treatments” peppering the streets. There seemed to be plenty of knowledge of the cause-and-effect present, but economics and the lack of drinkable running water defined choices for families.
So, without really intending to, we attempted what we dubbed “The Monterrey Challenge” - drink 2L of soda in one day. (We also decided that the real challenge would be to drink the required volume each of the days you stayed in Monterrey, but we weren’t equal to that challenge.) Even after a half liter each for lunch the day we left Monterrey, we had no intentions of downing four times that before bed, but the economics of it did us in. With no restaurants in the dusty little town of Puerto México, we stocked up for supper in the only store in town, where a 2.5L bottle of Coke was a better deal than individual .5L bottles for both of us. Washing down our cold tostadas and refried beans in the dark after almost 80 miles of biking (yes, there’s more of a story here!), we realized we only needed to split a .5L soda to log 2L each for the day. Jarritos tamarind-flavored soda did the honors.
Ugh.
Anyone up for a challenge?
Oh, México
February 22, 2009 | posted by Lars under mexico, photos | Comments (1)
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Monterrey to San Luis PotosÃ, MéxicoFebruary 19-25, 2009 (anticipated) |
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Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey, MéxicoFebruary 14-18, 2009 |
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…and other galleries have been updated.
Migrantes al sur
February 15, 2009 | posted by Lars under mexico, updates | Comments (6)
These are excerpts from my recent journals. While they’re not a comprehensive look at the past several days, hopefully they’ll at least be a picture for you.
February 12, 2009 (Thursday)
Freer, TX - Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, MX : 68.5 miles
An early start helped us finish the day’s ride before the heat of the afternoon. Sunrise and the morning light seems to re-enliven all the world - even the brush desert.
Sunrise -
even the tumbleweeds
bloom with freshness.
We spoke with border patrol officers at a checkpoint 40 miles north of Laredo (there are checkpoints on every road north out of Mexico), at the border, and also called the USBP Laredo office in homes of getting a tour of a detention facility, etc. with no luck - apparently they don’t get the question much. They were nice enough people, it just seemed like they were unwittingly caught as part of the gauze on the wound of someone who’s been taking anticoagulants for years. They’re just not stopping the flow, not addressing the issue, and arguably making the situation worse by trying to clean the wound constantly.
We crossed the border, though (it wasn’t hard for us - no documents were necessary to leave the US) and made our way to La Casa del Migrante, a migrant hospitality house run by the Roman Catholic Scalabrinian order. While we waited outside for the house to open, our bikes (and our gringo-ness) made conversation with the other men who were also waiting. Some wanted to practice their English with us, others simply asked, “¿Qué haces?” “What are you doing here?” and others asked about the load we are carrying or the brands and costs of our bikes. Generally, it seemed, we were seen as novelties, as curious aberrations from the typical migrant - we are heading south, after all - but as migrants, nonetheless. In the midst of one of these conversations, a man from Honduras told us, “si eres un amigo a los migrantes, eres un amigo a Dios,” “if you are friend of migrants, you are a friend of God.“ From him, it was an especially poignant reminder of the upside-down kingdom, the politics of gentleness and love upon which Christ’s community is built. Between moments like this and fielding questions about how much we spent on our bikes, we had plenty to think about before anyone even opened the doors of the shelter.
All of the men we spoke with on the street raved about the hospitality of the Scalabrinians (though they spoke of it as “La Casa del Migrante”) and assured us - without our asking - that they would also take care of us. And they did, but not without a bit of to-do and the calling of superiors. See, we are not your usual migrants who are forced to emigrate for economic reasons and do not have means to stay elsewhere besides the house, so we don’t quite fit in the center of the mission’s mission, one could say. They did finally decide to host us - there was plenty of room in the inn - and made sure to tell us that we would be treated no differently from the migrants, to which we responded that we assumed nothing differently. So, sure that we would not be displacing anyone who was heading north, we registered and joined the other men who were lounging about the interior patio, giving each other haircuts, and washing their clothes. After supper, a man from a local newspaper came looking for workers for the next day, we were lectured about the house rules (there are many, thanks in part to the human and drug trafficking so closely linked to migration here), and after free time filled with casual conversation and our obligatory shower (it’s in the rules!), all 70-80 of us bedded down by 10:30, set for a 6:00 wake-up and 7:00 on the streets for the day.
February 13, 2009 (Friday)
Rest day in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, MX
As we left the house for the day, I saw a woman in line to leave and this evening I saw another. This may seem like an odd observation, but it’s quite apparent when you spend any amount of time in groups of migrants - here or in the Shenadoah Valley, for that matter. Both appeared to be with their husbands; I imagine that very few single women travel north alone. I have seen no children here at all, save for the young men on their first trip north. I’m sure that some of them would still be in high school in the US.
We spent most of the day trying to find and unlock cell phones for use in Mexico. This entailed riding our bikes from shop to shop - and there are plenty - and asking if they carried “celulares cuatribandas” and if they could unlock Jon’s cell phone. Since just about every block in Nuevo Laredo’s downtown has a storefront for both of the country’s major cell providers, and each of these is independently owned and operated, we received any number of responses to these questions, from “¿Qué es cuatribanda?” to offering to unlock Jon’s phone if we left it with them until Monday, when we hope to be on the road to Monterrey. Mostly, though, the quad-band phones are exorbitantly expensive and the stores don’t know what to do with Jon’s phone -it’s a bit of an anomaly, apparently. Our search for Mexican cell service will have to wait until Monterrey, next week.
Back at the Casa del Migrante for the evening, we played Dutch Blitz with some of the guys, which was a hit. We started playing with two others and soon there was a crowd gathered around the game being played on the cement patio floor. We were called away from the game to hear from a Nuevo Laredo Public Works officer looking for people to help clean the city the next day. We signed up with at least a dozen others, and though we won’t be paid, we’ll get lunch, and hopefully be re-admitted at the Casa tomorrow night wih the signature of our supervisor and a description of the work we’ve done, as is required for all the migrants.
It’s time for lights out - 10:30. En punto.