Despierta

One thing I have heard a lot within the past few years of my life has been about how a billion people or so in the world do not have access to clean drinking water. We are privileged in the US to be able to turn on our faucets and drink from it without worry (usually). I have been meaning to mention this in here for a while now but I always forget to.

No one here in Immokalee drinks the water! If you do, you will be taking in lots of arsenic, all kinds of pesticides and, oh yeah, lots and lots of fecal matter.

In the United States of America, in a town called Immokalee, people do not feel safe drinking the water. I remember my first week here, all the allies and the CIW staff had a meeting at the new farmworker community center that we have slowly been moving into. We all talked about the water fountain in the center for quite a while, because everyone was really concerned about if people would drink out of it or not in the future.

That's a freakin huge deal.

Water! Agua! People, no matter where they live in the world, should not have to worry about if their water is going to give them a disease and eventually kill them. Arsenic in our water. ARSENIC. OK, some of you may or may not know this, but when I had leukemia, a huge chunk of my chemotherapy treatments were receiving arsenic through an IV for weeks and weeks. I think there may be different types of arsenic, I am actually not sure. I know that there are more toxic things out there than arsenic but it is still not great for the human body! If it is toxic and strong enough to kill leukemia cells (and those are some dangerous, powerful little things), then can one even begin to imagine what exposure to years and years of that will do to someone? Sure, OK, we have a bit more privilege here in Immo because there is a station near Winn Dixie where you can bring water jugs to be filled up with purified drinking water. Sometimes I see women walking around Immo, pushing water jugs in baby carriages back to their homes. So clean water is accessible if you have a way to get to this station and you have a $1.50 to fill it up; or you can use a filter like I have been doing. Still, though....every time I brush my teeth here or take a shower, I wonder what kinds of toxic chemicals I am once again being exposed to. I still don't really know what caused my leukemia a few years ago and I am definitely not in the mood to develop some sort of other disease that could possibly kill me again. My question is why has the county allowed us this to be, why has the state not done anything, where are the public health experts, where are the people of God? What about the children growing up here in Immokalee? Their health has to be put at risk simply because they were born into poverty? So it's going to be their fault if they end up with cancer in 20 years, if they end up with something else that could kill them? I mean, I know there is all kinds of horrible things in our water everywhere in the US but I have never felt that threatened about it growing up. The fact that people are concerned about a water fountain here really says something.

The longer I am in a rural area, the more I realize that rural areas are just way too neglected. They are so hidden, the people who live here are so hidden from the rest of the world. The focus is always on the city and that is where people want to go. I don't think the city should be forgotten but I don't want my people here in Immo to be forgotten nor in other rural areas.

There is something so intriguing about just being outside, about not having to endure traffic and overwhelming lanes of cars and trucks, about having some peace and quiet. There is something so great about everything being only 5 minutes away, about being able to ride a bike everywhere if you want to. A few days ago my roommate Melody and I went to pick pineapples, bananas and maracuyas with our other friends, Cande and Osker. We went to this forest/swamp place behind a lady named Reina's house. OK, I know this sounds weird, but she was the first person I have ever met from Paraguay and that made me really happy because I have always wanted to meet someone from Paraguay. I don't know why. There was just something so simple about it and we had a lot of fun, just all of us being together, and I was like why can't I do things like this more often? We just kind of took the morning off for a couple of hours and went did this and drank mate with Reina and it was a Tuesday and it was just so nice! So nice.

(OK, i have a lot of run-on sentences, I know, I know).

I told my friends that morning I wish I could be a banana. But I would definitely would want people to bury me when I became just a banana peel since I would be biodegradable and it would make me happy. So if I ever turn into a banana, I want you all to remember that.

It is so crazy how much I have adapted into a rural area. I suppose it could be my Incan roots coming alive in me (yay!). I just have this strong desire to live more naturally and simply.

You guys, I want us all to be more. I want us to be less so that we can be more (because less is more, right?).

I am so glad that I got to go to the Jesus, Justice & Poverty conference last weekend. I still think that was definitely the most incredible weekend of my life. I really feel like God is calling some of us into something together. I have some ideas and some vision but sometimes I am scared to put them down here. So i won't just yet. OK, I will put this out there but I think we all really need to bond together somehow and figure out ways as a community that we can consume less resources. When Brian spoke on Saturday about how 20% of the world consumes 80% of the world's resources (us), that was not the first time I had heard those stats, but they hit me just as hard. I have some ideas on how we could start to do this, to live more simply and stop using up so much resources for our convenience and I know that others do. I believe that God can really use a small community of people to make a huge impact if we allow Him to. I am just so tired of giving into convenience, I really am. I want to be about what I say I believe. For the sake of the love of God, I want to use less and be more. I want a community of believers to stop giving into entitlement and convenience and to start being better stewards of the environment.

Brothers and sisters, how are we going to allow God to use us to bring His transformation?

I miss my Tampa community a lot. I love my friends I have made here dearly but there is something incredible about being with other Jesus lovers/followers (jaja, that sounds funny but that's what we are). After the JJP conference, I am even more convinced that real justice and transformation cannot come without the Lord and it cannot come on our own, as individuals. We need each other. There is just so much going on that only Jesus can heal.

A couple of weeks ago I finally began to let myself really mourn over the pain of this beautiful community. I don't think that I have fully allowed myself to step into the pain of the community but parts of me have and the parts where I have gone to have hurt. I think it really began on the 4th of July; a large group us went to Ft. Myers Beach. It was a little crazy, a lot of fun and very surprising. However, it did also leave me with some aches in my heart.

Crazy because well, it was the beach on the 4th, enough said. (For anyone curious, no, I did not do anything crazy or illegal or nothing I should have not been doing!). It was fun because there were a lot of laughs making fun of each other and just hanging out and I always enjoy saying things that make no sense to people, especially in spanish, because then it really makes no sense at all (jajajajaja). Surprising, though, because God really just made some miracles that night. I ended up talking with a couple of the guys from the CIW for a couple of hours in Spanish (that's really huge for me to be able to speak that long in Spanish to people!). And I got to share with them about what God has done in my life and about surviving cancer and who Jesus has been to me! That's a miracle right there, on the real.

I also was able to do a lot of listening, though, which started to leave some aches in my heart. The one guy I was talking with mainly, everyone calls him "Chery" (and he told me he doesn't understand why, jaja), shared his story with me about coming from Guatemala to Immokalee. He is about 27 now and came here to the US about six years ago with one of his brothers, "Roque", who I actually worked with in the watermelon fields a few weeks ago. Anyhow, he shared with me that back in Guatemala he had been studying medicine for a couple of years in a university. "Chery" said he loved it, he loves medicine, he loves science and one day his dream is to go back to Guatemala and be a doctor who can provide medical services for those who cannot afford it. I've never been to Guatemala and I have only heard bits and pieces about the current political instability going on. "Chery" explained to me that there was still quite a bit of violence going on in the town he came from and that eventually he was forced to leave with his brother and come find work here in the US...

...how the heck does someone go from studying medicine to picking produce for sub-poverty wages?

I tried to imagine how I would feel if that happened to me. What if I went to the watermelon fields and for some reason, I was not allowed to leave? Or what if all of a sudden, I was forced to move to another country, where the culture does not make sense to me and I do not know when I will see my family again and I don't speak the language? And it does not matter that I just worked really hard and sacrificed tons of time, energy and sleep to earn a degree. I just have to work, I have to work to survive. The work I do has nothing to do with what I just studied but no one cares. Many would probably not believe that I ever studied anyway, because they already have their assumptions about me as a person because of the people group I belong to.

This is the case with many farm workers here. What does that do to a person's dignity? Studying medicine one day and then a few days later, picking produce for people in the US who will never thank you, never see your face, never really care about the back-breaking work you're doing for their convenience?

I would be so angry if that was me. I would feel entitled to more. I would demand better kind of work.

My heart begins to ache in situations like this. I also have met a couple of other guys who are really struggling with depression and then drinking out of that because they are so homesick and because they are away from all that is familiar and English is freakin hard to learn! This is where I start to mourn for my brothers, for those who are suffering.

God has been trying to teach me a lot about my people. I am so privileged that I cannot even see it most of the time. Almost everyday I am here I listen to people talk about their families they have not seen in years and it brings tears to my eyes, even now. It is so unfair. It is so unfair. It is so freakin unfair. How come I have the privilege to hop into my car and in an hour and a half I can see my mom, my sister, my step-dad, my grandparents, some of my cousins, aunts and uncles, my dad? How come others have to go years and years? I am a Latina but I have such a small understanding of my people's struggle. I don't fully understand what my family went through to get to this country. I know that my abuelita (grandma) had to come first and then she did not see my mom or any of her other children for 8 years because she did not have the money to bring them over here. I see the affects that has had my family until this day and I have heard my mom talk sadly about how she had to go through so much of her childhood without either parents around.

I am grateful, though, that God is allowing me to finally connect to some of this pain. I just hear so many hard things and I do not have any answers. I see no other hope than God. He is the only One who is going to be able to make things right. He is the One who has to bring people out of depression, out of drinking too much, He is the One who can bring families back together. I think the work and the organizing of the CIW is incredible and necessary. The fight is a good fight but the fight is bigger than us. We need the One bigger than us to win.