The World Cup and Goodbyes

Dear Friends,

On game day, the streets are empty- like Christmas day. Business close during the game. Buses run slow. At the Hogar, the process starts long before kickoff. The boys have to clean their rooms before the director of the Hogar, a widely-despised man named Walter, will turn on the power. On this particular day, there was paint all over the floor. The boys had showered Germán with flour, water, and paint to celebrate his birthday. The beds must be made. The floors must be cleaned. And most importantly, the TV needs to be operable before 4 o´clock when the game will start and Argentina´s World Cup hopes will either be squashed or vaulted. For a nation struggling to be hopeful, the importance of The World Cup cannot be overstated.

During the game, the boys sit in chairs, on their beds, or stand, nervously shifting their weight. In addition to the TV, there is a warped table, cement floors, and a few metal chairs. From time to time, Pepe has to kick the side of the TV stand to jar the cables back into place, fix the picture, and relieve the tension that grips the room whenever the screen goes to snow. The room is cold and unheated. The boys watch intently, in turn cursing the refs, the opposing players, and their own players as the ball moves around the field. If an Argentine player makes a bad pass, the boys yell expletives and insult his mother. When Argentina scores they scream. They shake their fists in the air. They throw their chairs across the room.

Although Argentina lost in penalty kicks to a clearly inferior German team, I was blessed to share the excitement with these boys. When the dream was squashed, we hugged, patted each other on the back. Pepe cried and began speculating about the Olympics in two years.

My time at El Hogar La Casita, a home for abused, neglected, and abandoned boys in Buenos Aires, draws to a close. In a week, I´ll return to the United States to see my family and friends and to face a barrage of questions, beginning with ¨How was it?¨

How was it? It was a year. It wasn´t perfect and neither was I. I was sad and capricious, angry and lonely and short-tempered. And in all my failings the boys loved me. Even when I didn´t want to be there, I wanted to be there.

In these final weeks, I have tried to say my goodbyes in my own way. Those who know me know that I believe in food. I believe in its ability to show deep gratitude and feed the soul as much as the body. Last week, I showed my gratitude to the boys through food. For the younger boys, I made an asado (Argentine barbecue), and for the older boys, I treated them to dinner out at the neighborhood all-you-can-eat buffet.

I chose this way to say thank you and goodbye because I wanted to give the boys one meal when they could ask for seconds and receive them. I wanted to give them plenty- if just for once.

Seconds (and thirds for that matter) are important. There are a thousand small doors that open with privilege. So many doors, we sometimes mistake them for a big door called rich, white, or first-world. But the doors are small. We see them more easily in aggregate. Lucas asks for seconds at lunch and the cook says no. It´s a small no, a small defeat, but that door closes and the no´s add up to a wall. Long before I could speak my mind, I spoke my stomach. What happens to kids like Lucas who learn early on that there´s no reason to speak up, the answer´s always no? The asado last Saturday was a chance for them to get nothing but yes´s- and lots and lots of good food.

At dinner out with the older boys, everyone buzzed with nervous energy. None of them were entirely comfortable, but Alan, the youngest of the group at 13, was the clearly the most unsure of himself. What do I do? Can I eat whatever I want? And dessert? Is there a bathroom here? Can I use it?

After I explained that all-you-can-eat means you can keep going back for more if you want and that includes dessert, and yes, the bathrooms are for everybody, including you, he calmed down and started to enjoy himself.

I´m reminded of my privilege (those many open doors), when the boys feel like they need to whisper, slouch, and try to disappear in public. They have been told repeatedly, ¨You don´t belong here. Go away. And no you cannot have seconds.¨

Alan ate his fill of grilled chicken and french fries. Pepe ate steak and more steak. Germán ate seven bowls of ice cream, and on the walk home, he hobbled like an old man, claiming the ice cream was kicking his insides.

Alan, Jonathon, and I walked back from dinner arm over arm. We often walk this way, like members of a strolling chorus line, like friends. Alan looked up at me and said flatly, ¨I´ve never eaten like that.¨ Alan hadn´t ever eaten like that. He´d never been to a restaurant. He´s never been to a movie or a fair. He´s never even been to a friend´s house to hang out.

Alan, more than any of the boys at the Hogar, is a child of hogars (homes). His mother had AIDS, and since he was two years old he has been a ward of the state. His mom was in the hospital on Monday when we went out to dinner. She died that Thursday.

When I saw Alan on Friday, we hugged. He had already been to the cemetery to bury his mom. When I asked him about it, he had the look of someone who had already done his mourning. He shrugged and smiled, as if to say, What am I supposed to do, it was bound to happen.

I get to go home. No matter what I do in my life, where I go, what clothes I dress myself in, I have parents who love me, and a family that would take me in and even take me out to eat.

I´m coming home, and I can´t bring these boys with me. So what do I do? I don´t do anything. I come home and be me.

So, How was it? It was a year. It wasn´t perfect and neither was I. But I got to say yes to a bunch of guys who are used to no´s. I don´t know how many yes´s I´ve been this year. When we do homework together, when we walk to school, when we go to the park, when we eat together,
Can I play with the flashcards?
Can I carry the ball?
Can we whistle when the train passes?
Can I say the blessing?
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Thank you, boys, for saying yes to me, too.

Andrew

Back to School

(Click on the picture above to see more pictures.)


I woke up early and walked to work in half-light. I could see my breath and my feet in front of me. I had my jacket zipped up to my neck. The Hogar is quiet in the morning. It´s a whisper compared to its daytime bedlam. The boys gathered their bookbags and put on their long white coats that are the uniform in Argentina. I gulped my tea and herded the 9 labcoats out the door. When we got to the schoolhouse doors, I bent down to receive my goodbye-kisses and wish them a good day.

I love back-to-school time. The air is cleaner. Kids are in love with their pencils. They are toting around their backpacks from room to room even though they don´t have homework yet. They are dreaming of having homework. They downright crave school.

In the Hogar, the new season brought many changes. Almost all of the kids are new. We have two new staff people. I´m now a veteran, a knowledgeable person.

Among the new kids are a group of four brothers. Lucas, Matías, Esteban, and Rodrigo range from 11 to 5 years old. When they arrived, they were all in bad shape. The neglect was evident. They looked thin and undernourished. The younger two had open sores on their skin from infections.

Those first few weeks, Lucas cried everyday. Esteban often joined him by lying on the sidewalk with his head on his arms. Rodrigo, a little boy I can only describe as ¨bulldog-beautiful,¨ barely talked those first few weeks. I had to practice with him daily just to get a word or two out of him. And Matías, well, Matías never stops smiling.

Though we´ve welcomed many new boys before, this group of brothers compares to no other group. Their emotions were more raw and visible. They marvelled over the presence of food. They gained weight before my eyes. Their sores went away, and they stopped scratching at lice. For the first time in their lives, they enrolled in school. I watched their lives improve in a matter of weeks.

I often get down about the work that the Hogar does. We do not do everything well. We don´t do all we could. But I have to remind myself that the Hogar is often a world better than where the boys come from.


Two weeks ago, I went to a town far outside the city with an older boy who needed to retrieve his clothes. As he walked around the town´s dirt roads, greeting his friends, visiting his family, I was in tow. I drank super-sweet coffee with his Aunt. I told her her nephew is a big help in the kitchen at the Hogar and she nodded. One little cousin was wearing sunglasses and karate-chopping the air, the other just looked at me, smiled, and giggled. When we went to leave, his grandmother walked over with the aid of a cane so we both could kiss her goodbye.

Sometimes it still strikes me as strange, my intimate intersecting with these lives. For a morning, I saw his whole life as it used to be. His school, his family, the restaurant where he used to cook. The ugliness of his situation. The ties he has to family and friends.

We left empty-handed. His older sister had already taken everything of value from the house. There were no clothes, no furniture, no plates in the cupboards. Mariano just shrugged. ¨There are clothes at the Hogar,¨ I told him. He found a sweater his sister didn´t take, rolled it up, and walked out the front door of his former home. He didn´t bother closing it behind him when he left.


I struggle with not-enoughness. What I do is not enough. What there is is not enough. Not enough meat at dinner for seconds. Not enough staff to care for the kids. Not enough time- just three and a half months left. Not enough faith to actually believe that God, not Andrew, is supposed to fix the world and the Hogar and me.

Today was a good day despite the crying and the throwing of rocks and the hitting. There was studying and hugging and messy eating that leaves a circle of tomato sauce around the mouth. I´m always amazed at how much I can love the Hogar and hate it at the same time. In the midst of my daily frustration, I can lose sight of the bigger picture. The bigger picture is this: Rodrigo speaks in whole sentences now. Lucas is learning to read more rapidly than any boy I´ve ever seen. Esteban still lies down on the sidewalk to cry, but he also plays marbles and does his homework. And Matías smiles. When I see Mariano, he´s often wearing Jorge´s clothes, and I know why. This is all good. All this is enough. It has to be.

Peace,
Andrew

Vacation Pictures

Click on the ¨Photos February¨ link to see pictures from my vacation in Chile.

Vacation

I´ve just returned from vacation. I spent a week with my parents here in the city and another week with my brother in Chile. I enjoyed sharing my life with my family and my family with my community here, but it was difficult to say goodbye for another six months. Soon, I´ll put up a link to my brother´s pictures. He´s a much better photographer than I.

New Photos

Click on the ¨New Photos¨ link to see the latest from Christmas and a graduation ceremony of one of our boys.

And...

If you would like to send a donation to support me in my service, it's not too late.

Instructions:
1. Make checks payable to the Presbyterian Church (USA).
2. Write "Andrew Barron ECO # 074156" on the memo line.
3. Send the check to:

The Presbyterian Church (USA)
Individual Remittance Processing
PO Box 643700
Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700

Reflections on the Present

Friends,

Jonathon was the first boy I met in the Hogar. He´s sixteen and was eager to try what English he knows on me. My first night in the Hogar I sat with a guitar in my hands. The boys were all around me asking me to play pop songs I´ve either never heard or never dreamed of learning on the guitar (How does one play Black Eyed Peas on a classical guitar?). In those first few weeks, Jonathon (who also goes by ¨Harry Sucio¨) was a much needed ally. He helped explain things to me in clear Spanish. He defended me. He introduced me to the customs of the Hogar.

The other day I found him sobbing.
¨I´m going,¨ he said.
¨Where?¨
¨I don´t know.¨
He had had a fight with his brother- also a resident at the Hogar. What hurts, I asked. Nothing, he sobbed. And he meant I´m not hurt, I´m hurting. I gave him no advice. For sure, the teacher in me wanted to sit the brothers down and start conflict mediation. Instead, I gave him a hug, and he went to take a shower. I told him to eat something. Actually, I told him the milk is delicious today and rubbed my tummy furiously in a vain attempt to cheer him up.

The next day I talked to his brother as he walked to work. We talked about having brothers, and what it means to have unconditional love for someone. You see these two brothers don`t fight because they don't love each other; they fight because they do. George shared his wisdom with me. He said, ¨He's all I've got. I don´t want him to leave the Hogar mad at me... but he's so stupid.¨

I´ve learned to wait for these situations, when the relationship building pays off, when I can be completely honest with the people around me, when I speak knowing I´m saying exactly what I mean to say (albeit broken, choppy, and badly conjugated). I´m happier knowing I said my piece (peace). George and Jonathon were happy I took time to let them say theirs.

The brothers, as brothers tend to do, forgave each other without ever discussing what had happened. They are stronger for having gone to that breaking point. And I'm more a part of their community than ever.

Christmas gave me the opportunity to feel my place in my many communities. I shared it with the people at the Hogar and church. I shared it with my host family. I shared it with my fellow volunteers here in Argentina. I shared it with my own family in the United States as they gathered for my grandmother's funeral. I am a member of all of these communities, and they are a part of me.

I didn't give many presents this year, just some bread to the people I know and love here. I sent no cards. Instead, I received. I received presents (including a wallet that says ¨I'm sexy!¨ and a pair of slightly used goggles). I received meals. I received well-wishes, emails, and a pile of Christmas cards. My thanks build up in me, and I think I'll take my time, maybe my whole life trying to show my gratitude. Maybe that's why the church sends us (young adults) out to the many centers of the world, so we will have to receive, so we will be genuinely grateful. I'm learning to receive as an act of love.

I tell myself, I've done the hard part of the year. I've built relationships in my many communities. I'm established now. And yet, I know, that relationship building never ends. Jonathon and George aren't done building theirs with each other, nor I with them. I still struggle in my church community to make myself someone more than just the guy who doesn't know the words to the songs. And after this year, I´ll have new communities to join. For me, Christmas let me feel out my place in all of my communities. It felt good.

Andrew

Quarterly Update

At least a few times this year I will write longer entries that will go up on the PCUSA´s website. Here´s a sneak preview of my update.

Dear Friends,

They told me to walk with the people. In orientation, the ministers and church people, the former volunteers, that´s the advice they gave us. Walk with the people. To me, it sounded a little too much like ¨marching in the light of God¨ (Siahamba...oo-EEE-oo!) I want to do a little more than just walk with people. I´d like to actually do something.

I´m two months into my placement. I work as the Young Adult Volunteer at El Hogar La Casita, a home for street boys, a stop along the social services ¨system.¨ The boys are 8-20 years old. They are rough, some of them, and nice, sometimes. Ask a boy at La Casita why they are there, and you will get a heartbreaking story. Abuse, addiction, abandonment. That´s not who they are, but it is a place they´ve been. I try to keep that in my mind when I´m with the boys.

In the mornings, I walk Luis and Walter to school. Luis is eight and he drags a broken Loony Toons book bag behind him. Walter is twelve and we practice counting in English as we walk: ¨One, two...ten, eleven, Tuesday.¨ I walk them home from school a couple hours later, and my day at the Hogar begins.

I´ve eaten cafeteria food all of my life. Public school, university dining hall, and a private school where I taught last year. I love it. But I have never met a group of young people who appreciate their food more than these boys. Everyday, they ask me, smiles and food on their faces, ¨¿Rico, no?¨ Delicious, huh? ¨Sí, riquisimo.¨ Yes, the most delicious. In cold weather, the oven and the food are all that warm the little room where we eat. The boys and I sit on church pews on either side of mismatched tables. They eat quickly. They clean their plates. They ask for seconds.

After lunch, it´s time to go to the park. The park is 15 blocks away. Not a short trip with these boys. I walk. I try to keep them ¨en grupo.¨ They are spread out over five blocks. Some of them are climbing trees and stealing oranges. I try to save them from traffic. They told me to walk with the boys. They didn´t tell me about traffic. They didn´t tell me that fights would break out mid-avenue. They didn´t tell me that I would have to hold Joaquín´s hand because he wants love and Nahuel´s because he wants to hit Joaquín. They said only to walk. And so I walk. To the park, to school, home, and to work. I ride the bus. I take the train. I close my eyes in the noise and try to hear every sound. I don´t listen to the noise. The Hogar has lots of noise. I listen in the noise, and I break up fights, and I hug a hundred times a day.

It´s dinner time now. I´ve just walked in the gate that separates the boys from the street. I sit down to my dinner with some of the older boys. They are talking about fútbol. Always. And I see Walter outside on the bench. I go out. I put my arms around him until he stops crying. The night is cold and dark. What happened, I ask. He doesn´t have an answer for me. How could he? What happened? That´s like asking the hurricane victim, or the earthquake survivor what happened. This boy doesn´t know. And neither do I.

I´m discovering that walking with people who hurt means that I will hurt. The boys don´t understand why they are where they are, and sometimes I don´t understand why I am where I am. I want to be effective. I want to see my effectiveness effecting change. So far this experience is teaching me that effectiveness isn´t always the bottom line. We often work below the bottom line, where God´s love moves and works.

After dinner tonight, I went with the older boys to collect old bread from the local bread shops. They lumber down the street as only teenage boys lumber, like a graceful stumble that says, I´m too cool to look like I´m actually trying to walk. The boys whistle at girls. ¨Por favor, [expletive deleted].¨ They bum cigarettes from the people on the main drag. One picks through the trash looking for anything of use. One leans close to my ear and says, ¨After tonight, you won´t eat the bread at the Hogar.¨ Some bread shops give us a lot, one gives us none. We finish and I head home for the night.

Five blocks to my house. Depending on the day, I may be tired. I´m often angry. On this walk I air out all of my self-doubt. I didn´t handle that right. I was weak. I wasn´t as loving as I could have been. I stop in the window of an English school. Private academies have sprung up around the city. They´ve decorated the front hallway for Halloween. For a moment I peer through the window and soak up the familiar sights. Jack-o-lantern cutouts taped to the wall, a black witch hat sitting atop the TV. For a moment, I think I should throw open these doors and start a Halloween party. I should declare ¨I speak English perfectly!¨ I want someone to value me for my mind. I want badly for someone to be impressed that I have smart thoughts. I haven´t said anything smart in Spanish. Which means I haven´t said anything smart in two months. And that´s when I get it. As I´m standing on the sidewalk looking at Halloween decorations like they´re modern art, I realize that I´ve spent most of my life wanting people to like me for my brain, my personality, and for funny things I say. And this year, people will love me without any of those reasons. The boys will love me just because I love them.

I look up to see what stars are visible through the city-light pink. I cross the street. I round the corner. I fall asleep.

I can talk about successes. I´ve instituted something resembling consequences with the boys. The social worker and I are entering real discussions about how to improve the Hogar. Many of the boys trust me. The older boys respect me. These are the blocks I´ll try to build on. But for now, I´m trying to be content with where I am and remember that small steps got me here and small steps will get me through the next week.

Peace,

Andrew