Dearest Rachel –
Yesterday was a day of trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing here. I’m scheduled to work on building pilas – those concrete water basins that hold something like a hundred gallons or so that Just One is trying to supply to as many homes in El Socorro as possible – today, and tomorrow I’ve got the classes I’ve really come down here to teach. But yesterday was a case of finding my place on a day in which I’ve nothing specifically scheduled.
To be sure, I suppose I could have joined the pila team for a preview of what to expect for today, but it’s not like I haven’t done the job in the past; I may not be an expert on the process, but it’s not my first rodeo, either. Besides, it so happened that, mixed in with all of the medical supplies that had been sent down ahead of us, there were a few boxes with art and craft supplies that needed to be found and unloaded in time for the morning’s classes, so it was a slightly urgent matter to attend to.
Granted, it proved to be a little bit more difficult than originally expected, since among the craft items were also various makeup paraphernalia (for the team assigned to work with the local women this week), and I’ll be honest, I can’t always tell them apart from the medical supplies. If nothing else, they all look like items one would find in a drugstore back home. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone in the search; several other members of the education team joined me in the library to sift through the various boxes – and since most of them were female, they could tell what was medical and what was cosmetic. So we managed to locate everything that was needed for the class before it was scheduled to take place.
However, by then, the pila team had already left for their first… what would you call it? Client? Delivery? Neither word quite works to describe these families and what the organization does, to be honest. In any event, the task was done, and there wasn’t an option for manual labor at the moment. In retrospect, I probably could have collected a garbage bag and my grabber and gone out to gather trash on the local roads. But in the moment, that didn’t cross my mind.
I was invited, however, to sit in on another class already in progress in the education wing; not in the classroom proper, but in the lobby (if you could call it that) of that part of the building. Brian was leading a small group on various forms of health: not just physical and mental, but intellectual, relational, vocational (although in this setting, that would primarily involve school as opposed to ‘work’ proper) and especially spiritual. That last in particular, as it is the one upon everything else balances; if you haven’t got your spiritual house in order, the rest of the things will be on shaky ground as well.
I wasn’t about to tell him about how I rated myself in each of those aspects of health. Some of them may be affected due to my age, but most of them, I rated rather worse than the rest of the group. I think it’s because, overall, I know how much I don’t know; how far I fall short of where I want and ought to be. But at least we weren’t required to share that self-evaluation; otherwise, what would they think of a teacher who was less together than his students?
***
Anyway, the afternoon was a little less in the way of requiring self-reflection; this had more to do with the manual labor most of us came down here to do. The campus is in need of an expansion, due to the increasing caseload of local folks who need assistance (in all six aspects of health, as it so happens, but at least they recognize their own needs), and they have big plans for the place.
In fact, the big project on campus that is to be undertaken is to run water, electric and sewage lines to the back end of the property and back. But again, this was not what was being taken care of today; today, we were setting up a fence around the community garden that had been established late last year (as in, a week or two after I’d gotten back from the place for the first time in July).
I couldn’t help thinking, as we lifted cinderblocks in place and dug the post holes, how much easier this was to assemble in Minecraft compared to real life. Real life isn’t like it is portrayed on one’s computer, where a single flick of the wrist can put a series of perfectly-aligned boundary stone in place. Here, dirt must be either piled up or scraped out to ensure that everything is standing evenly (otherwise the next layer won’t balance properly, and the layer after that, and so on). And even loosening up a small circle of dirt two feet deep is a challenge that takes two of us several minutes; in the virtual world, all twenty would have been dug out in that time and posts assembled.
Then again, it the digital world, one can punch a section of trunk clean out of a tree – and the entire tree above you will still be hovering above the stump – so I should be aware just from that how unrealistic that world really is. Still, it would be nice is real life were so easy.
In any event, we’re going to have another day of such labor ahead of us (assuming it doesn’t rain, like the forecasts suggest). Keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 