Untold Stories from Unheralded Countries
Connecting with people wasn’t always easy for me. Connections often are all about shared interests and experiences, and being homeschooled until high school I didn’t always have much of the latter. It’s actually pretty funny now, thinking back on those awkward teen years. Learning at home did wonders for my academic development, but I feel like it left me a step behind socially. As such, it’s no wonder to me that my first experience abroad in Ecuador was a crash course in finding myself, while making new friends in the process. As my oldest friends and former pains-in-my-ass will tell you, there was a pretty big change that happened between 2005 and 2006. My year as a Rotary Youth Exchange student changed who I was, and altered who I wanted to be.
Once I got the travel bug, it dug itself a spot in the pit of my stomach and grumbled, much like that last slice of pizza you couldn’t bear to wrap up and just HAD to eat at the restaurant. My experience in Ecuador was one where I lived in affluence, but still got a closer look at poverty than I ever had before. The sight of makeshift cardboard homes dotting the mountainside on the outskirts of Guayaquil is one of those moments that stays permanently infused in my brain. I knew at that point that I wanted to do something for those people.
My Peace Corps service in El Salvador brought me closer to poverty than I’d ever been. I saw how people make due with what they have, and they really don’t seem as miserable about it as I thought. Simply put, you’ll eat beans and tortillas every day if all you have are beans and tortillas. You enjoy the running water while it lasts, and if you poop in a hole, that hole better be deep.
My $300/month stipend was a higher wage than lieutenants of the Salvadoran military, and everyone still asked me how much my cool MacBook and Kindle cost. Even in poverty, I was the rich white kid.
I learned a new way of life in El Salvador, just as I did in my earlier trip abroad. In Ecuador, I learned to party. In El Salvador, I learned to work. While the former took my social life to unexplored heights, the latter has allowed me to connect with immigrants here in the US all the more.
I saw how people make due with what they have, and they really don’t seem as miserable about it as I thought.
My job today consists of building relationships with people, in the hopes that they trust me enough to believe me when I tell them that State Farm is going to be there for them when shit hits the fan. What I enjoy most is talking to our Latino clients. The simplicity of hearing a woman say that she needed to grab dos coras from her car made me realize that she was Salvadoran, and secured a consistent pupusa connection for the office (from which I think EVERYONE has benefited). I’ve spent time reminiscing with clients about bean harvests, fresh elotes, and the joys of gutting and frying cusuco (that’s armadillo for all you non-Salvadoran folk). While my US friends’ eyes understandably glaze over hearing these stories, theirs perk up.
My time spent as a proxy government worker with a non-profit to reunify immigrant kids with their families in the US was surprisingly less relatable. I had the good fortune of spending 2 years in a relatively calm spot on the map in El Salvador. I was always aware that many of these towns ran rampant with violence, but I rarely saw it in my town. Hearing the stories of these children, who had been beat up by gangs and seen their family members extorted, raped, and killed was another side that I never got to see.
I loved talking with those kids about soccer, missing pupusas, and why cat-calling women is the first step in being a douchebag. I also realized that part of me just couldn’t relate to what they were going through. I never doubted the veracity of those stories for one second, and I hope and pray that the judge they appear before feels the same way.
No matter the country, I’ve heard heartwarming stories from fellow returned Peace Corps volunteers (also known as RPCVs) in Chicago about connecting with folks from their country of service. From the Moroccan restaurant whose owners swoon when they hear actual Moroccan Arabic, to the Azerbaijani traditions of drinking vodka and telling stories, we all find our connections in a city as diverse as this one.
In an increasingly globalized world, it can only do us good to connect with people who don’t look, talk, or think like us (us in the collective sense of me and you, the reader, whomever you may be). The first two goals of the Peace Corps were all about learning another culture and teaching our culture and values to others (which I often chose to do through the majesty of Sublime, Mac ‘n' Cheese, and the card game appropriately named UNO). Connections make that which is human seem more human.
If there’s anything I’ve learned, and continue to learn, it’s that we’re all very different. Different isn’t always bad, it’s just… different. Those differences define us as individuals and groups, and should force us to reconcile, though many at the top would campaign otherwise. Still, those instances of humanity that we all share can bring us together in profound ways. When we can share experiences without pandering, and share ideas while actively listening to others, we can start to see some real social progress being made. Every person has a story, if you’re willing to hear it. It doesn’t require you to go halfway around the globe to experience it first-hand. While it may be hard to understand, all it takes is for you to listen.
