CHIC-ken in the KIT-chen

Wow, so long ago that I was last sitting here in an attempt to share this journey with you all. In fact, three weeks and four countries ago. It almost feels like a lifetime since we were in Mexico. Almost an entirely different world.

So much has happened, but so little has been written in my journal. I just don't really know how to spit most of it out. I think about home a lot. SO many powerful people in my life, that I don't spend enough time keeping up with, and here I am meeting hundreds more that cry when I leave, and ask constantly when I will return. I long to work with communities of youth in the US. While I would love to do it here, I feel at a loss for what I could offer. Will I ever be more than an outsider to foreign communities?

El Salvador was a trip. Its a very dark place with a mask of bight, american billboards. The people are in a rather desperate state, but statistically they are presented to be doing really well economically. There are no jobs, they recently switched to the dollar, the wealth disparities are horrendous, the immigration rate painful, and the cultural beliefs about medical care and education only make things worse.

What do you remember of the US invasion in El Salvador? We went to an incredible war museum in Perqin. Its a tiny town in the mountains, packed with history. The museum was very proud of the struggle that students and campasenos went through, even though they lost in the end. And did they ever lose. Their country is lost in a myth of Americanization and development and progress. But they are beautiful people and enjoy picking up a conversation with Americans when ever they get the chance. An astonishing amount of their country has emigrated to the US, and a sadly large portion of their economy is supported by remittances. If we close the boarders, they will be fucked, as if they weren't already. About one percent of the entire population is in one of the two violent gangs, and 9,000 out of the 12,000 prisoners in the country are gang members.

Often I just can't believe what the world is. What are we supposed to do? Fair Trade certainly isn't solving it, its just perpetuating the atrocities of capitalism. This trip has brought much time for reflecting on capitalism (as I always do) with only small bits of clarity. We spent last night in a gringo resort town in Costa Rica. Yes, a hot shower and washing machine felt nice (though I´m not convinced it feels nicer than a cold bucket shower, its just more custom), but there is just something so perverse about going from a small farmhouse on a volcano on an island in Nicaragua, to 75,000 gallon swimming pools and food from Sam´s Club. Physically we can move easily between these opposite universes, but mentally, its horrendously painful.

Much of this trip exists in a balance between love and hate, energy and exhaustion. When we make our next bus in the nick of time, or when it finally comes after two hours waiting on the side of the road in the rain, we celebrate with a high five or eating some pan dulce. But there is often a struggle inside to be excited to get on yet another bus, for another unknown destination. Most times I love that I have a small backpack with everything I need. Other times, I can´t stand the act of packing it yet again. I almost always love eating beans, rice, tortillas, and hand made juice from local fruit, and doing my laundry in a cement sink. Other times, I miss dearly baking bread and pulling clothes out of the dryer. Daily I see pigs tied up in plastic sacks strapped to the back of bicycles, or legs bound being drug up the back of a bus to be hauled on to the top to be transported alive to the market, making the most painful animal noise I have ever encountered. I see chicken in worn-out blue plastic backpacks on the laps of mothers on the crowded buses. I see boys throw up an empty stomach, and old men spit on the floors of the buses. I see American military stationed in tiny towns in the mountains of El Salvador. I ride on old US school buses that still have the names of my childhood county printed in black letters on the side. I see beautiful smiles, and chilling stares. I battle with where to put my eyes, hands, and mouth when the men are aggressively calling or staring at me.

I get emails from friends around the world, battling for freedom for even the most ´free´countries. Sam was a photographer from Germany who was traveling with the peaceful Zapatista Other Campaign around Mexico. (check out ProjectMex linked on the right) She was arrested and deported by the Mexican government. In her words...

sad empty angry and speechless...violence without ending...

Adam wrote of the atrocities of the US police who repressed a critical mass bike-ride in Denver...
Someone said to a cop that if we were blocking the sidewalk then so was he and that "your not above the law". He turned around and said "yes i am" and not to push it. I couldn't believe it. That was so fucked up.

I think tonight I will dream of our bench on the coast of washington and the wild methow sunflowers of my birth place.

Pura Vida.
Hc