This past June, I joined ten other delegates on the annual Global Connections trip to WES’s sister community, El Rodeo, El Salvador.  This was the tenth year that a WES delegation has visited El Rodeo to continue building the partnership between our two communities, and the first year that I had had a chance to participate.  I’ve spent my working life in international development, with a focus on providing financing to developing countries. In all this time, although I’ve spent plenty of time in conference rooms in capital cities, I had never spent time truly ‘on the ground,’ living and working in a local community, so participating in the trip to El Rodeo was a special opportunity for me.  

I had no idea what to expect from the trip, or even a clear sense of the main objective of being in El Rodeo for a week.  Throughout the course of the week, it became clear that the core of the Global Connections / El Rodeo partnership is rooted in the ethical culture principles of thought, action, and intentionality around how to just BE in a relationship to one another, and how to be in relationship with group of people from a very different cultural, social, economic, and political context.  That theme recurred throughout the trip, and it became evident that the trip is as much about how we ARE in relationship to one another, as it is about what we DO when we’re there.  

The trip began with three days in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital. This time gave us a chance to get to know one another, and to think and talk about how we want to be with one another and with the community in El Rodeo. It also gave people a chance to acclimate to a new country, in the tranquil charm of the Hotel Oasis. Lastly, it gave us a condensed education on the history, politics, economy, and culture of El Salvador; this knowledge was a critical part of how to be in relationship with people in El Salvador, because without having some insight into their history and culture, it would have been impossible to have any real access to the life experience in which we were participating.  

This educational component of the trip included meeting with a legislator from the FMLN (El Salvador’s major left-wing political party, created of former guerillas from the civil war fought between 1980-1992); hearing a lecture on Salvadoran history and culture from a community action group leader; visiting Divina Providencia, the chapel and residence of Oscar Romero (an archbishop, revered in El Salvador, who spoke out against poverty, social injustice, and violations of human rights); hearing a lecture on environmental issues such as the country’s mining ban and water privatization; and visiting a pottery studio, and the gallery of Fernando Llort (a renowned local artist). On our way to El Rodeo, we made a stop at Radio Victoria, a community-based local radio station. The themes that came out of this three-day crash course on El Salvador were clear and consistent: the realities of being (30 years later) a post-conflict state, in which the trauma of war is still palpable; the struggle to preserve national sovereignty over natural resources against the interests of multinational corporations; the awareness of El Salvador’s colonial past (Spain) and quasi-colonial present (the US); but also pride – in a national hero who advocated for the disadvantaged, in local art and artisans, and in an independent media giving voice to marginalized Salvadorans. Ultimately, I came away with the sense of a small, proud country, very aware of how little power it has in the global political economy.   

After three days in the capital, we got in our van and drove out to El Rodeo. El Rodeo is a rural community of 32 families, located in a gorgeous area of lush, green hills, with dirt paths connecting the homes with the surrounding woods and fields. Life in El Rodeo is basic; the community has electricity, water that runs to the homes twice a week, outdoor latrines, and a school that educates children through the fifth grade. The main sources of income are corn farming, and migrant family member remittances. For the next eight days, we lived with families in this community, interacting with and living alongside them on a daily basis. The theme of how to be in relationship with people continued to play out in El Rodeo, both in the things that we did there, but also simply through the fact of us being there at all.  

With regard to what WES does in El Rodeo, this is not a ‘mission’ trip or ‘volunteer’ trip – we’re not a development organization and we don’t go to El Rodeo with an agenda in mind for what we intend to do in the community during the week that we spend there. Our work is guided by the ethical culture principle that it be community-driven. The way we want to be in relationship with people in the community is very clear: we are there to support them in determining their priorities that can lead to a brighter future, and to follow their lead in achieving those goals. The week started off with an intensive meeting with the ADESCO, the energetic, local community council responsible for helping to articulate these priorities. This determined – through several hours of active discussion – the activities that WES would support throughout the week: a dental clinic, a health clinic, a field trip, the inauguration of the community water project, a final community assembly, and a fiesta.  

As always, the delegation included dentist Susan Runner, who ran a daily clinic. This clinic has been instrumental in improving dental health and hygiene in the community. Adjacent to her dental clinic, delegates Christina Kachulis and Gabby Santamaria ran a health clinic, where they took people’s height, weight, and blood pressure, and talked to them about choices around nutrition and fitness. These clinics were filled to capacity every day other than Thursday. On Thursday, the delegation took about 50 people from the community on a field trip to a nearby tilapia farm, for a day of relaxation, talking, swimming, and eating freshly harvested fish. Many of the people living in El Rodeo have had limited opportunity to experience much of life beyond the village. They also have limited means to seek out experiences outside of the village, so this type of field trip is something new, different, and interesting.  

The inauguration of the community water project was the culmination of an eight-year effort to make potable water available in the homes. The project involved installing a lower collection tank at the water source, and then pumping the water, via energy produced by solar panels, to an upper collection tank at the top of a hill. From there, the water is delivered to people’s homes via a gravity-fed system. Twice a week, the tap at the upper tank gets turned on, and chlorinated water flows to people’s homes, and into 50-gallon barrels or cement collection basins called “pilas.” This stored water is used for cooking, drinking, bathing, and washing clothes until, several days later, the tap is turned on and water flows once again. This project has been transformational, saving people (generally women) multiple hours a day that were previously consumed with walking to the water source and carrying polluted water, in huge plastic jugs, on their heads, up rock and dirt roads, and back to their homes. The inauguration celebrated the successful start of operations of the water project earlier this year.  

The community assembly took place near the end of the week. The purpose of the assembly was for the community to undertake a ‘diagnostica’, a diagnostic exercise, to identify for themselves what their main priority would be for the next several years. The dozens of attendees broke into groups by age and, on paper, drew their visions of how they saw El Rodeo in ten years. The output of the diagnostica was the decision that their main priority going forward was to build a community center, where the people could gather for learning and group events. This may likely become the next long-term project that WES will support.    

Between the clinics, the field trip, and the inauguration, the delegation kept itself occupied, but there was also a lot of time where it didn’t feel like we were DOING much of anything, other than just talking or listening or spending time with people in the community. But there was value in this unstructured time as well. One aspect of this was learning about what life is like on a day-to-day basis in this type of agricultural community. We went on a walk one afternoon to the corn field tilled by one of the community residents, and discussed with him how the corn harvesting process took place, how much land he tilled, and how much he earned from these activities. Even for me, having worked in developing economies throughout my career, the numbers around how much land he farmed and how little income he received for his corn harvest, were shocking. Part of being in relationship to people in a meaningful way is navigating uncomfortable issues around privilege, fairness, and accidents of history.  

Another, even more important aspect to ‘just being’ in El Salvador was that this is a country that went through a brutal civil war 30 years ago. The war directly affected El Rodeo, whose residents primarily supported and fought with the leftist guerillas against the US-backed, right-wing Salvadoran government. The people here have a long memory of resistance and trauma. We spent one morning going on a historical walk with a resident of the village, where he spoke with great emotion about his experiences during the war. This was not a one-off experience – every delegation has had some similar experience of hearing directly from individuals in and around this community about the brutality that they experienced during the war. These wounds have not fully healed, and part of our role in being in El Salvador is to bear witness to people’s life experiences and personal testimonials and then to take those personal stories back to our own country, and to make people aware of the issues at play in a tiny country with which most people have no familiarity.  

The week ended with an evening fiesta – a party with slideshows, skits, music, and dancing, to celebrate the end of our time in El Rodeo. I hadn’t actually expected to feel any particular sense of closeness to people in the community – this was just my first time participating in a delegation, and my Spanish was only very basic, and we were only there for a week. But somehow, the combination of the background historical and cultural context, along with the clinics, the field trip, the water project inauguration, and the time spent just BEING with people created a relationship. And bearing witness to their daily lives and personal histories somehow did create a real sense of closeness, community, and ‘intercambio’ (exchange). For me, this experience was a fascinating counterpoint to my career in international development, and a completely different way of being with people and building relationship, and is something that I look forward to deepening as I look toward next year’s delegation.  

2019 delegates: Russell Corbin, Peggy Goetz, Jasper Drizin-Kahn, Christina Kachulis, Joh Klein, Abby Oswald, Susan Runner, Gabriela Santamaria, Karen Storms, Jason Weinfeld, Ross Wells