Eucharist in the City of Garbage

“Eucharist  in the Garbage City”

During our years with Alfalit in Latin America, Trudy and I hosted “Latin American Awakenings.” LAA's  consist of immersion groups, rather rather mission teams. Immersion groups live experience communities and learn from them and their reality. Mission teams focus on projects that help the community.

Immersion teams consist about ten Americans who are  with marginalized Latin Americans. The immersion groups would spend the entire time in one community.

We climbed into two pick-up trucks and travelled to La Ceiba, on the Caribbean coast. La Ceiba is the port where most of the bananas from Honduras are imported to the United States.

La Ceiba would be our residence for next ten days. 

The daily routine was after getting up, individual devotions, breakfast, and a brief reflection by Rolando telling us about the activities for the day. This included visits to the barrios, where its inhabitants would educate the students about lives.incllude

The curriculum was designed by the community. This included the history of their community and their country; the reasons for their systemic poverty; why thei were poor. The students experienced their faith particite in their Bible studies. 

They learned about the corruption and violence of their government, and the intervention of the United States in the internal affairs of their country and the abuse of their human and civil rights.  

The policy of the United States' since 1947 was to "contain communism." The American government propped up Latin American regimes, who identified what they considered subversive, accuse them as communist, then eliminate them with US support.

In the afternoon we would return to the residence for showers and siestas, until supper.  

After super we would engage in the most important activity of the day.  This was the time for feedback by the students and their reactions to the experiences. Because the group was thrust into another culture, and into situations of poverty many were and emotioinal disoriented. They had never seen poverty at this scale.

Few Americans see children begging in the streets with dirty faces and with tattered and dirty clothes.  Without realizing it and from their perspective of  privilege, from their experiences back home, they assume that these children are neglected by their parents. "Why don’t their parents bathe and clean them up?" These students, as is often is the case, want to clothe and feed them on the spot. They feel guilty because they have so much while the children and their parents have so little. This exposure will give them a perspective on the real causees of poverty and how the marginalized will find the tools for lifting themselves out it.

During this after supper discussion, this issue would be put into perspective of the reality that so many marginalized people live with – the lack of clean water to wash clothes, to take baths, and to drink. Poor communities are often isolated onnts  rocky hills- the good land owned by the wealthy.  The only water source, often over a mile away comes from a polluted river. Children and women spend the better part of the day going up and down the hill with any container they can find, hauling the putrid water- time better spent for the children to be in school.  Under these conditions, all are infested with parasites, and many infants die from diarrhea, a very preventable disease.  Lack of plumbing and electricity causes very unsanitary conditions.  These are some of the reasons poor people are caught in an endless cycle poverty. 

Transformation into a worldview is the beginning of the student’s education.  Sometimes, we worshipped at a local chapel.  Sometimes local leader would give a talk about an issue confronting the people and the country in their struggle for a better life.  Participants were encouraged to journal and reflect on their daily experiences.  This resource would become their textbook when they returned home.

The day before we left Honduras, we had just finished the evening meal, when Rolando, as if on a whim, told us to climb on the trucks.  We had no clue where we going.  The sun was setting as we left the city.  Soon I smelled garbage.  We stopped on the side of the highway.  Rolando told us to get out. We crossed the road and entered a garbage dump.  In the twilight, we saw the shadows of people of all ages working through the piles of garbage that the trucks had dumped during the day.  Tractors moved among the people, children, women, and men piling up the garbage. People ran behind the big machine hoping to find something of value that they sell the next day in the city.

We moved along.  I wondered what the reaction was with these white, middle class, US Midwest students, far from their homes and definitely not in their comfort zones.

Rolando stopped and we gathered behind him.  He greeted a young man standing in front of his shack that served as his home.  While conversing with him, we could hear some clinking and the sheet that covered the door rustled.  Then we saw the man’s wife come out with a small tray and four cracked cups filled with coffee.  She greeted us with the traditional, open hospitality practiced in all of Latin America.  For cups of coffee and 12 North Americans.  I said to the students, we must accept the coffee, regardless of its dubious sanitation.  We prayed over the cups as the Spirit washed them clear, and we hoped that the boiled water in the coffee would have been rid of all the bacteria from the polluted water gathered nearby.  

I fell back and the Holy Spirit took over as we began to celebrate the Eucharist. We passed the cups around the circle, with the couple among us, our bodies became the Body of Christ. The Universal Christ was incarnated in that moment. The Catholics refer this moment when the bread and wine are transfigured into the body and blood of Christ – the Transubstantiation.

The Christ present with us as he promised when we celebrate Eucharist together. “Do this in Remembrance of Me. This moment was our common Epiphany as we entered into this liminal space.  Time slowed to Kairos, a significant moment in time.  The students were not the only transformed that evening.  So was I.