Sadly, the summer has ended. No more mystery meat sandwiches, no more adventurous rides in my jeep, no more drawing at the river's edge, swinging kids around in El Callejon or listening to Francisco's wonderfully probing questions. Wait a minute... I still get to do those things... just not with awesome and zany teams from the States!The second to the last outreach brought Brelle de Groot and Matias Mora from Tulare, CA, with Gerred Wilkie from upstate New York. A smaller team, but with larger than life personalities! This group took quickly to teasing each other like siblings, as well as engaging the community of El Callejon at a deeper level. One of the students, a fluent Spanish speaker, really spent time getting to know the ladies that gathered out in front of our portion of wall. In fact, the area where we were painting the community calls "El Parque de Francia", which means Francia's Park (since the gathering place is right in front of Francia's house)
and everyone gathers there because a huge shade tree grows behind the wall, providing some respite during the hot midday sun. Women will meet there mid-morning to style one another's hair, gossip about the neighbors and sort of keep an eye on all the naked and half-naked kids running around. After 5 outreaches, the town was more than comfortable making friends with this new group. Some of the kids even tried teaching us a sort of Spanish pig latin they'd come up with using the word 'chi' in front of every syllable of every word: Chi-bue, chi-nos, chi-di, chi-as (Buenos Dias: Good Morning) They speak it so fast, I don't know how they understand one another. Even some of the moms have picked it up and when they wanted to say something so we wouldn't understand, we'd here this round of what sounded like clucking hens and then laughter. It was delightful.
My very last group (*sniff*) were deigned the 'Calibraskans' (3 from California- Amy Wright, Hannah Larson, Maria Fandl; 1 from Nebraska- Alexandra Heller) and, as I said about them at the banquet, they were girls I would have hand-picked to be my very best friends in high school. Artsy, dramatic, gentle, hilarious, loyal and caring, these four ladies learned the true meaning of 'Today is my BEST day'. During the last few outreaches, Francisco really focused on this statement, a phrase he says to himself when he wakes up every morning. For some reason, with this group, he reminded them of it everyday. And truly, after two weeks of art labor, on their very last day, the very last day we would be painting murals in El Callejon, it was the BEST DAY. All the children we had been playing with, talking with, hugging and chasing around, crawled out of the woodwork, canvased the entire community and brought us flowers from every bush that could be found. We were covered in flowers!! It felt like it was coronation day with God saying, 'Well done, good and faithful servants!' I will never forget it, and I'm sure they won't either.
31 murals in all. Wow. Ready to do it again next summer?? To all the teams who came down and loved the community of El Callejon, THANK YOU. I hope many of you come back next year. Yeimi, Franklin, Tule, Yoemi, Noelia, Yenny, Yensy, Yuliani, Gabriel,Loreini, Estefani, Oscarina, Paula, Luz Maria and all the others will be waiting!Thanks, also, to my wonderful friend and part-time intern, Brianne Hofsommer, who helped make my summer a royal affair.
Stay tuned for upcoming reports on: So, what goes on at the art site when summer teams are NOT there??
Blessings!
