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FAMILY JOY
By Fr. Timothy Conlan, O.P.
Rabinal, Guatemala.
I suppose all of you are looking forward to the season of
Advent in preparation for Christmas with the wonderful
traditions of the Advent wreath and the candles that
announce the coming of the Savior who came to live among us.
The feast itself often is the occasion for celebrations at
schools, at work, and it often brings together families.
However, we have added so many dimensions to the feast of
the Birth of Jesus that it sometimes seems incidental that
it is called Christmas because Jesus is no longer at the
center. Perhaps it should be called Gift-mas, Partymas or
Journeymas. However, at the core of the feast is a very
secular reality, that is, Jesus was born like everyone of us
in a family in a time and place with all the colorful
traditions of the Jewish culture. Each country and race adds
its own colors and shapes to make the feast its own.
What could fulfill more the message of Christmas than to
unite with our family or friends and try to live that
message of love with those closest to us. It is the sequel
to Jesus’ last gesture from the cross just before He
expired, when He told His beloved disciple, John, to take
His very mother, Mary, as his own, and told Mary to take the
disciple as her own son.
So it is that we the followers of Jesus are united in the
Family of God, the Church. It is a religious act to take
time to share our life’s experiences with our own family and
include others who have no family. Let me share one
experience with you from my life in Rabinal.
I was living with a family in a village at the 5,500-foot
level on a mountainside with a great view of the surrounding
valleys. They have a few patches of steep land around their
house, (30 x 30 yards) where they plant corn. They also have
some land of the same size across the valley and also down
near town, 2,500 feet below. The father goes down to look
for work as a laborer in town each day. He rises at 3 a.m.,
rides his bicycle 6 miles and 2,500 feet below in the dark
on a very steep and rocky dirt road. He is lucky if he gets
three days of work a week. Sometimes he can make up to $6.00
a day, but usually it is $3.50 a day. He returns at 7 p.m.,
walking his bike. Sometimes his work starts at 4 a.m. and
finishes at noon, so he then works on his field or looks for
another job. When he has no work in town he goes to the
mountains (2,000 feet up) to cut kindling wood for cooking.
His wife is a catechist, and a community leader in the
school, the clinic, and the community gardens. They have six
children: the oldest is a 15-year-old boy in his second year
of high school at the Centro de Formation where he is
learning to be a tailor. He leaves the house at 6:30 a.m.
each day on his bike to go to town and returns pushing his
bike up the 2,500-foot, seven-mile grade at 7 p.m. It takes
two hours, if you are young and strong.
The family also has a girl in 4th grade, a boy in 3rd
grade, a two-year old, and a three-month old baby. The
sister of the husband, a 14-year-old, lives in the house as
a domestic helper. The grandmother visits daily to help with
the housework. The family has adopted two girls: one is 13
years old in the 6th grade. Her parents both died. She hopes
to attend the television high school, which we helped to
start three years ago. The other girl is 10 years old; her
father is in jail for killing her mother.
They have one cow, which must be milked each day. Often
they keep it across the valley an hour away. The mother
leaves each morning at 7:30 once the children have gone off
to school, carrying the baby in a cloth sling over her back.
She walks down a steep trail to the valley, then up the
mountain to the other side to milk the cow. She returns at
10 a.m. to start fixing lunch. Meanwhile the grandmother
begins preparing the corn. They shuck it, strip the grains,
boil it in limewater, drain and grind it, and make 150
tortillas for lunch and dinner. She makes cheese from the
cow’s milk, by putting in the element that coagulates it and
straining it through her fingers. This is a lot of work.
The family keeps pigs to sell and chickens and turkeys
that roam around the house, mostly outside but always trying
to enter, scratching for food and looking for the leavings
of corn. The family has cats and dogs. The former keep the
mice from eating the corn, and the latter make sure no
strangers come near without facing a mouth full of vicious
teeth.
They live in a two-room adobe house. The children sleep
in one room and the parents sleep in the room at the side of
the wooden platform where the corn is kept. Their meager
harvest of corn only lasts half the year. They eat very
little beans or meat since they must buy those. Their beds
are made of strung cord. The kitchen is 10 x 7 feet and most
of it is taken up by the adobe stove and grill and two small
tables to keep the grinder and the kneading stone, along
with a stand-up cupboard. They have a couple of tiny wooden
chairs for children and one large plastic one that they
offer to me.
One great blessing is that they have good clean water
that is piped to the garden faucet where they have their
wash-stand. They have electricity for a few 50-watt bulbs
and a radio, but have no other appliances.
I think you can see that they live hand-to-mouth, on the
very edge of survival, but what a joy to watch them gather
over their meals. At lunch they all crowd into the tiny
kitchen and the mother listens to the tales of all the
children. As they chatter away in the Achi language, they
pass the little ones around and play with them. There is
much news and she talks at length and gives her advice. She
is the queen who governs with real wisdom. In the evening
the dad comes in and sits down and he and his wife talk,
while the children sit and listen and all share. Children
come and go from the kitchen, but for at least an hour and
half all are present while they eat seated on whatever is
handy. They all drink copious amounts of sweetened coffee,
which they grow and roast themselves. The dad has an old
bass guitar missing a string and a regular guitar and likes
to sing and play his guitar. He has an accordion that partly
functions, but he manages to relax with a few songs. His
oldest son is learning.
I wonder how many families in our highly wired world
enjoy that kind of sharing every night, not interrupted by
the phone, the television or whatever? All hands are busy
shelling little squash seeds that they sell for 10 cents a
pound to dealers for making cooking oil. It is slave labor,
but they do it because they have no other income. If they
had a coop with a truck to sell the seeds in the capital
they could get four times the amount.
You can see how difficult it is to support the boy who
studies in town because they not only had to pay for his
tuition, books, and uniform ($50 a year) but also there are
costs for the material he uses in his tailoring. It can be
quite expensive, even if at some point he can sell his wares
when he is good enough. This year I am offering this family
(and 15 other families in the area) a scholarship for
computer classes in town with money for transportation since
it was an intensive course with two trips to town each week
and they had to get back for the afternoon classes for the
television school. Since the boy finishes high school this
year, we are hoping he can qualify for a technical school in
the capital and we can find the money to pay for his living
in the capital. We hope to help 20 students this year for
college. We have a scholarship program that is only able to
help a few students because of lack of funds. For a college
student it costs $500 a year in the capital, $350 a year in
Rabinal, and $100 a year for computer school.
You must remember that here in Rabinal, many families
were torn apart 20 years ago by the genocide that took
place: 5,000 people were murdered – almost one-fourth the
population. The result is 2,000 widows who lost their
livelihood. There is great instability of family life. In
the past, most of the youth have gone to the capital to work
in sweatshops. Rabinal exports 90% of its youth each year
since it is one of the poorest areas of Guatemala. We hope
to help them get at least a high school education and a
chance for a better job. They come back often to look for a
wife and also for the many religious festivals. Perhaps
those who have no family are the ones that value it the
most. This is a great challenge to the Church here.
You can see what a joy it is for me to be included in the
gathering of these families. I hope your Christmas brings
you the same joy as you gather in the Family of Jesus, the
Church. Thank you for remembering us here and for helping
these Mayan people.
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