I hope this
finds you well, wherever you are! I just wanted to write a quick update about
the work I continue to do thanks to CRISPAZ’s generous supporters
These past few months
have been a whirlwind, hence the lack of blog entries, but they have been quite
full of activity.
As Maria explained, we have been working with male youth in
a detention center doing art therapy workshops, and we have also been working
with amazing young women a minor’s detention center in Ilopango. The young
women we work with are so full of life and dreams yet most of them serve 5 to
15 year sentences for crimes they may or may not have committed. Since the
maximum sentence for minors was raised from 7 to 15 years, youth coming into
the centers are even more overwhelmed and have less motivation to “change”
knowing that they will be living so many years within the same walls.
Our work
consists mostly in one-on-one sessions with about 30 of the women in the
center, where we listen to their fears, secrets, aspirations, and often
unspeakable pasts and simply write as they speak. Through this simple exercise
the girls realize that they are already poets and that they speak of a wisdom
that comes from lessons learned in the streets, one that has everything to do
with a gritty reality far different than that which scholars paint with their
prose.
Having done this exercise repeatedly for a
year and a half with the majority of the women in the center, we can see that
the culture of the center in itself is beginning to change slightly. Girls come
to us with 10 poems that they’ve written on their own, wanting us to type them
and give them back to them for their portfolios.
They tell me things like “I was so sad one night I did not even want
to exist, but there was a tiny ray of light shining onto my bunk bed so I got
out my pen and began to write. Here’s what I came up with, I don’t know if it’s
any good…” And inevitably the ensuing words speak of doubts, insecurities,
hardship, and a longing for a God that they perhaps have yet to feel fill the
spaces of neglect and abuse these women have suffered for years.
Others will
tell me, “I was bored to death in computer class because all we do is play
solitaire, so instead I wrote these poems, I don’t know if they’re any good…”
And again their words shock me as they reveal themselves as the poets they have
always been, yet perhaps are finally expressing for the first time.
At times this
work can be exhausting, overwhelming, and can seem like such a tiny drop in the
bucket of ignorance, abuse, and discrimination that plague these women’s lives,
yet there are always rays of hope that illuminate our work in the Center.
Recently as I was leaving, one of the young women who I have come to love as if
she were a long-lost sister of mine told me “You know, I barely know you, but I
feel that you are one of those people who has really marked my life, because
you’ve helped me to discover who I really am.”
Her words
floored and humbled me, and I left with such a feeling of gratitude. Despite
the multitude of setbacks and despair we encounter in our work, if I can
facilitate others’ discovery of their true selves, their loving,
well-intentioned, God-like selves, this work is well worth the effort.
Jenna Knapp
CRISPAZ Compañera (Long Term Volunteer)
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