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A few quick announcements:

1. Online, tax-deductible donation is now available through PayPal here! (For more information about donations and supporting our work in El Salvador, please visit the "Support" tab.)
2. Posts and comments are welcome! If you would like to share anything in response to a post - thoughts, questions, your favorite song lyric that happens to be oh-so-apropos - please do!
3. If you would like to receive all blog updates in your email inbox, click the "Subscribe" icon in the menu to the right of this window.

There have also been a lot of questions about when I actually leave. Here are all relevant dates:

May 15th is my final day with Anchor QEA (my current company where I work as an environmental scientist and consultant).

June 11th is my final day in Seattle, after which I am flying back to Boston to live and be with my family.

~ September 7th I move to El Salvador! My mom made the request that I be home for my birthday and my parent's 25th anniversary (September 3rd), which seems fantastically reasonable to me.

Keep the questions and comments coming, and, as always, thank you for your love, support, and curiosity.

Con amor,

HP

Navigating

I’m sitting on the back porch of my house, basking in the sun in Seattle.

Let me say that again… basking in the sun… in Seattle.

It’s gorgeous here, and I have a bowl of wheat farina cooked with honey and cinnamon fresh off the stove with sliced banana. There’s birds, there’s kids laughing in the background, the whole yard is covered in dandelions and those white fluffy things you make wishes on when you’re a kid. I had to look around and tell myself… just hold on a sec. You’re sitting right in the middle of heaven.

A later expedition from this afternoon which resulted in scoop of coconut + scoop of salted caramel + waffle cone.  Yummmm.

Because all this morning from the moment I woke up I’ve been stressed. I’ve had a to-do list in my head, I’ve been running in circles thinking of writing this post, setting up more donations, fixing my car and figuring out how to sell it, and surely there’s something I’m forgetting… there’s always something next, something more. But then there’s paradise if only I could just stop and look around.

I’ve had a lot of talks about development recently.  I wonder why so many people in the world want to end up where we are here in the US. I see people stressed, unsatisfied, confused, unhappy. Like we’re all trying to get somewhere, and even when you’ve “arrived,” there’s always somewhere else to go. I know I do. I’m always pushing to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing… my mom lovingly calls it my “disease.” 

I think that in a lot of places, that is what development can look like.  It starts off as an empirical thing – I want X, and to get it, I need Y. Let’s get a hold of Y and then we’ll have X. Simple. Done. Poverty solved. Except now that I have X, I want Z…

Oh dang… I think I just got the epic moral behind “When you give a moose a muffin.”

I don’t mean to be cavalier about what I have – I don’t mean to dismiss clean water, medicine, great food, beautiful friends... but I do! Unless I’m writing a blog post and doing all this self-reflection business, I completely forget to sit and relish the beauty around me.

A friend in Portland asked me, “Why you? Why don’t they get someone from El Salvador to do your job since you’ve never even been there before?” A great question for which I had no answer.

I don’t have answers, just a whole bunch of questions and a really long to-do list. But I am starting to realize that no matter where I go or whatever career I jump to, I won’t be happy unless I learn to appreciate exactly what’s around me in the moment. Like this sunshine. Like the fact that I’m blissfully exhausted from capoeira yesterday. That I can call up a friend and in a few hours I’ll be hiking in some of the most beautiful wilderness I’ve ever seen. And then I’ll go to El Salvador where those things don’t exist, but other things do. And I just need to learn to see them. And so even without answers, I can have awareness. Awareness of a new place and new people (and a new me) that will likely lead to more discovery and joy than if I had “answers” in the first place.

It is official! I am moving to San Salvador in September to work with Cristosal as a member of the Young Adult Service Corps.

That was a lot of information in one sentence... allow me to break it down.

In January, I met with an old friend over coffee. He was my boss many years ago when I taught environmental science, and we share a love of Spanish, intellectual debates about development, and really tasty caffeinated beverages.

I told him that I was frustrated working at a desk, and though my job as an environmental scientist is interesting and important, I missed people - that sense of being truly integrated in someone else's life and know that what you do makes a real difference for them. My friend suggested I speak with Noah Bullock, a buddy of his and the Exectuve Director of an extraordinary anglican, human rights organization named Cristosal in San Salvador.

Actually, let me rephrase. Cristosal isn't directed by Noah - I learned in talking to him that it is directed ultimately by the members of the communities they work in. Each project is the product of many conversations, facilitated by Cristosal's staff and driven by each individual voice at the table. It sounded too good to be true, but despite my best efforts, I have yet to find any evidence to the contrary.

Jose Lopez, one of Cristosal's lawyers, meets with community leaders from La Anemona to discuss legislation to legalize their land. In 2009, Hurricane Ida destroyed their former hillside community, forcing them to relocate.

I will be working with Cristosal as a member of the 2013 Young Adult Service Corps (YASC). Though I was not raised in any religious tradition (unless you count Star Wars and the Red Sox), YASC's definition of mission resonated deeply with my own purpose:

"Responding to people’s physical needs is very natural... but we should never forget that our first call is to be in relationship with others and to respond to God’s call for reconciliation. We are called to listen to one another’s stories...We are not all called to travel across continents or to visit prisoners, but we are all called to love our neighbor as ourselves."

My goal in moving to San Salvador is to learn from the best. It is also to seek humility and grace in the face of obstacles that are bound to come my way. I gotta admit, I used to be a bit of a smarty pants. Before I lived in Nepal in college, I thought I was going to fix poverty. Literally. I was going to take my college education and solve suffering.

I think it takes an extreme sense of humility, patience, and love to be able to come face-to-face with someone's pain and not immediately want to do something, ANYTHING, to make it stop. But that immediate reaction is not always the helpful one because it's meant to make me feel better. In the end, I want to work with Cristosal because I want to learn how to listen and see someone not as their poverty or their situation or their circumstances, but as my neighbor and my friend.

Though YASC covers over half of our costs, I am responsible for raising $10,000 to cover my insurance (medical, dental, and emergency evacuation), housing, flights, and training. When you break it down, each day of my year with Cristosal costs about $30. If you would like to contribute and make my trip and Cristosal's work a reality, please visit the "Support" tab above!

Many thanks, and salud!
Hannah