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A Challenge to Keep “Walking a Mile in Each Other’s Shoes”

For those of you who are following the progress of “Sanando Corazones” with a map, we are now in the area of Curanipe, at the bottom end of Chile’s 7th region. The devastated areas include both the coastal towns and the rural communities in the interior.

After a teacher seminar I did on Wednesday in a school (a bit in the interior), a teacher came up to thank me for the personal encouragement he had received in the seminar; confiding in me that it had been quite difficult for him at first, knowing that several of the children in his class had watched as walls collapsed on their brothers and sisters, crushing them to death.  Then he added something quite interesting, he said: “I think that with everything that happened in the earthquake/tsunami; and everything that is happening all around us up till now, we tend to just want to block it all out and get on with our lives. Thank you for reminding us that we don’t have to get dragged down by it all, yet each of us was put in this group called ‘humanity’ to encourage each other, help each other, love each other, to make the effort to ‘put ourselves in each other’s shoes’; and not separate ourselves off from each other. Thank you for reminding me about that. Continue reading →

the afternoon snack, made available by the local supermarket and the drinks provided by a small little shop, which is running in a shelter, because their store was destroyed in the earthquake.

Having done the workshops for the children in the refugee camps in Constitucíon, it was requested that we do something to help the mothers also. We have gotten a larger team together in order to do an all day seminar with different activities to help ease their emotional pain and stress, which they’ve been living with for almost two years now…..plus the pain from all of the peripheral problems which have come along as side-effects: loss of major sources of income; husbands having to leave the area to go to different parts of Chile to find work (or sometimes just leaving),  mothers  alone  struggling with caring for themselves and their  children under difficult living conditions; cramped quarters in their temporary  wooden shelters (as well as the fact that the shelters have been crammed in

Outdoor Activities

together  to maximize the use of  each piece of allocated land, leading to social problems); and  feeling the shame of little by little being “grouped”  with the  “poor of the welfare society”  because of their present housing situations and living situations (it’s so easy for the world to forget the causes and merely judge by  present conditions which meet the eye). In some cases stress has led to separations, break downs in community relationships and family structure, and deaths (occurring as an aftermath of long term depression syndrome). Continue reading →

This write up is going to be about people. It can’t be about scenes of beautiful coastal communities of quaint fishing villages, or picturesque homes because it’s too painful to think about such things, as one looks at the destitution and the makeshift wooden shacks that lie on bleak, bare coastal terrain (that used to look so different!). This write-up is going to be about people, because that’s what the “Sanando Corazones” project is all about : people!

What used to be the colonial style city of Constitution lies close to the epi-center of the 2010 earthquake and tsunami. It is also one of the places that suffered a significant loss of life. After the earthquake, we (among many others) made trips to take food, supplies, clothing, blankets, etc. to the makeshift camps of temporary wooden shelters which were set up.  It was, on the one hand, a shocking experience – similar to visiting a city which had recently been bombed out. It was also painful to have to listen to the tragic stories of death and destruction that everyone needed to vent. On the other hand, it was exhilarating to see all of the different volunteers, just like us, who were sacrificing their weekends to make long, tiring trips to lug supplies; and work long hours, helping to build the huts or set up the camps, or doing programs for the refugees, who had lost everything between the earthquake and the three biggest tsunamis that followed in its wake. One definitely felt a sense of unity in the air.

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Before leaving the county of Coltauco in the country’s 6^th region, I stopped in to show the photos of the workshops in Rinconada de Parral to the mayor. As a very kind gesture of gratitude, he authorized the use of the Senior Citizen’s Center that the Municipality owns on the coast, a little to the south of Pichilemu (surfing capital of Chile! Surfers brag that if another tsunami comes they’ll “surf it!”). My plan changed a bit (quite a bit) and instead of going much more south into the 7^thregion, I went south- west and right into a beautiful, millennial paradise called “Laguna de Cahuil”.

view of the Laguna from my bungalow

In times past Laguna Cahuil was one of the major salt producers, being that there was just the right mixture of sea water and fresh water. According to legend, at the time the first Spaniards arrived, salt was being taken from holes in the area and used for trading. The Spaniards took over the salt trading business. “The salt road” ran from Cahuil through the Rinconadas (along the mountains) to Rancagua (and then probably off to Santiago). A twenty mule train carried the bags of salt. The lead mule or “God-mother” wore a bell around her neck. This practice actually continued up till forty years ago. The salt train would stop at different “inns” along the way.    A train was put in around the early 1900’s, which ran east from the coast near Cáhuil, dropping off cars of salt at large meat processing plants; other agro – industries along the way; and ending up at the large copper mine (“El Teniente” – first owned by the US in the early 1900’s as the Braden Copper Co., a subsidiary of the “Kennecott Copper Co.”) against the Andes Mountain slopes. Now, at this point in history, I couldn’t even find the train tracks.

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Nestled in the foothills of central Chile’s coastal range of mountains lies a string of communities that house a portion of the farm laborers who work hard to supply the first world countries with specialty fruit, grown exclusively for exportation. The large farms stretch below for miles in the fertile valley. The roots of these farms (or haciendas) extend back in time to the colonial period, when a feudal system was firmly in place. Workers dedicated their lives to the “estate”. In turn, the “lord of the manor” cared for his workers, as a sort of “godfather” figure. Some cared well for their workers, and some were of the “cruel tyrant” variety……and so the story of the history of much of the rest of the world has also gone. Continue reading →