Is that dirt?... or a birthmark?

I looked down at my calf yesterday and wondered if that was dirt on my leg or a birth mark? It is a funny question to ask I realize... I should know if I have a birth mark, as I would have lived with it for almost 25 years now. I shower, but I have spent about 17 months semi-dirty all the time. But seriously, I couldn't figure it out. I tried to wash it off, fail. Turns out I have been stained by El Salvador. 

I have 8 months left, and I am realizing that I have been stained by El Salvador in more way than one. "Stained" sounds negative. I have been marked. Marked for life. It is like a re-birth mark. Forever my life will be defined as before or after my Peace Corps service. 

I am busy, happy, and still learning more than I can take in most days. This week people from home surprised me by donating more than we need for an efficient stove project, and I am working on a few more grants in the next couple months. I thought I would share a teaching tool that we use in the Peace Corps to teach about prejudices and paradigms. I think we can all learn from this.

The Sunglass Story

Imagine that in your own country, from the time of the first people, today, and far into the future, 

everyone who was ever born or will be born was born with two legs, two arms, two eyes, and a pair of 

sunglasses. The color of the lenses in the sunglasses is yellow. No one has ever thought it strange that the 

sunglasses are there because they've always been there, and they are part of the human body. Everyone 

has them.  

  

Take the yellow sunglasses off and look at them. What make them yellow are the values, attitudes, 

beliefs, and assumptions that all people in your country have in common. Everything that they have seen, 

learned, or experienced (past, present, and future) has entered into the brain through the yellow lenses. 

Everything has been filtered and interpreted through all these values that have made the lenses yellow. 

The yellow lenses thus represent your attitudes, beliefs, values, and cultural background.  

  

Far away in another country, from the time of the first people, today, and far into the future, everyone 

who was ever born, or will be born, was born with two legs, two arms, two eyes, and a pair of sunglasses. 

The color of the lenses in the sunglasses is blue. 

  

One day a young traveler goes to that far-away land and realizes everyone sees things differently than he 

does.  What he would describe as being one way, they describe as another.  Then it occurs to him that to 

learn about that country and the people more thoroughly, he will have to acquire blue sunglasses so that 

he can “see” the way they see.   So he gets a pair of blue sunglasses, puts them on, and finally realizes 

what the problem was.  What he had been seeing as yellow, they saw as green! 

The punchline here is that the young traveler wasn’t actually seeing the world the way the others were.  

He had forgotten to take off his own cultural glasses before putting on the blue one of the other country.

I will never be Salvadoran, my world will always be slightly green. No matter how hard I try, I will always be an outsider. The privileged one. I needed to learn that the hard way this year. I can gain their trust, I can integrate, but I don't share their history. 

I am marked for life as the gringa that lived in El Salvador for 2 years. It has changed me. I am grateful for everything they are teaching me. I am grateful for my brokenness, so that everyday I can be made better. 

Keep Spreading the love around.

Chels