Chapod

Wherever you have dreamed of going, I have camped there, and left firewood for you when you arrive - Hafiz

I've been putting off writing this post because I can't figure out a way to put the week I just had into words. I'm going to do my best.

The world we lived in for seven days was small, pretty much consisting of the gravel road between the elementary school for the village of Chapod and our house. During the day, we'd sometimes travel outside of that world, to visit other Mapuche communities (Chile's primary indigenous people group) multicultural schools and the city of Temuco.

The road home

But in the afternoons, we'd walk home, turning off the road in pairs to our respective homes, until six of us reached our shortcut. Then we'd duck through the slats in a fence, cross a few cow pastures, and leave Sloan and Lane at the top of hill, where their sister for the week would run out to meet them. Then we'd walk down past the grazing calves and wave goodbye to Alex and Koral, our neighbors who shared our bathroom, enter through the gate into the yard with the laundry hanging from a barbed wire clothesline and piglets underfoot munching on fruit peels, and Amanda and I would be home.

Outside the front door, featuring the mama pig

Inside, we'd snuggle on the couch with our five-year-old sister Daniela, watch Phineas and Ferb, page through an animal-themed coloring book (both of these experiences helped me learn a new word: ornitorrinco, platypus), or read aloud from Donde viven los monstruos. 

Some days we helped our mom, Miriam, make bread. Not a day passed when she didn't measure flour from a giant sack under the counter, pound the dough with strong hands, and leave it to rise under the windowsill where a small wooden box read El Señor es mi pastor, nada me faltara. There was a modern oven in the house, but the bread was still baked in a woodstove, which also served to keep five kettles constantly ready with hot water.   

Eventually we would make our way outside to play, knocking on the neighbors' door to invite Alex and Koral and their sister Fernanda. The call to play was usually Mati's doing. Mati was 14, and both Amanda and I were expecting a 14-year-old host brother to be way too cool for us, but instead he was the best brother anyone could ask for. We taught him how to play ninja and he taught us how to tease in Spanish. I'm especially fond of the song he wrote about me after a community soccer game. It went something like this: "Laura plays soccer. But she's afraid of the ball. She never scores a goal. Believe in yourself Laura!! You can score a goal!"

Amanda and Mati were the prominent ninja players

After several games of What time is it Mr. Fox?, Untie the knot, and Sardines (My youth group/babysitting arsenal came in handy) we'd be called in for supper. We'd sing a prayer, then dig in to the fresh bread (sometimes sopapillas, the fried masterpiece I'd been warned about) lettuce salad (Mati's favorite) and delicious meat. We'd recount stories of the day to Danny, who, after accidentally bruising Amanda's arm during the soccer game, earned from us the loving title "Papá abusivo." Like a good dad, he specialized in watching over everything and quietly laughing at all of his children's antics.

Sopapillas and other delicacies 

When the food was eaten and the kids had gotten their hands on Amanda's kindle to play angry birds, (Mati developed a signal to let us know he wanted to play. He'd look at Amanda slyly and say "cuckoo!") it was time for Mate. I'd learned about this South American custom in Spanish class, but hadn't experienced it since it's disappeared from most urban households in Chile. Mate is loose herbal tea drunk through a filtered metal straw, but drinking mate, passing one mug around the circle with each person drinking a cupful before passing it back to Miriam to be refilled, is another thing entirely.

Over Mate we talked until Amanda and I couldn't keep our eyes open, and it was in these conversations that I learned that not only are the majority of the Mapuche community evangelical Christians, they're Alliance Christians. I had heard that, as a result of its focus on missions, the little denomination I grew up in was bigger outside of the United States than inside of it, but it was incredible to me to see that this thing we do called mission work had transformed an entire oppressed people into dedicated and joyful followers of Christ.

Drinking Mate with my mom, Miriam.

When we finally got up from the table, I would go outside to the back porch where the sink was, sometimes stepping into the yard to look up at the sky dusted with southern hemisphere stars while I brushed my teeth. And then I would go to bed, and in the morning I would wake up again into the rhythm of that home. It was a music composed of baking bread and feeding pigs, playing games and drinking mate.

We learned, of course, about the struggle to retain Mapuche culture in the face of dictatorship and a racing "modern" culture. And we learned about the theft of Mapuche land and the draining of natural resources through giant lumber companies. I was reminded in many ways of the time I spent with the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge reservation in the US. I thought about the big issues of indigenous oppression. But in the small world, this week was fundamentally different from the hopelessness I saw in Pine Ridge.

This was contentment, faith and family. I was reminded that culture, as a huge a thing as that is, exists in its simplest form within families. This family lives their lives resting comfortably in their traditions. And even though those traditions are radically different from the ones I grew up in, there was something fundamental that was exactly what I know family to be: work and games and food and laughter. And it was just enough.

What a wonderful family!