From Chris, Alison, Luke and Bethan No8, February 2007
Email: eyes_chile@yahoo.co.uk
Postal address: Avda Héroes de la Concepción 1924, Condo Héroes 2, Depto G-21, Iquique, I Region, Chile
A very HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all! We would like to thank everyone who sent greetings to us for Christmas – whether by email or card or letter. Those of you who have at any stage spent Christmas abroad will know how precious these greetings are, and will have a sense of how much we appreciate them! We are sorry we cannot respond to each one individually.
“NO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN”
Over 80 women filled the Methodist Church in Alto Hospicio on 24th November for an ecumenical liturgy to mark the International Day of “NO violence against women”. Chris originally put forward the idea of holding such an event, which was planned jointly by his project, Centro de Atención Familiar, and a similar project run by the Catholic Church, Casa Nana Nagle. The service was jointly led by Alison and another woman Methodist minister, Rev Miriam Kaba, and involved users and staff from the two centres.
The liturgy was based on one prepared by the Methodist Church in Great Britain, which was then translated. The liturgy ended with this prayer, after which individual candles were lit so that the light gradually spread around the church (see photo above):
O God, who shows us in Jesus Christ
how your kingdom will come in love and justice and peace,
be present to those of our community here
and those who are our friends, colleagues or neighbours
who are suffering at the hands of a loved one
or have to witness the suffering caused.
May they know your supportive presence with them.
Give them the strength to share their pain
and enable the rest of us to hear and believe,
that together we may act to change how things are
so that no-one need live in fear and humiliation.
We pray that your liberating kingdom will come
in truth and hope and love.
Amen.
It was the first time that anyone could remember a joint liturgy taking place in Alto Hospicio between the Methodist and Catholic churches. One member of our congregation remarked that it was striking how much we shared in common. The liturgy formed part of a wider event held for the first time in Alto Hospício to mark the day, and was preceded by a march to the church (right).
Work changes
On 4th February, Alison will officially take on pastoral charge of the Methodist Church in Alto Hospicio, thus bringing to an end her maternity leave. She will no longer work in Colegio Ingles as she has done up to now. She is very excited, as, although she enjoyed the pastoral work in the school, she has missed working in a church context. She is looking forward to the new challenges that this work will bring.
Around the same time, Chris will take over as Director of the Centro de Atención Familiar, where he has been working since we arrived. This forms part of a number of staff changes in the centre which will bring a new Social Worker and a new Psychologist into the team, to replace people who are leaving, and (in her capacity as minister of the church) Alison will also now be involved in the work of the project. As part of a new management structure, Chris hopes to receive greater support to enable the work of the centre to develop further. Despite various problems, the centre achieved a huge amount in 2006.
We will still be working 1.5 jobs between us, though this will now be split more equally than before. Both Luke and Bethan will be going to nursery in the afternoons – though it remains to be seen exactly how our new routine works out!
Please pray for us all as we adjust to new challenges, new roles, and new routines.
Holiday in the “Lake District”
We are just back from a holiday in the south of Chile – around 1750 miles south of Iquique. We started our trip by flying down to friends in Concepción for New Year, and then we drove further south to a beautiful region of lakes and volcanoes know here as the “Lake District”.
We spent 10 days in a house with a stunning view of Volcán Villarica, which is one of the most active volcanoes in Chile, and which rather alarmingly emitted a red glow from its summit at night!
We then moved on to stay in a cabin on the edge of Lake Llanquihue, very close to Volcán Osorno - mercifully less active – (the picture on right shows us all in front of Volcán Osorno).
We enjoyed great weather throughout, and our only problems were the vicious biting insects near Volcán Osorno, and our oversociable son who insisted on inviting all of his new-found friends to come and see us!
Luke’s bit
While we were on holiday I made some new friends - María-Jesús and Sabqa. I had great fun with them. We did lots of things while we were away – I went up a volcano on a chair-lift, and went through a lava tube under a volcano. I drove a BIG boat, and played in a little inflatable one on the lakes. The water in the lakes was a bit too cold for me to swim in, and we also went to some thermal pools where the water was too HOT to swim in! I am enjoying having a baby sister, and I am very good at making her laugh. Bethan is very happy and smiley. I always look forward to her waking up in the morning.
Two deaths in Chile
Following our recent newsletter looking at Pinochet´s legacy in Chile, many of the same themes were revisited here in the aftermath of Pinochet’s death in December 2006. There was a very mixed response to his demise, a response exemplified by the physical clashes between his supporters and his opponents outside the hospital where he died.
Sheila Cassidy (a British doctor tortured during the dictatorship) said in THE TABLET that “Pinochet... has cheated the courts and died peacefully in his own bed, unlike the 3,000 or so men and women who were killed under his rule. What a crafty old fox he was to be always too ill to face his accusers… Let us refrain… from naïve assumptions that now that the old man is dead, the pain of the bereaved will go away. It will not.”
At around the same time, here in Iquique the corpse of an 18 month old boy, Igor Barraza Salazar, was discovered two weeks after he had starved to death, following the disappearance of his mother (a drug user, who was later found dead herself elsewhere). There could be no greater contrast between the “peaceful and supervised” death of Pinochet, and the agonising death of little Igor. Igor’s death provoked much heart-searching in the city and in the country as a whole – one correspondent to a newspaper said “it gives me much shame and sadness that we are not capable of seeing our neighbour as a human being, that we are so self-centred and unable to concern ourselves over the person next-door…” Another said, “Last night…I could do no more than hug my daughter…, hope with all my heart that her life would never depend on my neighbours, and cry with shame – shame of being Chilean.”
Is this the price of development for Chile?
