These past four days we have been living in a rural community. The community, Nueva Esparansa, was formed during the civil war and has a really interesting history. The community started to form in Nicaragua, where people were living as refugees of the El Salvadoran war. When they came back to the US, they came together with Salvadoran refugees also from Honduras and Panama. They started an agricultural cooperative to sustain themselves, and still have the coop today. They grow sugar cane, coconuts, and cashew nuts. The community is set up in a completely democratic form. The entire community makes decisions together. The community also has cow herds that they use for milk, Its funny to see how many cows were roaming the streets.
We all stayed with individual host families. The family I lived with was fairly large, most of their family unit eigther lived in my house or in the houses next door.
While we were there we had to opportunity to visit their coconut fields, sugar cane and cashew fields. We got to drink coconut milk and eat raw sugar cane, which was pretty cool. The cashew trees are wierd, cashews grow from the bottom of a fruit, its kinda funny lookin. We also visited other communities who shared their history. It is interesting how these communities for because, alot of them have ex-guerilla and ex-military men from the war in them. But because they all live in poverty, they are able to get along because of their common bond. Its fascinating!
There is also a vary strong sense of community and sense of identity. They all care for each other and work together to over come difficulties. Liberation theology is also vary alive there. Many of them talk about verses from the bible such as Exodus and the Beatitudes and relate the stories to their life and live through them. I feel I am learning so much about the Christian faith by talking to all these people that truely live our their faith, its amazing!