Author: Liz Core

Three Little Letters
Posted on by Liz Core Posted in Cambodia, Essays

Three Little Letters

SST. These three little letters carry almost 50 years of memories for thousands of people. These three little letters evoke a wide range of emotions for many in the Goshen College community. When I hear these letters, a smile instantly comes to my face.

In the spring of 2013, I travelled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia for three months. It was my first time out of the country, and I was more than a little anxious about what I was getting myself into. As I stepped on the plane with my fellow classmates, I had no idea that I was about to travel to a place that would eventually become a second home for me.

The first few weeks were hard for me; I have a hard time with transitions. However, after the first few days with my family, I started to feel at home. My host family was a little unconventional in that I did not live with host parents. I lived with a brother who was close to my age and a sister who was ten years older than me. I immediately felt like I was part of their family. Although there were times of homesickness and tears, my host family gifted me with many times of smiles and laughter.

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One Cannot Exist Without the Other
Posted on by Liz Core Posted in Essays, Nicaragua

One Cannot Exist Without the Other

I could feel the upheaval as soon as I entered the room. My mom was nowhere to be seen, and my Nicaraguan host dad, Reynaldo, was shuffling around in the kitchen. It was early in the morning, and he was aimlessly pacing around. Eventually, he put away a rusty metal serving spoon, hanging it on a nail in the wall. He turned to grab a wooden bowl off the windowsill, stared at it, and put it on a different shelf. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.

I was new to most things in Nicaragua, but I knew for certain that my father was not the normal family cook. Although I had seen him in the kitchen several times, it was only to bring pichingas full of water, chopped firewood, and sacks full of lechuga inside for my mother.

My dad looked at me, gestured toward the steamy arroz and frijoles warming on the clay stove, and said, “Your mother is in town today for a routine doctors appointment. She made breakfast before she left this morning.”

Really? I thought to myself, She’s gone one day and my dad can’t make his own food? I knew men and women in Nicaragua were expected to fulfill certain roles in the household, but this seemed ridiculous. I finished eating my arroz and frijoles by myself and walked back to the bucket of water sitting on the wooden countertop. Normally, my mother would take away my dishes before I had a chance to wash them, but today I was on my own.

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Filled to the Brim
Posted on by Liz Core Posted in Essays, Senegal

Filled to the Brim

I originally wrote a version of this story to use in a sermon given at my home church, Mountain View Mennonite Church in Kalispell, Montana.

When thinking back on my experience in Senegal, it is tempting to focus primarily on the things that struck me as being the most contrary to my life in the United States. The animals wandering the streets, mosquito nets over beds, and clothes hand-washed and hung out to dry were intriguing and exciting at first. These things are certainly noteworthy, and they had the most impact on me initially.

As the days passed, however, the novelty wore off. I grew accustomed to seeing such sights, and it was no longer out of the ordinary for a taxi to stop in the road for a herd of goats or a person to drop everything and pray when they heard the call to prayer. But throughout my time in Senegal, the attitude of the people who I encountered continued to amaze me. I experienced a kind of hospitality and acceptance that remains unparalleled in my life, which made the largest impact on me.

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The Mystery Woman
Posted on by Liz Core Posted in Essays, Peru

The Mystery Woman

Her face was etched with deep wrinkles. Her back hunched from decades of carrying the world — in all its forms — on her back. Her black hair had turned silver, shimmering in its long braid under low light.

As I revisit her features now, two years later, each detail seems harnessed with my Peruvian experience. But in that moment, they only represented my fears.

I had been living in Cusco, Peru for less than a week — not enough time to yet have a routine, but sufficient time to avoid getting lost in the mountains of Cusco. After school I would return to my new home of Lucre, a small agricultural town imprinted on the side of the Cusquenan Andes. Our first bus up the mountain seemed laden with handsy men and only enough oxygen for two thirds of its passengers. I felt scornful eyes on me as I struggled to occupy the least amount of space possible.

But perhaps the scorn was my own, as I became increasingly more aware of my whiteness. Our eventual stop in Huacarpay yielded fresh air and a taxi ride of seven adults up the mountain to Lucre (what later came to feel like a spacious ride). Here, I would leave my peers, anxiously cross the makeshift bridge and join my family at their new fish restaurant, where we would eat dinner and I would do my best, through broken Spanish, to tell my family what I learned that day.

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Potatoes and Grit
Posted on by Liz Core Posted in Essays, Peru

Potatoes and Grit

On the white lace tablecloth covering the hardwood table lay two sliced palta (avocados) and a bag of white bread. I spread the palta on bread for breakfast, and sprinkled it with salt, at my host brother Eric’s suggestion. I told him it was muy rico because it really was delicious, not because I was trying to be polite. Later that night, he told me, we’d eat “real Peruvian food.”

All five members of my host family crowded into a 6- by 10-foot kitchen to prepare the meal. I sat poised at the supper table, preparing to taste my first authentic Peruvian meal.

Four large ceramic plates arrived in front of me, and I saw that real Peruvian food meant, most accurately, potatoes. Potatoes, potatoes, and more potatoes. And rice. A small cucumber and onion salad rested in a small white bowl off to the side, and a strip of fried chicken lay across some of the rice — but these foods were barely visible next to a colossal plate entirely covered in thick papas fritas, another plate lined with baked yellow potatoes, and a third dinner plate heaped with a mound of white rice — and, of course, a side of potatoes.

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