From China to America, Lives Collide

The year was 1987. My aunt Kristina, then 20 years old, was with Goshen College’s fourth SST group to China. The group was stationed in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, living in dorms and attending classes at Sichuan University.

China was still nine years fresh from “Reform and Opening,” and the long, slow crawl toward modernity had just begun. Bicycles lined the car-less streets and SSTers relied solely on the tedious process of snail mail.

For her service location, Kristina was assigned to teach English classes at the university. During this time she became especially close to one student in her class, Zhang Xiaowei, or Kathy, a spunky and out-going young woman. Every day Kathy and Kristina would meet after class to eat noodles or walk around the city. Despite their cultural differences the two formed a deep bond of friendship.

“We would talk about everything,” Kathy said.

Embracing Discomfort: Portraits of Peru

When Shina Park went to Peru, she had three things in mind: build relationships, hone Spanish-speaking skills, and immerse herself in a foreign culture. In short, she said, she traveled to get lost.

But several weeks after her arrival, she said, I felt genuinely lost and disconnected from all things familiar. The transportation system bewildered me, I couldn’t extend beyond small talk with my host father, and I was shivering in my bed at night. It took me a while to figure out the kombi routes and to muster up the courage to ask for more blankets at night. How was I confronting my fears and embracing discomfort? I wasn’t, really.

But then I looked up, observed my surroundings, and took photographs of what I saw. During this process, I forgot about my anxieties. I no longer cared for them. To have been consumed by my anxieties would’ve been my loss, as I would’ve missed Peru. Although the following photographs do not wholly encapsulate Peru, they are few glimpses of what I’ve discovered there.

A Life in the Present

As I watched the microbus pull away, I felt the sinking feeling in my stomach again. This was a feeling totally new to me, and not easy to define. It bordered on the lines of terror, curiosity, and helplessness. Throughout my time of study I had briefly greeted this feeling, but now it had decided to skip the gut and go straight for the chest. The pressure was rising into my throat and I was on the verge of tears. But I held it together; trusting that these strangers I just met will take care of me. Either way I didn’t have a phone or computer or any way to escape even if I wanted to since I had no idea where I was or where I was about to go. So I followed them blindly, surrendering to my fear and helplessness.

We passed by my host mom’s daughter’s house in El Crucero before heading to the rural community where I would be living for the next six weeks, called Santa Julia. As I tried to catch bits and pieces of rapid campo Spanish, I discovered they were trying to decide how to transport my gigantic gringo-sized suitcase. Finally I saw my host dad, a flaco, offbeat war veteran nicknamed “El Zorro” (“the fox”), zip up on his motorcycle as my host brother propped my suitcase on the back and hopped on as well, sandwiching the suitcase between them. That wasn’t even the best part. An older gentlemen on a horse trotted by and hoisted my barrel of purified water behind him, continuing down the path like this was perfectly normal.

Looking back, I see this was a humorous insight into Nica culture lesson No. 1: Strangers will go out of their way to make sure you get where you need to go. And without much thought or planning, things always seem to fall into place. This insight continued to ring true my first day in the campo as my host mother, Lola, and I started the trek on foot to Santa Julia.

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.

The Unity of Song

When I went on SST, I wasn’t a student, I wasn’t in a host family and I wasn’t a unit leader. My father and mother, Harold and Patricia Yoder, led the 1972 group to South Korea. I was a sophomore in high school, barely two years younger than the youngest college student in our group. I was too young to be noticed by many of the students, but not too young to learn a lot about myself and the world.

My immediate reaction to Korea was to realize people at the college weren’t kidding when they talked about culture shock. This was the East; I was comfortable in the West. Many things were different: the hole toilets on the ground that you squatted to use and stall doors in public restrooms that went down to the ground; lots of fish instead of hamburger; marinated meat called bulgogie, which would become my favorite dish.

But even at 16 years old, I was no stranger to SST. Two friends had also gone with their parents as SST leaders to Jamaica and Honduras. My parents had always wanted to lead a unit but waited until the college sent students to South Korea. Right after they married, they did MCC work in Japan and Korea; my mother was the first civilian woman to go to South Korea after the war, and they wanted badly to go back with my family.