1st day of praxis

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time… But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” –Lilla Watson

This is sort of the motto or idea of our Praxis sites. We had our first visits on Thursday and it was really different than I expected.  Even after all of our orientation and learning that we are accompanying not serving I was still expecting to be helping out the community that I was visiting but it was completely the opposite. Ate Faye is the coordinator for my site, Sitio Payong, an impoverished squatter community without water or electricity, and all day at praxis we sat and ate and talked with her. We listened to her story about her family and how she came to live here and be a host for us and she asked us about our lives and families.  We didn’t actually do anything. We just sat and talked and played with her nephew and talked with her niece when she got home from school. Her niece is attending Univeristy of the Philippines elementary school and was one of 14 out of thousands of applicants who was admitted based on academic examinations, to her class. Ate Faye was telling us how she is the only student there without electricity and it is hard for her to complete all of her school work without a computer or internet access at home so often she goes to internet cafés around her neighborhood to research.  At 12 years old it seems like she has pretty rigorous amounts of homework and her mom and aunt make sure that when she is not resting or studying she is learning to cook and do chores around the house. They expressed how while they are so happy that she excelling academically they still want to make sure she has proper domestic skills and can learn to independently cook, clean, and run a household.  Her niece seemed really excited to talk to us and she even played and sang a Taylor Swift song on guitar for us.  She has such a beautiful voice.   I’m so excited to learn more about their family by accompanying them and living in solidarity with them in the weeks to come. I’ll be staying there overnight next weekend! I’ll try to take some pictures soon to give you an idea of the kind of community they are living in.