Jack Voelkel
Steve Hawthorne: Christian subversives in Yawisla
We found this fellow subverting the nation… (Luke 23:2).
(This guest article, excerpts from a prayer letter written by Steve Hawthorne, M.D., in April 07. Steve and his wife, Mary, have been serving with the Highland Quechua Indians in Bolivia for 17 years with SIM. They have three children.)
If I Told you, Would you Believe me?
It’s been a quiet week in Yawisla, Bolivia.
- Edelia had her baby at the clinic two months after graduating from high school and one month after getting married, but at least she did accomplish those two things before embarking on motherhood.
- Mrs. P. told her daughter Sara that she was worthless one too many times, an Sara swallowed rat poison in a gesture that caused little stir in the town, but stressed the health team, who worked through the night to pull her through.
- Josephine got fed up living with her in-laws while her husband was off working in Argentina, and left with her three kids to join him in the one-room apartment he is renting, making another family that our church has lost to emigration.
- A group of engineers came out from the city to string cable to a community still without electricity. They got drunk in a tavern and then started weaving around town in their pickup, bumping into corner buildings and scattering children. I had to wrestle the keys away from them until they could sleep it off.
- Invitations had gone out for Dora’s wedding when she got cold feet and ran away to the city, leaving her parents to deal with the angry jilted not-to-be in-laws.
- Old lady Margarita died alone on the dirt floor of her adobe hut. Her daughter Francisca, to whom she had always been mean, left her ill two days before, just setting out a knife and an ax on the floor to ward off the devil.
- Granny Vique came in with two black eyes and a broken rib from a beating her son gave her. They were both drunk at the time and neither remembers what the argument was about.
Dealing with the Roots, not just Symptoms
Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia-Marquez said, “We have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.”
The poverty that Mary and I see around us has not so much to do with the lack of good roads, jobs, schools, means of communication, and other infrastructure. Rather it is a poverty of relationships, “a chronic absence of experience with love, responsibility and righteousness,” We see it every day in demeaning, oppressive interactions among people who have internalized negative, debilitating lies learned from a social system built on age-old inequities and untold bitterness. What to do? Our option have been to be subversives.
Subversion n: a systematic attempt to overthrow a system by persons working within the country involved.
Subvert v: to overturn from the foundation.
Patching up people in the clinic gives me opportunities to show the love of God, but doesn’t make any structural changes in Quechua society. My wife, Mary, and other women on our team – Alicia Inglis and Christy Knudson – decided to take the long view and change the next generation through intentional relationships with 10-14-year-old girls.
They call their club “Girls like Dorcas” after the woman in Acts who built strong inter-personal relationships through acts of service. The girls learn sewing, baking, cake-decorating, and crafts. Mary and Christy also read to them, teach them English in the “total physical response” style, help them memorize Scripture, and bring the nurses over to talk to them about their bodies and health.
Building New Values
But beyond imparting new skills, they focus on building new values in the girls; values that lead in transformational development, such as TRUST. “Trust” is the expectation that people and groups will behave reliably and honestly, that we can count on each other. Trust levels are low in Bolivian society. Instead, there is a pervasive (and well-founded) fear of being deceived and betrayed, that others will take advantage or manipulate you if given the chance. In the health and educational systems, this mistrust of the individual translates into hierarchies of oversight and control that strongly discourage innovation, initiative, and creative thinking, thereby resisting progress as well.
Trust depends on associated values such as truth-telling, responsibility, integrity, love for a job well done, and concern for others. Mary wants her girls (many of whom come from one-parent families) to know that these qualities all come from God, their Heavenly Father who make them in His image. Pray that these girls will accept God’s love for them and begin to act like Jesus in their families. They will overthrow the system that keeps their community impoverished!
Points to Ponder
- Why are Steve and Mary in Bolivia?
- What impresses you about him as he shares his experiences and his thoughts?
- How valuable is their presence in Yawisla?
- What can you learn from his reflections? In what ways are you a “subversive” in your context?
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