Volunteer: With the Poor In Peru
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"You miserable little sh**!" I yelled in my angry, foul-mouthed English at Juan Carlos, the eleven year old Peruvian boy whom I had grabbed in a terrible moment of uncontrollable rage. "You ungrateful little rat. I built this place for rotten little scum like you and look what you do to me!" It was Saturday afternoon religion class they were supposed to be making collages at the Cristo Rey Center for the Working Child, a small, primitive, storefront building on Bolognesi Street in the town of Tacna (with a growing population of over 160,000) in southern Peru; and I had lost control. Halfheartedly supervised by a group of middle-class students from the local Jesuit high school, where I had come to work as a Boston College International Volunteer, these twelve poor eight to twelve year old street kids shoeshine boys, car washers, newsboys, and thieves had been cutting out pictures from magazines and arranging them on three white boards in sections to represent good and evil. My hope was that this artistic exercise would serve as a moral lesson, enable them to conceptualize more clearly the differences between right and wrong. But six of their unruly friends, whom I had sent away earlier, had returned and were throwing rocks at my building. I went outside, yelled at them, and threatened to call the police like those pathetic, intimidated men and women in every American neighborhood who have lost control of their own turf and are reduced to hollow threats all children know they are impotent to carry out. "Go ahead, gringo. Call the police. We re really scared." They mocked me. A car full of seniors who I had taught at the high school drove up, saw that I looked foolish, and joined in shouting and honking their horn. Back inside the classroom, the kids had quit work and were throwing rocks at one another. I tried to silence them with a final class prayer the last refuge of a teacher who had lost control of a class of supposedly "good" Catholic kids and told them all to go home; but they flocked around me, groping in my pants for fruit and candy. Then I saw him. Juan Carlos stood in the corner, urinating against the wall. The goddamned little punk he was doing it to make me mad. I seized him and lifted him off the ground shaking him angrily in the air as his penis, protruding from his unzipped fly, wiggled in front of his giggling friends. I wanted to rub his nose in the urine but I dragged him across the room toward the door, his pants and shirt ripped from some fight years ago, his fly still open and his defiant penis still exposed, and dumped him outside on the street. I ordered everyone else, including the high school students, to go home. Then I got a damp rag and began to wipe Juan Carlos urine off the wall. Out in the street, the kids renewed their barrage of stones against the Center walls as they chanted, "Gringo Chancho! Gringo Chancho!" (Gringo Pig!) For this I had postponed law school, left my family, my friends, and a girl I loved. For this.
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About the Book
"One of the most engaging and inspiring stories I have ever read . . . I hope that every young person in America reads this touching account."
--Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Former Congressman
"A superlative job . . . I couldn t put it down."
--William Griffin, Publishers Weekly
When Jeff Thielman graduated from college in 1985, his friends and family thought he d get a job like everyone else, make a pile of money and lead a "good" life. Instead, Jeff decided to give two years of his life as a volunteer worker with the poor in Latin America. The decision dismayed Jeff s parents (and his girlfriend) and catapulted him into an alien culture where he didn t know the customs, couldn t speak the language, and was taunted by the young people he came to help. This book tells the story of his Tacna, Peru adventure, which eventually stretched beyond two years. It tells how a young product of North American affluence encountered the gritty reality of the third world. It was a meeting that enriched both sides and moved beyond "helping" into compassion and gratitude.
About the Author
Jeff Thielman was born and raised in Meriden, Connecticut. After returning from Peru he entered Boston College Law School, from which he graduated in 1992. After a brief career in law and sales in Boston, he moved to Chicago in 1998 to oversee the development efforts at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, which serves at-risk Latino young people from the city s southwest side. Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. is an assistant dean at Fordham University in New York City. He holds a Ph.D. in American Thought and Culture from George Washington University and has taught at Fordham, St. Peter s College, Loyola University of New Orleans, and Holy Cross College (where he was academic dean). He is the author of five books and over 100 articles.