Este Cuerpo Es Mio

Friday night I went with my colleagues from the board of the Association for a More Just Society to a training in the poor neighborhood of Villa Nueva in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. Before arriving at the training we knew that there would be two workers from the Gideon Project, a program offered by the Asociacion para una sociedad mas justa, a Honduran social justice organization. Gideon operates four neighborhood centers and offers psychological and legal services for a nominal fee. The services typically relate to child support, domestic abuse, and child behavioral problems.

We didn't know the topic of the training or the audience. As we climbed the hill in Villa Nueva, we heard a loud worship service, and JoAnn, one of the AJS board members, jokingly said that she wondered if we were going there. Turns out, she was right. Because we were 45 minutes late, the members of the congregation the ASJ workers were giving the training to had started a worship service. So, we joined the pentecostal congregation in jumping, dancing, screaming, and overpraying. The locals moved out of the front rows and gave up their seats for us in the capacity-filled space.

After the pastor finished the singing, he introduced Esmirna, and Yessy, who started a training on sexual abuse of children. The reaction of the congregation was silence and a certain amount of unease. But Esmirna and Yessy are fantastic and jumped right in with the them of "este cuerpo es mio." After asking all of members of the congregation to repeat that phrase and to instruct their children to say that their bodies were their own, the trainers also instructed us to teach them to say "don't touch it," "don't violate it," and "don't kill it."

These were tough things to teach, but Esmirna and Yessy had great activities and sketches to get the congregation involved. Esmirna asked three volunteers to come up and show what to do if a stranger came up to them. A male volunteer put his hand on the back of the female volunteer, who was then instructed to (1) say "no," (2) scream, (3) run, and (4) tell a friend. Esmirna then asked for three more volunteers. I went up, as did Sharon and Jotham from the board. This time Esmirna asked for a male victim and a female attacker. So Sharon was supposed to attack me. This didn't come through so clearly to Sharon though, because the instructions were all in Spanish. So we were ready to do the demonstration and she starts laughing, "I'm the attacker?" When she put her hand on my shoulder, I said no like there was no tomorrow, I screamed with my hands around my mouth like I was lost in the mountains, and I ran like I could see Tavern on the
Green and it was the first Sunday in November. Jotham was a great friend and consoled me when I shared what Sharon had done! Our board impressed the crowd a lot and by the end people were sharing personal stories about why this was such an important topic. The only downer was that in photographing the congregation I dropped my camera on the jagged stone floor and it ended up breaking. A small price to pay . . .