An Arlington reader, who is also a longtime friend, has written urging me to “feature some seniors who are active in more international efforts, not officials, but ordinary people who are looking beyond the U.S., making a difference in alleviating the absolutely dire poverty in places such as Africa.”
I welcome this suggestion and believe that such older volunteers deserve admiration. Among them are friends and neighbors whom I feel privileged to know. No one of them works in an African country, but what they do for impoverished people in Haiti and two Central American nations merits attention.
This is the fourth winter that Bill and Linda Green, a married couple who live on my block, have spent three months in Guatemala serving residents of one of the poorest regions of that country. To describe their work I have relied on an article written for The Howl, the amateur rag I publish for people in my neighborhood.
Bill, a retired physician, locates the work they do in the central region along the shore of Lago Atitlan, one of the world’s most beautiful lakes. He and his wife Linda, a social worker by profession, have engaged in varied activities on behalf of the local people..
Last winter, Bill saw patients four mornings a week at a local health center; he calls it “a very rewarding experience.” Linda, for her part, assisted teachers of English in the city of Panajachel, and did some therapy and consultation. Together, Linda and Bill interviewed ten non-governmental organizations to investigate “women’s reproductive health and family planning in the indigenous towns around the lake.”
Another couple, Margaret and David Gullette, whom I have known for many years, spend part of each winter serving the people of San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua.
Margaret, a writer on cultural issues, raises money to support a literacy project for women. Collaborating with two woman physicians, one Belgian, the other Nicaraguan, she has established learning centers that include a free high school for adults, a Saturday school that has enrolled 350 people, and 21 satellite schools in rural areas near San Juan.
David has helped build or reconstruct a school each year, resulting in a total of 17 thus far. The work has attracted students and teachers, along with hundreds of visitors from Newton, which since 1988 has been paired with San Juan as a sister city.
About her work with grown-ups Margaret says: “It gives adults a second chance; it’s like a mission.” David adds: “It has transformed my life; it has been a great midlife gift to us.”
I recommend the project’s web site: www.newtonsanjuan.org.
Another woman who lives on my block, Betty Mahan, has been devoted to good works in Haiti for many years. She buys hand-crafted cards with her own money, has them brought to the United States with the help of various informal contacts, sells the cards, and then gives the money back to the Saint Boniface Haiti Foundation. Founded in 1983 by the parishioners of St.Boniface Church in Quincy, this nonprofit works to serve “the poorest of the poor.”
My neighbor Betty sees her own work as “only a small portion of many in the St. Boniface group with whom God has shared the desperate needs and sufferings of his Haiti children.” This group raised the money to build a hospital in Fond des Blancs that provides the only source of health care for a community of 45,000 rural poor.
Even though she can no longer go to their country, her work on behalf of Haitians strikes me as enterprising and valuable. She manages to raise the consciousness of many Americans, especially those in the parish churches where her cards are sold. Thus she provides an object lesson for those of us unable to volunteer our services on the ground in poor countries.
If I personally know three people living on the same city block with me, there must be a large number of the retired and my age peers who contribute services to residents of other countries. And they must be engaged in a wide variety of activities, some highly professional, others more informal, but all valuable both for the people they serve and for themselves.
Ultimately, efforts of the kind described here, though essential, cannot ever be sufficient to solve the poverty of so many of the world’s people. Every day, an estimated 30 thousand children die from causes that good nutrition and health care could remedy. This situation continues to be a scandal that only governments have the means to resolve.
In a speech at this year’s Boston College commencement, Paul Farmer, the Harvard physician who has become well known for his work with the poor of Haiti and elsewhere, defined hell on earth as “poverty and violence and untreated disease.” Thankfully, many of my age peers have risen up and dedicated themselves to fighting the fires of this hell.
Richard Griffin