Studying abroad taught her lessons for life

Her name is Doña Vilma. She is a 36-year-old widow with five children under the age of 10. Her children have three different fathers among them. Doña Vilma has no income, owns no land, and is the apparent outcast of the community. She is the untouchable, the unclean.

Danielle Wegman, reflections from Honduras.

You are 22, just graduated from Whitworth College, a Spanish and cross-cultural studies major. You are in Seattle looking for work this summer in that world of lattes and cell phones and money-making going on almost everywhere. In the midst of this, you cannot let Doña Vilma go.

You met her in February 2005, in a small village in the mountains of Honduras, during your junior year semester in Whitworth’s Central America Study Program.

I sat with Doña Vilma and her kids on the rocks outside of their home. She offered me lemonade, which I accepted, taking her 3-month-old boy as she picked the lemon from her tree, poured the water from her spring, and sprinkled the sugar from her pockets. Days later I stood outside with Doña Vilma as she rocked her baby in her arms. She looked me hard in the eye and asked: Could you take him with you? I can’t, I said, I’m so sorry.

You gave your phone number to Doña Vilma. A year later, your phone rings.

Doña Vilma has walked two hours from her mountain village to use a phone. She asks if you can send money so she can cross the border and enter the United States. You try to explain, in your fluent Spanish, that the United States of Mythology is just that. Life is hard, especially for illegal immigrants.

You hear devastation in Doña Vilma’s voice and realize you must speak words Doña Vilma will understand.

She lives in a culture where bribery is sometimes the only means to an end. You tell her you do not know any police officers on the border where she would cross. “I cannot make a deal for you,” you say.

Disappointment, but understanding, now in Doña Vilma’s voice. The line goes dead.

You then call a development director you met in Honduras who works with villagers in Doña Vilma’s region.

He is starting a women’s work project to help the women gain self-sufficiency. He will try to persuade Doña Vilma to join the project. The wealthiest people in her village make $2 a day growing the coffee that we drink here in our $4 lattes.

There are three commitments that I made following my days with Doña Vilma. One is to work for justice. If I remain silent and turn my eyes from the injustice of poverty that I’ve seen in the life of Doña Vilma and her children, I contribute to the continued oppression of the poor. I choose to be a voice for them. My second commitment is to love people. My third commitment is to live simply. There is life in having less.

The land of lattes and cell phones and money-making almost everywhere would make you crazier, if not for one fact: This August you will leave Seattle and move to Chicago. You will work in the Lutheran Volunteer Corps, subsisting on a small stipend and living communally with other young people.

Meeting Doña Vilma and her children led to your decision to do this your first year out of college. You will work with a group that supports sanctuary for Colombian refugees and another group that pushes for just causes in Latin America. You will also travel to Latin America as part of your work.

You plan to make the trek to Doña Vilma’s village, drink her lemonade once more, hold her baby again, photograph all her beautiful children, and hope that life is better for Doña Vilma, the woman who changed your own life story in ways you cannot adequately articulate in any language, except the language of your heart.