independence.

My host family went out of town last month. And while I was sad to be without their company, I was also looking forward to some time alone. I’ve spent the past two years living in community – moving in with a group of strangers and working to build a space that was life-giving for us all, a space where we could explore what it meant to live well in our surrounding communities. This year was different – instead of working to build a community, I stepped into a preexisting community and worked to find my place within the routines and expectations that had already been set. Because of this, I began to think of this vacation as a chance to be independent, to set my own routines and to do things on my own for a while.

And then I got mugged.

It wasn’t a big deal. There was never any danger, just a young boy who jumped off a motorbike and ripped my bag off my shoulder. I was fine. Fine, until I remembered that my bag contained all of my house keys and my cell phone. All of a sudden my hope for independence and self-sufficiency went right out the window. I was helpless and completely at a loss as to what I should do next.

I walked down the street in a daze, not really sure where I was going, and came across some neighbors who were on their way out for a New Year’s Eve party. I apologized for detaining them as they hurried out the door, told them what had happened, and tried to gather my thoughts. Was there any way I could get into the house? What was I going to do without keys for the next few weeks? Was I going to have to stay with a friend until my host family got home? Would I have to cancel my upcoming vacation plans? I had gotten to the point of feeling comfortable navigating day-to-day life in Argentina, but I felt so incapable of dealing with this unexpected situation.

My neighbors, however, were wonderfully up for the challenge. They consulted with each other and some other friends, adjusted their plans for the evening, and took me to find a locksmith. When the locksmith wasn’t immediately available, they gave me a set of keys to their house and set me up with some mate and fruit salad while I waited. They also gave me the phone numbers for everyone in their extended family in case I ended up needing somewhere to spend the evening.

After just a few minutes, the locksmith and his teenage daughter showed up. As the locksmith worked, his daughter chatted with me. After having had a moment to sit, the excitement of the past 30 minutes caught up with me and the tears started to come. The two of them sat and talked with me for a while and waited while I made sure I had copies of all of the keys so I would be okay for the next couple of days. They comforted me but also let me cry for as long as I needed – I didn’t for a moment feel like my tears were making them uncomfortable or like they were in any hurry to move along to the New Year’s Eve party they were heading off to. They too left me with their phone numbers and an invitation to their family’s New Year’s Eve party, and refused to let me pay for their help.

I spent the next couple of weeks thinking a lot about the extreme kindness I had experienced on New Year’s Eve, but I also settled pretty quickly into my previous delusions of independence.

And then I got bit by a dog.

It was just a little dog, but with fairly impressive jaw strength. I was rounding the corner onto my street and stepped off the curb (ironically, I moved off the sidewalk to avoid another group of dogs up ahead) and the combination of my approach and the group of barking dogs up ahead must have startled the little guy. I never even saw him coming, but he ran up behind me and took a good chunk out of the back of my leg. 

Once again, I found myself at a loss. It was midnight, and I had just gotten off the last bus of the night. I was sure my host family kept first aid supplies in the house, but I was a little worried about getting blood all over everything before I found it. More than anything, though, my mind was running through all of the rabies-vaccination related horror stories I had heard over the years.

Luckily, once again, my neighbors came to my rescue. An older man who lives down the street had been sitting outside his house and saw the whole thing happen. He immediately came up to me and led me over to his house, cleaned off my wound, and gave me a glass of water and a place to sit down. He then walked over to his next door neighbor’s house and a minute later, came back to say that he had arranged for her to drive me to the doctor. This neighbor is someone I had waved to on my way to work, but we had never actually met before. Even still, she sat with me while I got cleaned up and did her best to explain the things I didn’t understand.  Best of all, the neighbors recognized the dog and promised to go talk to the owner the next day to make sure the dog was up-to-date on its vaccinations.

The thing is, this whole time I’ve been trying to put the idea of accompaniment into practice (accompaniment is defined by the ELCA as “walking together in a solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality”), but central to what we’re doing here is the idea of mutuality. I was willing to admit that I would be served here – I still seem to spend more time asking questions and being confused than actually helping with anything – but my willingness to need always had its limits. It was always controlled and superficial. I never really let myself feel vulnerable or lost, or at least tried not to show those feelings. But sitting and crying with the locksmith and his teenage daughter, or looking to the neighbor I had just met when I had questions about what the nurse at the 24 hour clinic was telling me, those experiences helped me to let go. They taught me how to need and how it’s okay to feel lost sometimes. These moments also taught me about what community actually means, what it is to be a neighbor, and what “interdependence and mutuality” might actually imply.  

All my love.