The House-Shaped Box

I used to keep a small, wooden, house-shaped box on my bedside table. It had a red roof supported by tiny columns, a bright orange and blue door, and painted-on window boxes decorated with tiny flowers. In this box, I would keep change that I collected from returning soda cans and plastic bottles at the grocery store. After I’d saved up a few dollars, my mother would take my sister and me to Staples, and we’d pick out a few notebooks and boxes of crayons. They weren’t for us, however – they were for the kids in El Salvador who we had heard so much about.

Since the 1980s, my family has been involved with an organization called ASAPROSAR, the Asociacion Salvadorena Pro-Salud Rural or, in English, the Salvadoran Association for Rural Health. ASAPROSAR is based in Santa Ana,  El Salvador’s second largest city after its capital, San Salvador. The organization was founded by Vicky Guzman, an incredible Salvadoran doctor whom I admire immensely. ASAPROSAR organizes several projects, two of which my family has been particularly involved in: the Eye Health Clinic, an annual week-long event providing Salvadorans with free eye exams, glasses, and surgery, and the Barefoot Angels program, which provides children with a safe place to go after school.

After a Salvadoran man came to their church and introduced them to Dra. Vicky’s work, my grandparents traveled to El Salvador on a yearly basis to volunteer at the Eye Clinic. As it was and still is dangerous to travel to El Salvador and because few Salvadorans speak English, my family decided that my sister and I were not to travel there ourselves until we were in our teens. As such, it was only after I turned 15 that they decided I was old enough to tag along and volunteer at an Eye Clinic.

Seeing how ASAPROSAR operated and its impact on regular lives, I gained a much more nuanced view of ASAPROSAR’s work. While my main job in Santa Ana was to work at the Eye Clinic’s dispensary fitting glasses, my favorite job was acting as a translator. I found it the best way to have conversations with all different kinds of people, from other volunteers to native Salvadorans.

A few afternoons during the Eye Clinic week, my sister, a handful of other volunteers, and I were able to visit the Barefoot Angels. We brought along crafts to do with the children, duct tape to make flowers, bows and embroidery floss to make friendship bracelets, as well as letters that my sister’s high school Spanish class from back home had written. After writing back, the Barefoot Angels acquired their own one-letter pen pal. We even brought supplies to color eggs for their first ever Easter Egg hunt, and I was able to restring some guitars they had received as a donation a few years prior.

The Barefoot Angels
The Barefoot Angels. Copyright Anya Gruber.

Volunteering with ASAPROSAR has been a huge part of my life ever since childhood. Having grown up with stories of El Salvador and the people my family worked with, seeing the people and places I recognized from photos, while surreal at first, quickly became the highlight of my year. Since my first visit in 2011, I’ve visited El Salvador four times, and, now, every year I look forward to attending Eye Clinic again so I can see all my Salvadoran friends.

Through my involvement, I’ve gained a much more comprehensive view of the world outside the small town where I grew up. Here at Smith, I continue to keep my little wooden box house on my windowsill, but, instead of keeping change in it, I store notes and drawing from the Barefoot Angels. I always make sure it’s in a safe spot, because it holds memories from a country dear to my heart.

GRUBER.Anya. portrait_4Anya hopes to be a journalist, teacher, or both. Here at Smith, she is an Art History and Archaeology major and an associate editor for the Sophian.

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