Thankfullness

This week I did highs and lows with the people I was working with. I asked them to say one bad thing that happened to them in the past week, one good thing, and one thing in English that they wanted to learn.  Most of them talked about how thankful they were that they have the opportunity to learn English.  One of the women talked about how thankful she is that she and her kids are healthy.  I expected them to have lots of bad things to talk about, but hardly anybody had a "low" to share.  They repeated how grateful they are to God for the blessings that they do have, rather than focusing on the horrible situation that they are in.  It is startling to see the contrast between these women's attitude toward suffering and the attitude that I have been surrounded with for most of my life.  In middle-class white America, people live comfortable lives and do not often encounter the same kinds of extreme suffering as people living in Mexico and Guatemala, and immigrants from these countries face.  Therefore, we often take little things like health, safety, and family for granted.  These women, and all of the Postville immigrants, however, know what it is like to have these things taken away from them.  Therefore, they are thankful for the little that they have.  

This attitude, however, is not complacency.  These women know that they are being treated unjustly and that something should be done about it.  They are hopeful that a turn over in the presidency will prompt immigration policy reform.  They also talked about the way they are treated by the "pretty people".  They were talking about the white people in Postville who look down on them and don't take the time to try to understand them.  One women mentioned that teenagers walk by them and say "hola" in mocking tones.  Yet, the focus is usually not on their well-being, but rather that of their children.  One of the women explained to me that everything they do they do for children.  Some of the women are faced with the dilemma of staying here with their kids who are American citizens or going back to their home country to be with their husbands.  This is a difficult dilemma, but most people would rather stay here if they could, simply for safety reasons.