From Surreal to Real

Posted on Monday September 21, 2009 by Jacob Campbell.

Some background

From surreal to real

The last days before heading out on this adventure of a lifetime (see post: Let The World Change You, and… You Can Change The World for more information on my trip) I had a lot of different feelings and thoughts. You can also see my photo’s I uploaded of my End of Summer Adventures Facebook Albums. It felt very surreal to know that i was leaving for a long period of time. Spending some last day’s hanging out with friends, it felt like I would be able to see them again anytime that I wanted… just like I always have been able to. When I gave back my apartment, I had a realization that I was then homeless. Hanging out with my mom before I left, I went on my way feeling like I haven’t spent enough time with her during the last couple of years.

The closer I got to the trip, getting inside the airplane… landing in Dallas then in Miami… then in Trinidad it all became very real.

The Miami Heat

You can view the album Miami Heat in the Evening and Trinidad CoExisting Island Style Facebok Album if you are interested in seeing the pictures.

So I guess that I ought to explain a little bit of what’s happened so far in the last couple of days, so that you can keep up. We had a 12 hour layover in Miami, which was planned to be that way. While it was supper hot outside, it didn’t start out so hot. We took forever to figure out the bus system, missed the last night bus (at 12:30… doesn’t make sense). We ended up paying for a taxi ($32.00) to go to Miami Beach. It was a lot of fun, and worth all of the hardship. We salsa danced at Mango’s Tropical Cafe for a couple of hours. We spent some time at The Clevelander, a pretty cool club. We ended up wondering down to the beach and just playing in the water and talking about life, love, and God for a couple of hours. It was really great, and made me so glad that I was going with Ami. I could tell it would be a great trip. Around about 6am, it was getting late enough that we could catch a bus back to the airport. We first caught the one going the wrong way, then we ended up missing the next one. While we were waiting for the one after that, we got the great idea into our heads that we should sneak onto a yacht and do some exploring. Well, we missed the next bus due to that. So when we finally got back to the airport around 8am, combining jet lag and lack of sleep we were both exhausted. After three and a half more hours we were in Trinidad.

Co-Existing Island Style – Trinidad & Tobago

Live Crabs on Fredrick St.

We arrived in Trinidad and encountered a couple of problems right away. First they didn’t want to let us into the country because we didn’t have a specific place we were staying and we didn’t have a specific plan for leaving. In hindsight, I believe that this is important. We took a taxi to Port of Spain, the city we are staying at in Trinidad. It poured rain on and off the first night. Ami and I were so tired that we both went to sleep around 6 or 7pm. The next morning, we woke up early. We met a couple of different people. First was Chester, who wondered around with us trying to help us find a restaurant. We ended up buying him a soda. Later we met Marcus, who we ended up paying about $15.00 for his service as a “certified tour guide.” Although we probably got swindled a bit, it was worth it to get to see the sights. One place that was really interesting was the Reggae club he took us to. It was pretty eclectic, locked people inside of this bar, and everybody was smoking marijuana. That night we ended up going out to see what the night life was. We ended up meeting a guy named Steven. He was totally enamored with Ami, and had no problem telling her that, after he found out that we weren’t together. Today, I slept in much later than Ami did. We wondered out looking for a meal, and then spent hours agonizing over how to get off of this expensive island. When we decided to just follow the plan we had made the day before (wait till Wednesday and take a ferry to Venezuela) , we walked down to Independence Square. It’s was pretty amazing to see how many people were out. It was full of the eclectic groups of people that make up Trinidad. From business men, families, Rastafarians, homeless, and everything in between. It was awesome to see so many people outside, enjoying community, parks, and the early evening. All and all, even though it’s become very real. I’m very excited to see what happens during this trip.

Let The World Change You, and… You Can Change The World

Posted on Friday July 24, 2009 by Jacob Campbell.

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) is about two men from Buenos Aires who make plans to travel by motorcycle travel around the coast of South America. The story comes from journey and written memoir of the 23-year-old Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara. Che Guevara years later become internationally known as the iconic Marxist revolutionary. The film recounts the 1952 journey, initially by motorcycle, across South America by Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado. As the adventure centered around youthful hedonism unfolds, Guevara discovers himself transformed by his observations of the life of the impoverished indigenous peasantry. The road presents Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado a genuine picture of the Latin American identity. Through the characters they encounter on the road, Guevara and Granado learn the injustices the impoverished face and are exposed to people they would have never encountered in their hometown. The trip serves to expose a Latin American identity as well as explore the identity of one of its most memorable revolutionaries. This description changed from Wikipedia entry

I watched this movie last night with my friend who I am going to be traveling around South America with. It was a powerful movie, and one that I highly recommend for anybody to watch. Watching it, made me think about my upcoming trip, and what some of my expectations/reasons for going are. The following is some of what these are

• Learn Spanish: When I was in Barcelona Spain during my European Excursion, it was the place linguistically I felt the most comfortable. I want to be able to come back fluent, especially able to counsel and work with people I might other wise have had a language barrier.
• Meet/See/Do: I’ve been very fortunate in my life to travel and see lots of the world. Already in my life I’ve been to four of the six continents I want to see (I have no desire to go to Antarctica). I love the feeling of being on the road. During my travels I’ve gotten to meet so many different people, that have improved and influenced my life. As I’ve gone places, the people have opened up my heart and encouraged me. I’ve also seen some of the most beautiful sights all around the world. I love seeing new places, and learning about the history and culture.
• Sort of a Sabbatical: Sense graduating from High School, I have been working on preparing myself for my career for the last seven years. I spent two years involved in a leadership training/discipleship program called the Master’s Commission. After that I went to community college and earned my AA, transferred to Eastern Washington University and first earned my BA in Social Work and now most recently my master’s degree in social work. I think it is fitting to spend a year traveling and refocusing for my return and beginning of my career.
• Finding Direction: I don’t feel like I’m running away scared from my future, but I don’t know really what the next step is for me. I think the traditional concept for after graduation is to start “real life.” I don’t like the idea of this. I feel like we should live/love the moments we are at in life. We don’t have any time other than the now. I don’t feel ready for things like getting a career job, buying a house, getting married, having a dog… etc. OK, dog thing sounds good, but I’m just not ready for the rest.
• Letting The World Change Me: Just like in the movie the Motorcycle Diaries, I am hoping that the experience will change me and prepare me to go out and change the world.

I think that is quite a list of different hopes for my trip. If you want to see a preview of the move Motorcycle Diaries watch it from youtube below.

Both Good and Bad Can be Crazy

Posted on Friday June 19, 2009 by Jacob Campbell.

Crazy

South American Trip Confirmation

In my years working with at-risk youth, I’ve come to have some pretty crazy stories that I was either there for or heard about second hand. Yesterday, was no exception. What I can say is that a man with a machete attacked a teenager outside of my work yesterday. Apparently after the attack he walked calmly up to the Crisis Residential Center, and was attempting to get in. The Spokesman Review article describes the attacker as a possible mental patient.

While I wasn’t at work during this incident, It’s pretty crazy and tops any other stories I’ve head before. It has also made me think about violence that is taking part with our youth. While the attacker was 49 years old, it was still an attack on a teenager. Maybe it’s that I’ve been watching too much GangLand on the history channel (you used to be able to watch videos on NinjaVideo.net), but I think that all of the violence is crazy. In thinking about violence, I think that it is about building up our communities. Although Spokane is not a huge place, it is growing. There is a gang problem, I realized that while working at Spokane Juvenile Detention. There are some pretty bad neighborhoods, check out the Crimemap. I believe it is about staying in some of these more needy neighborhoods. It’s going to be the community to help change the violence. A good book about inner city violence is Fist Stick Knife Gun by Geoffrey Canada.

The other crazy thing that is happening right now, is that I just bought tickets to go to South America. We fly into Trinidad and Tobago into Port of Spain. Me and Ami are still attempting to lock down some ideas about exactly what we will be doing, but it is now a for sure thing (tickets purchased).

Five Years Each

Posted on Saturday June 13, 2009 by Jacob Campbell.

Five Years.

Transitions and ceremony are important aspects of all of our lives. I was talking with a good friend the other day, who was telling me that she is not that interested in a wedding. To me the marriage is not about either the certificate or the ceremony. I do believe that both are important. The certificate is like a legal deceleration stating to everybody that two people are married. The ceremony is also important in that it is a public display of of what is going on in two people’s hearts and a public showing of the certificate. While the most important component of the marriage is the two people and their lives lived together, the other parts are significant.

In the western culture, we don’t truly have a ceremony to depict a young person’s transition into adulthood. Many cultures used to have different ceremonies. Last year, I was hoping to attend one of Fr. Richard Rohr’s Men’s Rites of Passage I will be participating in my own right of passage today. Graduation from college is probably the closest ceremony that we have depicting somebodies transition into adulthood.

Today, I will graduate with my master’s degree in social work. It is a pretty amazing story that while it took five years to earn my high school diploma, I will have earned my master’s degree in the same amount of time. I have had a ton of different challenges, changes, and other stuff happen over the last many years and find myself lucky to be where I’m at.

While I am still not exactly sure what I will be doing next year this time… I do have have some ideas.

Weighing the Balance

Posted on Monday May 4, 2009 by Jacob Campbell.

The needs of the many verses the one. I made it in Adobe Illustrator, but I’m attaching the Adobe Photoshop file, because I can’t find the original Illustrator file. It’s some of my first experiences playing with Illustrator

At work recently, I have been thinking about some tough issues. Weighing the balance of the good for the many verses the good for the one is something that seems to come up over and over in residential work. Often at the CRC, our last effort to curb negative behavior of a youth is to “punish” the group. This often means taking away the T.V. or not being able to go on an outing, because one youth is acting out negatively. This is always a tough decision, because it is hard to punish the many because of the behavior of the one.

An even more difficult weight that sometimes must be balanced is in looking towards a youth that really needs a lot of help, support, and love. These youth that need more time spent working with them, sometimes take staff’s time away from the other youth. One particular youth often required one to one staffing (something that was unthinkable from my times at Jubilee). While it is great to pour that much attention into one youth, sometimes I feel like I haven’t had time to come and give to the other youth at the facility. This youth has also displayed behavior that could be harmful to the other clients (bullying and threatening).

It can be very tough to know that one person really has a lot of need, and wanting to help them as much as possible. But to at the same time, understand that there is a need to help as many as possible. Maybe even be able to focus more on youth who are receptive and willing to work on issue. I guess it can be broken down into two ethical fields of thoughts. That of utilitarianism and of Kantian ethics. I believe it is much too early in the morning to spend time getting into the specifics of the arguments.

What do you guy’s believe is the best way to judge if one ought to work with the one at the expense of the many or the many at the expense of the one?

Street Lights

Posted on Sunday April 19, 2009 by Jacob Campbell.

Street Lights

I spent this weekend seeing old friends in both Pulman and Moscow. It was a really good time, and a trip well spent. The trip really made me spend some time evaluating where I am in my life, especially as I sped home at 2 am on Sunday morning (wanted to be able to go to my home church).

I had two thoughts as I was speeding home. I started thinking about how fast paced my life (and really the majority of the industrialized world) is. First, I was thought about when the road is bumpy that one feels the bumps even more and they can be harder to handle then if somebody is going slowly. Have you ever taken a speed bump at 50 mph? Well, I haven’t, but I would imagine that it would be very hard to take. I think this is true in our lives too. As our life pace moves so quickly, the bumps in our life are harder to handle correctly. It is much more likely that one of the bumps in our life will take us out. Second, I started thinking about how I drive when I am going fast, especially at night. Race cars attempt to turn as little as possible. Sudden changes in direction can be detrimental for somebody going quickly. If there are no cars, I might freely change lanes back and forth to attempt to go as straight as possible. It’s like the lines in our life don’t matter as much. I believe in our fast paced life, it can be easier and easier to have the lines and boundaries blur. Things that did not appear cross-able are easily crossed to keep the speed up. Maybe it’s time to slow our lives down some, keep in our lane and courageously take on all the bumps that come our way.

The Economy and Social Work

Posted on Saturday April 4, 2009 by Jacob Campbell.

With the worldwide, national, state, and local economies facing an economic downturn, it is important to examine its effects on social service agencies and social work. The active policy of how economic downturns effect social service agencies is examined though a number of modalities. When looking at these types of policies the affected populations must be described. The historical, worldwide, national, and statewide perspectives provide context and understanding of the problem. A policy analysis matrix is also utilized to give a more concrete description of the crisis.

Continue reading…

Abject Poverty, Orphanages, and Cuban Cigars

Posted on Friday March 27, 2009 by Jacob Campbell.

Los Niños de PPA

A photo overlooking some of Villa El Salvador. It began as a pueblo jóven (shantytown) in the vast, empty sand flats to the south of Lima in 1970 because of the urgent housing needs of immigrant families who had left the sierra of Peru. Villa El Salvador evolved into a huge urban zone, largely self-organizing, for which it won some fame. Largely through the efforts of its inhabitants, the neighborhood was supplied with electricity, water, and sewage.

Spending only five days working at the PPA is difficult, it really doesn’t feel like it is enough. As I sit here Thursday (actually technically Friday) morning, knowing tomorrow will be the last day that I get the opportunity to work with Los Niños de Puericultorio Perez Aranibar (PPA) it is a very sad thought. You see find pictures of Peru~ PPA & Villa El Salvador Peru~ PPA & Villa El Salvador 1 of 2 and Peru~ PPA & Villa El Salvador 2 of 2 albums on Facebook. Although I will only have been in Peru for 10 days come Saturday, it both feels like an eternity full of activities and thoughts and at the same time merely a touch in the water in regards to getting to know the kids or be of service to them and the PPA.

My mornings at the PPA have been spent doing physical labor. I have really enjoyed this trip having so many different layers to it. My physical labor layer is really nice in the fact almost nobody was willing to do it, knowing how much it’s needed around the huge campus of the PPA, and getting to see an instant result upon completion. The afternoon’s I spend “teaching” English to eight year old. Doing this I haven’t been able to see the instant results I get in the mornings. I believe it was one of my fellow travelers, Tony, who said it was like organizing chaos. We have a couple of games, often bring toy animals (asking the kids to describe them in Spanish then giving them the English names), and then playing futból and stopping various skirmishes. Even though I don’t believe me and Tony really taught the kids very much English, we got to love on them and give a couple of kids some individual attention they so lack in this institutional setting.

It can be good to unwind with some wine, cheese, chocolate, Cuban cigars and good fellowship

Yesterday, it was very powerful to get the opportunity to visit Villa El Salvador, a district in Lima. The main parts of town are nice, paved, and have many beautiful sections. Once you leave the more central areas, one finds how most Lima residents live. Villa El Salvador has dirt roads, no running water, trash in the streets, stinks, extremely poor families, and yet happy beautiful people. Seeing people’s resilience, regardless of their economic status and living conditions really puts your own life into status. It was a hard day, knowing that many of the kids at the PPA come from homes like the ones we visited in Villa El Salvador is really hard.

We visited one home, with one of PPA’s social workers. This visit was to check in with the family. We found a 12 year old daughter cooking for her younger siblings while her mom was at work. After getting back to Mira Flores (the wealthy district we have been staying in) we went back to the PPA to read bedtime stores to the three year old and tuck them in. It was so hard for many of us to leave these precious children. Feeling the weight of the day, I figured it was important to be able to debrief and relax. The trip has been strenuous.

Me and a friend bought some Peruvian wine, Cuban cigars (just had too, because they are illegal in the states), and Peruvian cheese and chocolate. About six of us stayed up talking until almost one am about all the things we’ve seen and experienced. It was powerful to just sit and get out many of the things we were all thinking about. Anyways, it is getting late and I have to get up very early for my last day at the PPA.