While buying ice cream bars to keep us going on our trekking through Cochabamba, some vendors struck up a conversation with Jashton. I had to intervene with some translation, but Jashton did a great job sharing his name, and then answering the common question question, “de donde es?” In Spanish Jashton said, “Nueve York.”
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| the house of Jashton's toddlerhood |
Then I shared that he was born in La Paz, so for them, Jashton is from La Paz. In Bolivia you are from where you were born, and this works well in a society with very little individual mobility, and even less of family roots. In reviewing the photos from today I was hit by this photo. Jashton eating a saltena – a typical Bolivian food. It is a great image for me – seeing Jashton's Bolivian-ness. But is he Bolivian? What does that mean, what does it mean that he is American?
Okay, a photo pushes me into a bit of philosophy. Who are we really? What are nationalities but arbitrary political boundaries. So it comes back to “Where are you from?” For an American raised in a mobile middle-class, it is a bit clearer that it is not where we were born. But our mobility also makes our current residence a shallow descriptor of our identity. The pattern of the Israelites is that of paternity – who is your father? And those who study family systems lay most of all we are at the feet of our family. But I am taken back to a poem Jashton wrote for school earlier this year.
In poetic form, he was to write using the start of “I am from....” It was a list of fun and family, events and memories, places and people, but then he ended; “But most of all, I am from the love of God.”
De donde es?
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