Where God weeps with hope: the story freezer

 "During the last few months, my work has taken me to the Amazon in Brazil and Lake Turkana in Kenya, seeking to portray the human condition with my camera, beyond race, religion or beliefs. First and foremost, the people," says photojournalist Ismael Martínez.

Una chica recibe clases particulares en Abidjan (Costa de Marfil). Harambee Africa International.

I am a photojournalist. I look for a story behind every shot, a person behind the story and a hope behind life.

I try to photographically portray the human condition in Brazil, Spain or Kenya.

For 80 percent of humanity, life is a lottery where God seems to have distributed the tickets among the winners themselves? Faced with such a panorama, the question can be quite simple: what would have happened if I (Andalusian) had been born fifteen kilometres down the Strait of Gibraltar in a different religion and culture? How and to what extent does a country and a family influence us?

Ismael, author of the report and photojournalist, with a friend in Uganda.

"I build my life on the biography of others," says the well-known photographer Richard Avedon. I look for humanity in the people I portray, regardless of race, religion or beliefs. People first, then ideas.

So my work is simple: I try to tell stories with photography like any photojournalist. I work in corporate communication. For example, I transform into images the corporate identity of educational, social or economic entities, whether they are universities, NGOs or business schools.

Photography is memory and identity, and I try to find these two aspects by documenting people and institutions that want to improve their public communication. It is not just about taking pictures, but about truthfully reflecting people and entities according to their own traits. Sometimes images of stories in photojournalism, sometimes corporate photographs.

"Belleza. Así yo era, así serás". Young woman caring for people in need in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). Flickr: Opus Dei.

During the last few months, my work has taken me to the Amazon in Brazil and to Lake Turkana in Kenya. In both countries I have worked for Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a Vatican foundation that financially supports initiatives of different institutions of the Catholic Church. Sometimes it is a refugee camp, sometimes it is a clinic with AIDS patients. Places where I discover stories that bring me closer to death... but where I really understand life better. Perhaps, to answer Heidegger's question: 'why am I something and not rather nothingness? Am I something between two nothings? Anyway, I hope these stories will help you to better understand some of these images and a certain sense of life... with hope. Thank you very much and bon appetit.

The freezer of stories with hope. Five scenes where God weeps in the world...

1. Where God weeps 
2. Of the living and the dead 
3. I look for human people, not perfect people 
4. Up to the tail, it's all bull 
5. Affection, the passport of life with Pope Francis and Javier Echevarria

                                                        A man rests on radial engines at Lodwar airport, Kenya.

1. Where God weeps

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter the gates of hell" (The Divine Comedy, Dante).

March 2017. In Brazil I am haunted by Dante and Paul of Tarsus: "Death, where is your victory". In the peripheries surrounding the city of Sao Paulo men and women seem to succumb to temptations. And yet, a group of ex-drug addicts try to reach the edge of normality by escaping the victory of death. They live in Fazenda da Esperança, a pioneering centre for ex-drug addicts. There, people are rehabilitated through living together, work and spiritual counselling. Fazenda da Esperança was started in 1983 by Friar Hans Stapel, a German Franciscan priest, in Guaratinguetá (Brazil) to rehabilitate drug addicts. In 2007, this first centre was visited by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Brazil. Friar Hans has created a total of 112 Fazenda de la Esperanza all over the world (Angola, Russia, Germany, Argentina, South Africa, Mozambique...). This year 2017 he will open another ten new fazendas on five continents.

-When a drug addict 'hits rock bottom' and decides to 'climb out of the hole' we call it the 'cry' of the Gospel: "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" It is the cry of despair of the sufferer. At that moment, many decide to come to the fazenda freely ... says Daniel, an optimistic young man, who accompanies Rafael, a drug addict.

-There is a nuance. You have to understand that drugs are not the origin. Drugs are the consequence of an emotional, family or sexual drama that has arisen in the past and that needs to be purified... Then Daniel falls silent and looks at Rafael to get him to talk. An hour later, Rafael tells his story affably in the dark suburbs. With his nike, trainers and blue jeans, nothing apparently gives away his biography. He looks like he has never broken a dish in his life and could pass outwardly for the perfect brother-in-law that every mother-in-law wants for her daughter: a quiet, kind and affectionate boy.

Here appearances, now their inner life:

Family on the outskirts of Juina (Brazil).

"My parents were distant cousins and met one night at a bonfire in Porto Alegre. When my uncle found out my mother was pregnant, he tried to pierce her womb with the knife.

This child is mine," she said, a pretty, green-eyed, blonde-haired girl of 16.

However, since I was born, my mother never gave me her blessing. I was a living abortion and she left me with my grandmother. When I was six years old, that woman, my mother, came home...

-Rafael, you are useless. I'm going to the bathroom and you're going to pick up the dirt I left behind... do you understand, she would say. She insisted: "Rafael, have you cleaned my bathroom yet? I usually obeyed to avoid reprisals and punishments...

The boys in the neighbourhood called me "estropicio" and the continuous humiliations left me without friends. At school Paulo made it his business to make my life miserable. Every morning he would shake me as I walked past his classroom door.

-Where are you going, you little wreck (estropicio)? What are you looking at me for? Your mother is a bad woman and you're going down the same path....

In 2006, fed up with humiliation, I ran away from home. My mother was not interested in looking for me and only my grandmother - when she found out where I lived - came to pick me up to return home. I shook my head stubbornly. I refused. My grandmother, observant of my wounds, was convinced of my pain and inner rage.

-I will not live with that woman any more, I said.

So at the age of 12, I started working on the streets of Portoalegre selling DVDs for the mafia. Small-time drug dealers put me up in flats. There, notes and coins were collected as fast as I easily squandered them on alcohol and other vices. With no other limits to my life, I started taking cocaine at the age of 13. Every day, every morning I took 10 grams to go "excited" to the DVD sales. The drug kept me euphoric and I wanted to try everything. When I was 16 I switched to crack, which was more dependent and cheaper.

Sunday Mass at the Fazenda da Esperança in Guaratinguetá (Brazil)

In the midst of the chaos, one night I met my "friend" Raul. I knew of his fame and didn't need to ask him. I simply accepted him as you accept the first person who enters your heart and your friendship. We talked and drank. Two days later Raul asked me for a favour. I gave him a ride on my motorbike. We arrived at the address in ten minutes with two plastic bags. I watched the street with the engine running while my buddy Raul grabbed a backpack. He climbed the stairs to a shack. He opened a door and took a 38 mm pistol out of the plastic bag and 'unblocked' a drug dealer on the couch of a joint. Nerves, screams in the street. Suddenly, among the people in the crowd, I recognised Paulo, my school bully, in the doorway of a bar. He was already a famous arms dealer then. Like a wild beast on my prey, I excitedly let go of my motorbike and approached him. He looked me in the face in disgust. He couldn't call me a "mess(estropicio)". I fired three shots at point-blank range and we left the place at full speed.

The Meaning of Life and Death in Time (Dead Sea, Israel).

From then on, even though I was just waiting in the vehicle, it didn't matter to me who we were going to kill. I was just Raul's squire, who had me emotionally trapped because he was the only person in the world who cared for my life. Raul did twenty more 'jobs' as a "matador de aluguel" (contract killer) before he was executed by a gang in our flat. There was a reckoning and I managed to save my own skin when they came looking for us.

What more limits do you need to cross at the age of 21, Rafael? I panicked, decided to drop everything and run away to another city. Only my grandmother knew my whereabouts. Depressed from drugs I kept my head down during the day, until a construction company offered me a job as a bricklayer. It was hard to have a schedule, to get up early and obey when your life is built without rules... but at least I was busy. One morning two of us bricklayers were given the job of repairing the roof of a parish church. I was neither baptised nor Catholic but the priest was a good man who celebrated Mass. I was hiding from my depression at the back of the church. The ideas kept pounding in my brain. One day the priest stopped me and said, "If you are a drug addict, I can help you". God was giving me a chance and I didn't let it slip away.

Then I made the second biggest resolution of my life.

I want to go to the Fazenda da Esperança and get cured.

I called my grandmother.

-I'm happy if you go there," she said me.

As I was about to cut the line, I heard a woman's voice on the other end, my mother:

-Don't cut me off, don't. I have to tell you something that weighs heavily on my mind.... I ask your forgiveness for all these years of our life. I love you for what you're going to do now... my son.

I hung up the phone. In 22 years, I had never been called son.

Rafael, a new prodigal son, in Guarantinguetá (Brazil).

Post Scriptum:
I, Rafael, today live in the Fazenda da Esperança, rehabilitating myself from drugs for a year under three principles: coexistence, work and spirituality. During this time I understood that my mother has also suffered a lot and I have been able to realise her attitudes. And she gave me life. Today I want to go back to see her because a family is what I want. I want to ask for forgiveness from my mother too in order to be forgiven. This is the priority. Then to return to the fazenda to help others and close a cycle in my life. I know that I must ask forgiveness from the parents of the young man whose life I took, even though I know that I run the risk of anger, because in the interior of Brazil they live the revenge of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? I credit my forgiveness to God, I feel that He has forgiven me and that I can help others to find God's forgiveness. I have been baptised, confirmed and received communion but I know I need prayers to deal with this. I must know that I am not alone.

Volunteers are a blessing from God. Dead body. Cleaning the body in Juina (Brazil).

2. Of the living and the dead

"The stories are strong, it is true, but they are strong because there is nothing stronger than Christian realism", Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being.

 March 2017. In the 1970s there were diamond prospectors in the rivers near Juina, in the west-central state of Mato Grosso (Brazil). Mato Grosso is a region twice the size of Spain or Kenya (900,000 km2).

Flying over the Mato Grosso, next to the Amazon (Brazil).

The diamonds attracted numerous adventurers to Juina, a small town of 50,000 inhabitants. Because of greed, insecurity in the area was very high. Since the death rate was so high, a local businessman decided that his own mine would be the burial ground. Rich and poor alike had to pay 3,000 reales to this one undertaker in town.

There came a time when the less well-off could not afford to pay for their burials and had to go into debt by taking out bank loans. The Salesian bishop of the city - aware of the drama that this meant for the most needy - decided to promote the dignity of the most disadvantaged of the dead by developing the work of mercy "burying the dead".

At a dignified and fair price AME offers the possibility of a dignified burial (Juina, Brazil).

So, thanks to its drive - and funding from Aid to the Church in Need - it opened a second funeral parlour and a mortuary chapel in 2012. Since then, the Catholic Church-driven association has buried more than 2,500 people in five years with professionalism, care and respect for the deceased, thanks to a few professionals and many volunteers who take turns to help AME. Now, the inhabitants of Juina can be buried for as little as 500 reais...

Funeral worthy of an evangelical woman thanks to the diocesan funeral home of the Catholic Church in Juina (Brazil).

So today was a tough day: documenting the funeral of an old woman and a man killed by seven stab wounds... The first deceased was a nice lady, an evangelical Protestant. The murdered man, a man with no beliefs, executed in a farmyard brawl... Honestly, although I have been to other African morgues... I was impressed to see the affection of the volunteers cleaning the man's body, as can be seen in the image above (a delicate affection that I would like for myself in the future, although, well, I will not go into details). In short, you see how the universal and catholic charity of Christ reached this old woman and the executed man when perhaps they least expected it. Perhaps they were only asking for justice worthy of a burial. Yet they were still treated with the mercy of love.

3. I look for human people, not perfect people

"I'm interested in the future because it's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life", Woody Allen.

June 2016. Turkana is an African region in northern Kenya. Lake Turkana is famous for being the largest alkaline lake in the world and an important breeding ground for crocodiles... Other species prowl the desert, such as snakes and spiders, although the most dangerous is the tiny malaria mosquito. The Turkana tribe that surrounds the lake is recognisable by their sinewy, tobacco-chewing men and women who elongate their necks with brightly coloured necklaces.

Turkana women in festive dress by the lake (Kenya).

Dazed, I return from a funeral of a one-year-old child. The deceased baby is wrapped in a sack and placed in the boot of the car, although I am only aware when the priest asks me to take the sack from the back of the car.

"What's inside...", I ask.

The priest falls silent and moves forward, offering a few words of comfort to the mother, who has come out to greet us. The villagers finish digging a grave next to the family hut. I drop the small sack in bewilderment and walk away. A nun now comforts the mother, who has lost her second child in three years. The ceremony begins with the whole village present around the sack in the hole. "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return". The village elders are about to cover the grave with branches when one of them lifts a palm leaf from the ground. Then a scorpion comes into the light and scurries swiftly away, reminding us that death is still with us and not only in the little deceased. The old woman - with her vitalist necklaces - doesn't even flinch. With a sharp blow of her flip-flop she harpoons the animal, which is crushed to death under the sand.

The mother, who has lost her second child in three years, is the first to throw sand into her son's sack in the open grave in the sand next to the family hut (Kenya). AYUDA A LA IGLESIA NECESITADA.

I am in these thoughts of life and death when - on my way home - I discover Erik, a cheerful teenager from the Turkana tribe, who opens the gate for me as I wander around looking for water to hydrate myself from the heat.

-Hey, Erik .... I need a conceptual photo for a project.... I need a scorpion and I don't know where to find one," I say.

Erik, he gives me a somewhat weary look of disdain. "Sure, musungu (white man). I'll find it. Do you want it dead or alive?

I look at him surprised because what is terrifying and close to me, is not terrifying at all to him....

-Hey, but I don't want you to take any risks, I insist.

-Calm down, musungu, no problem for me.

Women catching fish at sunset on Lake Turkana (Kenya).

I eat, walk and work. Twenty minutes later Erik knocks on my door. In the bottom of an empty plastic water bottle he carries a scorpion strutting its sting.

-Well, here it is...

And here again death. Here at the bottom of a bottle is death reflected in the scorpion that defies us with its harpoon.

Why this fear of death, who is the guardian of my life, who defends me from pain if I get too close? We are not eternal in this life and "someone" is supposed to watch over us (Buddha, Confucius... or Jesus Christ according to the Catholic creed...). Evil is not supposed to prevail.

“Muerte ¿donde tu victoria?”. Escorpión frente a crucifijo (Kenia).

Erik looks at me. He knows that life and death are everyday scenes in Turkana, in Kenya, in Africa. Here it is cheap to live and cheap to die. They, the Africans, don't seem to care about the security with which we Westerners cling and bind ourselves to the life of our times. For them everything is in the hands of God and providence. For Erik, life is simply about being human today, not about being perfect tomorrow. Giving humanity and a smile to the poor musungu. To facilitate the whim of a scorpion for a photograph because we don't know if tomorrow will come. Then, for Erik, the future will make a place for his affable humanity.

A woman receives the rain of grace during WYD in Madrid (Spain).

4. Up to the tail, everything is bull

"You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, because she loved much; but he who loves little, little is forgiven. And to her he said: Your sins are forgiven. (Luke, 7,46-48) "For I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will precede you into the kingdom of God" (Matthew 21,31).

In the central district of São Paulo (Brazil), God is with you 24 hours a day. Next to skyscrapers and office buildings stands Our Lady of the Good Death, a church where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed 24 hours a day. Here, in the nearby peripheries, true hope is being born: drug addicts, people without families and prostitutes come to the church to pray before God. They go alone or accompanied by missionaries of the Alliance of Mercy, young people who accompany society's outcasts at night.

"I have to raise my children here on the streets of Sao Paulo" (Brazil).

Edilson is one of the poor. He lives among cardboard and Bruna is a blonde girl, a consecrated member of the Alliance of Mercy who visits him every Friday with a group of young people. Edilson doesn't stop talking.

-I'll tell you the truth: she is the only person who has sat in our midst without asking us whether we smell good or bad. On many Fridays she accompanies us in our daily conversation and asks us about our life. She does not care about our appearance. She was the only person who remembered my birthday and brought me a cake to celebrate it.

-Well, I can be with you for a few hours, but God is with you 24 hours a day," says Bruna.

-Well, my dream is to meet the Pope and have my picture taken," interrupts Rafinha, sitting on a skateboard, disabled by an accident and father of seven children. Take a picture of me and take it to him, he implores me.

-I'll try...

Ayuda a personas excluidas en Madrid (España). Fundación Desarrollo y Asistencia.

Here, on the peripheries nearby, true hope is also born: drug addicts, people without families and prostitutes continue to seek mercy in the Church, in the house of God.

The Pope greets the author of the report.

5. Affection, the passport of life with Pope Francis and Javier Echevarria

"Giving love is in itself giving education", Eleanor Roosevelt

"If your picture is not good enough, you are not close enough" said the war photographer Robert Capa. And something similar can be said of the mercy promoted by Pope Francis and the affection offered by Javier Echevarría, the recently deceased Opus Dei prelate. "Give and it will be given to you [...] For with what measure you give, it will be measured to you" (Luke 6:38)... for what merit do we have if we only love those who love us? Perhaps it is only a matter of seeking mercy in the different, in the unknown, in the discarded.

Rome, 1 February 2017. Holy Father, I am Ismael, a Spanish photographer living in Kenya. Tomorrow I am following in your footsteps in Calabria and Brazil with former drug addicts and refugees in a project for Aid to the Church in Need. We will give you a book of photos on Mercy Sunday, but how can we give these people hope with pictures?

- [thinking] Treat them with affection,... with your gaze, with a gesture of tenderness. Love them a lot and accompany them a lot. Look them one by one in the face... and you will draw hope.

-Thank you, Holy Father. I will try as well as praying for your intentions at daily Mass, since I am a member of Opus Dei....

-Oh, and in Kenya! Do you live there? Well, they are doing very well in Kenya. The Work has consolidated a great work there. When I was in Kenya last year, I was able to see what they are doing in many places, with a wide variety of people at all levels. We must continue like this. Opus Dei is doing great work to help the people in Kenya.

-Thank you, Pope Francis. I don't think it is any merit of Opus Dei. Just something to help you and the people.

Madrasa children in Lomé (Togo).

Rome, 17 September 2016. Don Javier, this time I don't bring you any more African comics, except for this crocodile tooth from my pocket.

-But, my son, you didn't tear it off?

-No, father, I didn't tear it out.... It was given to me by a wise man in northern Kenya, in the Kakuma refugee camp. As I am not a fetishist, nor does my mother use it for 'soup', I leave it here with my passport, so that she can "bless" my visa, as it expired a few times and I had problems with the African bureaucracy...

Don Javier, this time I won't bring you any more African comics, except for this crocodile tooth from my pocket...

-Hey, Ismael, my son, I'll bless you as much as it takes, of course. And be careful, with the crocodiles, we need to be alive... The most important passport for a Christian is to be able to go to heaven. So take care of yourself... you are still very young. And in the meantime, we are here on earth to console and give our lives for others. As Saint Josemaría taught: "The time for giving fat bitches and old clothes is over; we have to give love, we have to give our hearts!

SOURCE: 

This article was originally published in Spanish on 19/04/2017, and translated with a little help of DeepL™ translator, free version & GoogleTranslate™  <https://opusdei.org/es/article/el-congelador-de-historias-cuatro-escenas-donde-dios-llora-en-el-mundo/> Copyright © Prelatura de la Santa Cruz, Some rights reserved.