Profile

Greg Wittenburg is a teacher for Colegio Cristo Rey in Tacna, Peru.

How has your experience compared to your expectations of JVC?

Disembarking the plane at Carlos Ciriani International, my first sight was of rolling sand dunes and rocks that more closely resembled Star Wars´s Tatooine than my native Kansas.  It was a baptism in what would prove a long line of shifting expectations. 

The temptation is always to idealize, to imagine your new home and the people there as something they are not—perfect.  But, more true in my case, the temptation was to hold myself to that elusive standard of perfection.  Crossing cultures breaks that idol, and fast.  We become like kids again.  We must relearn language, customs, and even our perspectives or beliefs.  It turns out that among Peruvians there are rich and poor.  There is good and bad.  There is consolation and desolation.  And, all those things coexist in me as well.  Now, after 16 months, I am more able to see my experience and myself as they are instead of as I would have them.  By surrendering my own understanding and the need to do, it is easier to love.  It is easier to move about and, paradoxically, to enact change. 

What has been the biggest hurdle you’ve overcome as a Jesuit Volunteer?

Teaching. Anyone can do the spray and pray method with teaching.  I have done it on many occasions.  But working toward cura personalis—care for the whole person—and forming women and men for and with others is much more difficult.  It means taking an interest in their lives and in their personal formation.  For me it has meant visits to students´ homes and spending time with them outside school at their extracurricular events and about town.  It is a challenge to do so while maintaining your patience with students who display a particular affinity for disrespectful behavior.  The road has often been marked by more failures than successes and certainly prods you to thrown in the proverbial towel.  Yet, the year’s end bore many fruits in addition to having just survived my first year as a teacher.  There were friendships and there was much growth on both ends of the classroom.  I think it has humbled me and taught me much about being “workers and not master builders…ministers not messiahs.” 

When comparing your life in JVC to your previous experiences, what has been the biggest shift or change?

On many typical days I wake to the sound of huayno music and pull off my wool covers.  My bare feet hit the concrete floor and carry me to the shower which may or may not draw water.  A quick bread and avocado sandwich, and I´m out the door of our beloved house, Habitat D-10.  From there, it is a short walk to the combi or public car and on to work with hundreds of precocious teenage boys chattering in their own slang-injected Spanish.  In short: there are countless daily differences, but they become workable, then normal, then they become the things you love—it´s just the water you swim in.  The real difference for me has been living an intentional lifestyle.  That is not to say that my life prior to JVC was unmoored but that, as volunteers, we view our experience through the lens of our commitment to certain values.  We hold ourselves to those values, evaluate ourselves by them and, most importantly, recommit ourselves to go deeper in those values.  It is a challenge but also a great blessing to be a part of a greater commitment shared by volunteers and countless others.

Who has had the biggest impact on you as a Jesuit Volunteer?

From neighbors to Jesuits to coworkers, friends and young kids, I think most JV´s would say they are constantly being formed by the people around them.  They teach us to move in new cultures, to love and thrive, and to laugh at ourselves when we slip.  But, when I honestly think about the person who has had the “biggest impact” on me, I would have to say my community mate and friend, Seamus.  I actually knew him quite well before moving to Peru, but living together as JV´s in Tacna is very different than being friends at Creighton University in Omaha.  He is someone who inspired me by his ability to always prioritize relationships and care for others.  It often came at personal sacrifice but he was never bitter but always open, patient and joyous.  It is easy to feel good and to want to become a better person when you are surrounded by people who really live lives that give testimony to the JV mission.

Has JVC affected your perspective on issues of spirituality, simple living, community, and/or social justice? In what ways?

The pillars of JVC, when fleshed out, can look different than they do on paper.  It seemed very clear when I read the handbook and wrote my many essays during the discernment process.  Naturally, my definitions have been challenged, enhanced, filled out by my real experience as a volunteer.  Community means eating together, sharing your lives with one another.  But it also means weekend water fights with Ashlen and Rose.  It means coffee with Martín and Edith or camping trips with my students.  Simple living doesn´t just mean giving up luxury, but prioritizing people.  Spirituality means sustaining a communal and personal relationship with God but also finding God in people and situations where initially we come up empty.  Social justice is consciousness and education about water rights and mining in northern Peru while watching our water consumption in the home.  Our values are never as simple or clean as they appear in print but they are more personal and dynamic as well.

What is one thing you’ve learned to appreciate as a Jesuit Volunteer?

The value of family.  Peruvians are often very dedicated to their families.  Many spend more time together than families in the states.  They take care of each other when they are sick, old, dying, in moments of trial and in moments of celebration.  As a volunteer I feel invited and even adopted into many families here.  It is also something I see reflected everyday in my students and in my neighborhood.  Kids who have a loving and present family that set high expectations for them simply perform better in school and are less likely to be drawn into delinquency.  Meanwhile, other kids struggle in families that have been divided by economic circumstance (as is the case with many parents who must work in mines in Chile or outside of Tacna in order to support their children).

In my own life I can more clearly the effects of having had positive family experience.  In many ways this has been continued in my JV community because we, as volunteers, function more as a family than friends.  Without them and other support we would lose much of that personal contact that breathes life into service and social justice.

What role has your faith played in your time with JVC?

I don´t know that it would be too difficult to talk about my faith life over the past 16 months; personal prayer has been a sustaining, nourishing and necessary element of my experience that has nurtured and rooted me in this experience.  But, I think it misleading to stop there.  Why?  I have learned so much more from our faith, that is to say the faith that I have shared in with my community and with Peruvians.  Whether it was the memorial mass for the father of a colleague, yoga and centering prayer on the beach, a candlelit reflection with other JV´s in the quiet of our home, grace before meals, readings on liberation theology with the Andahuaylillas community, or a spirited singing of Taytay Dios accompanied by zampoña flutes, our faith binds us by our common humanity and reminds us of our calling to simply serve and love one another.  It is in the ”our” of our faith that we find God and remember our small but significant participation in the People of God.