Is this Hell?

Remember the awesome movie, A Field of Dreams? And the question? Is this heaven? This week, I'm in deep southwest Georgia, near the border with Florida. I'm here to serve as an interpreter for PA students from Emory University as they complete a rotation in which they offer a free health clinic to the migrant farm workers here in the area. As we drive up to field after field in the brutal heat, only to encounter workers who are compromised physically in so many ways, and really held captive to the lives they are living, I have thought of this question again and again. Is this hell?

We all get stuck in ruts and live without really paying attention to what's going on around us. One day we wake up and realize we are not at the place we were headed and we readjust our sails to get back to the place we want to be. These workers have very purposefully chosen where to go...they have escaped the difficulties and sometimes the horrors of their lives south of our southern border and have come here...for a better life. As I look at the work they do....it is backbreaking work done in the hottest sun you can imagine...and the effect it has on their bodies and minds, I wonder....for them....is this hell? Though quick to acknowledge the difficulty of the work, rarely do I hear them complain that they are not where they want to be. And to a man or woman, they have a plan. "In 8 to 10 years I want to return to Guatemala." "I don't have a visa so I have to stay here until I'm ready to go back home." Never at a loss for direction, they know where they are and where they are going. Amazing to me.

My roommate, a thoughtful Salvadoran/Urugayan/Italian American from San Francisco, is fascinated by their stories, and I share his interest. Such epic tales of escape, danger, and always, it seems, overcoming. They overcome. Whatever is in their path, they overcome it. So what that I'm working in the hot sun everyday and you're telling me I have TB...there are treatments, right? I'll overcome. I was involved in a vehicle accident five years ago, but I can keep doing this work until I don't have to anymore. I will overcome. My son is in college and my daughter is one of the most famous people in Florida. They tell me that they will take care of me and their dad one day. We'll be able to leave the tomato fields. We will overcome. Vaginal infection, fungus, heart murmur, back pain, terrible headaches, TB, pregnancy, diabetes...all difficulties. But we will overcome. Working 8-9 hours a day in the sun with no breaks and making hardly any money...stuck here on the farm unable to go and shop or even wash clothes...teeth that got pulled that needed to come out long ago and now my mouth is sore....all things that can and will be overcome. Come back and see me in ten or fifteen years. You will see.

No. This is not hell. It's a hard, hot, difficult place to be. But it's not hell. Despite barriers galore, and difficulties that multiply like rabbits, this is only a place to be overcome. And I will overcome. This is a place of superheroes. It is not hell.