Words

For some reason, adult illiteracy hits me so much harder when I'm in the US than when I was in El Salvador. I don't like what that says about my assumptions. But something like 40% of adult Detroiters read at less than a 9th-grade level. Ariana has run into this often when she's out helping folks apply for Bridge Cards. Our systems are so set up for people who read - not only read, but understand fairly complex legal and financial terminology that sometimes gives her (and me, when I look at it) trouble.

My last day in El Sitio, I sat with María as she was practicing her writing assignment - writing the numbers 0-20,000 by fives (!) and my thought was, "Rock on! You delivered two babies in a refugee camp while raising the four you already had, while your husband fought with the guerrilla, and now you're in your late 50s and learning to read and write. Amazing." And now I'm doing data entry on some ELCA member surveys and several of them so far have been written by folks who seem to have struggled pretty greatly with reading and filling out the survey. And it has me psychologically clothes-lined.