Day 50: Joannes Klas

Sister Joannes Klas, age 86, has been helping migrants in Central America since 1982.  Speaking with her today, I thought about all the lives I've seen pass through the shelter since I've been here—all the pain I've witnessed. I asked her how she's been able to stick with it for so many years. 

"I think you have to learn not to be afraid. That's why I say that security is an allusion. You almost have to put everything in a box and try not to think too hard about it," she said. 

Originally from Belgium, Wisconsin, Klas was one of 11 children. She grew up going to the library and reading from The Lives of Saints, and was so inspired these stories that at age 15 she knew she wanted to enter the convent. At age 18, she was received into the community of the School Sisters of St Francis, Milwaukee. 

She was drawn to this particular group of sisters because they worked internationally, which was something she had always dreamed about. 

"You could enter the School Sisters of St. Francis, if you want," she told me. 

In 1971, the sisters sent her to Williamsburg, Kentucky, where she worked in the Cumberland River Mental Health Center. She opened a classroom in the basement of a church for kids who didn't have the proper resources to support their education, many of whom were children of coal miners. 

Then in 1976, after traveling briefly to India with the sisters of Nazareth, she returned to Kentucky to fight for the coal mining community. For three years, she devoted herself to the coal miners’ strike in Harlen and Stearns Counties—playing guitar at union meetings, writing letters, visiting the picket line, and supporting the miners' wives. 

"The strike got worse and worse. Sometimes, the miners would go out and give talks and leave their wives alone. I would spent the night at their homes because officers would shoot into their homes as a scare tactic," she explained. 

In 1980, she moved to Tupalo, Mississippi, where she fought for economic justice for African Americans. She picketed with workers, gave speeches, marched, and even confronted the KKK while they were recruiting. 

Two years later, sparked by a strong desire to learn Spanish, she spent six months in Mexico. After her program ended, she traveled around Central America and decided she wanted to work permanently at the Honduras-Guatemala border. 

The refugee camp she was stationed at was called "El Tesoro" or "the treasure." She survived on $25 a month, lived in a tent, and started a school with a small budget for pencils, paper and books given to the camp by the United Nations. 

"It was simple living, but good," she said. "We had no electricity for all those years. No running water."  

She lived this way for nine years—sewing clothes, harvesting from fields of cabbage, grinding corn for tortillas, and cooking over an open fire. 

It wasn't a utopia, however. In 1983, soldiers from Guatemala and Honduras entered the camp with accusations of sedition against 17 men at the camp. The officers hit the volunteers with their guns and forcibly removed the group of men. Ten of them were tortured and kept as prisoners until 2007. 

Klas told me she's had a lot of frustrating and terrifying interactions with military over the years.  

In 1892, Honduras closed its doors officially to refugees. The government lent a piece of land to the refugees and everyone fled. They had to build everything from scratch. The new camp in Yalpemech, Guatemala—San Jose del Tesoro—still houses about 500 families. It continues to be under construction. Though they've installed electricity, they are still digging wells.

Klas stayed in Guatemala until 2017. She was in Honduras and Guatemala for a total of 37 years. 

She's given so much to the camp. In 1997, she received the Fridthof Nansen award from the United Nations and she put the prize money into building a church, convent, and medical clinic. 

I asked her if she was able to go home around the holidays. 

"No," she said. "Never for those big days, because those are the days you want to be with your people."

That phrase—"your people"—stuck out to me. These people are her family. 

"Visitors used to come by and ask where they could find the treasure, and I told them that all the people are the treasure," she said. 

The Mother General called her back to the United States because of concerns about her age and health. People in the camp protested and Klas didn't want to go, but knew she had to follow her religious order. 

Back in the United States, she misses the thick tortillas people eat in Guatemala and said that shopping malls overwhelm her. Sometimes, it's hard for her to find the words in English to express what she's thinking. She's still in contact with many families at San Jose del Tesoro and tries to go back every year. People call her periodically, informing her of deaths or births in the community.

"I loved every minute of it. As hard as it was at times, I wouldn't want to change it for anything," she told me. 

She came to El Paso to put her Spanish to use and now volunteers at our shelter on Tuesday mornings with two other sisters. The three of them are supposed to work in the clothing donation room from 1 to 4, but I often see Klas walking around and talking to guests in the dorm instead. 

(Our beloved Joannes Klas.)