Author Archives: St Fleur Fadjy

About St Fleur Fadjy

Haitian American Linguistics and Spanish Major @ UMass Amherst, Photographer, Research Aide @ The Center for the Study of African American Language

A Christian Reflection on Study Abroad

When people talk about their study abroad experiences, the most common topics are places to visit, to shop, to eat, and to have fun. A less common topic is religion and where you can find a community that shares your faith in a new country. One of my 2020 resolutions before setting off to Madrid was to get closer to God. Admittedly, I didn’t do my due diligence. I didn’t look up a single church or community in Madrid where I could practice my Christian faith. Instead, once I got to Spain, most of my time was spent with friends–eating, drinking, going clubbing on some weekends or in my bedroom. None of this helped me grow my faith. Instead I was heavily distracted, engaging in activities to fit in with others in my program and almost always feeling guilty afterward. To make matters worse academic life was being repeatedly disrupted by major depressive episodes. Many nights I fell asleep exhausted from sobbing, feeling the distance between me and God growing further and further. And like a plot straight from a horror movie, the virus quickly reached and took over Spain. A sense of great fear swept over everyone. Sanitizers and masks that were readily available just a week prior were sold out and merchants couldn’t tell us when they’d be back in stock. Ultimately, my time in Spain came to an abrupt halt and I left Spain in the same spiritual place I had been in before arriving. Most of my deepened faith journey happened after I got back home. However, that doesn’t have to be you. For this reason, I have compiled a short list of churches in the Madrid area that might be useful to anyone going abroad who wants to still be involved in a community of believers. 

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Reflection in Mexico: The Nahua, Nahuatl and Some Things I Noticed

I was scrolling through my phone in early December and noticed my friend was in Mexico. It was a trip he asked me to go on a few months prior and I had decided the dates were not a good time for me to up and leave Massachusetts. However, that day I was feeling like I needed a break from my surroundings. A friend had just passed, I was sad, and needed a mental health break. That Saturday morning I purchased the first flight out to Cancun and on Sunday I arrived. I stayed at the Sandos Resort and met up with two of my childhood friends who I had not seen in almost ten years. The same day we went out into the real world that surrounded the resort and visited La Quinta Avenida (5th Ave). I noticed how many people were clearly indigenous or had noticeable indigenous ancestry. These were not the Mexicans I grew up seeing in telenovelas. I was used to seeing main characters like Guillermo del Toro — blue eyed blondes. In talking to some non-indigenous Mexicans, I realized there was a sort of animosity or sort of “other-ness” put onto the indigenous population. There is even a word, “india”, which is used to mean stupid or dumb. You will come across more privileged Mexicans saying things like, “Te vio muy india” or “Que india me saliste!” When I talk to my Mexican American friends, they speak about Aztecs like they are a thing of the past much like how US Americans talk about our own indigenous populations. And for the ones who acknowledge Aztec existence, they describe them as people from distant far away pueblos and often don’t even acknowledge the obvious Nahua features they have themselves. Somehow being indigenous or only speaking Nahuatl makes you less Mexican simply because you don’t speak the colonial tongue. I’m kind of blabbing but I’m now really interested in possibly being able to do field work in Mexico. I wish Nahuatl was taught as a second language in every Mexican school. Does anyone have any more insight into the relations in Mexico as it pertains to the Nahua people?

Reflection: My Dominican Cousin, Being an Outcast in the Latinx Community, and Finding My Identity in that Struggle

I grew up in Newark, New Jersey – a city known for its heavy population of immigrants from every corner of the world. I grew up speaking fluent English and Haitian Creole in my household and a passive speaker of Spanish as my father was a fluent speaker – though we didn’t live together after I was five. By middle school, I was Mr. Corrales‘, my Spanish teacher from 4-8th grade’s, inner-city success story. He had finally taught una negrita how to speak Spanish and threw me into multiple conversations with native speakers who would just come to our school from countries like Honduras and Nicaragua. Of course, he and my schoolmates weren’t aware that I had been exposed to the language my entire life. But it didn’t matter to anyone, because for a black girl in Newark, New Jersey, speaking Spanish was impossible. Continue reading