Perspectives, Back and Forward

Interact’s first international service trip has come to a close, the students are back in the comforts of family homes, and all of us have learned a great deal.

Forgive our final week of spotty blog entries: our internet connections were gone for the most of the week. And that’s one of the first lessons of our trip, made clear by Joey in an earlier post: in much of the world our “American” lifestyle is simply not possible, and may never be. At times in Antigua, we were able to enjoy ice cream (there are about a dozen shops in the small town), even though most of the city’s homes have no refrigerators. 

Our housekeeper/cook Adele, after preparing us tasty meals from simple ingredients (zucchini and cucumber, rice and papaya were constants), would stand apart as we ate. Then as we retired for a short siesta or went off to service work, she would collect our leavings to take home. Our simple meals, humble and warm, were luxuries to many. Almost 60% of the country is in “extreme poverty,” unable to purchase even a basic basket of food.

Like any developing nation, the economic disparity in Guatemala is acute and poignant.  A large Nestle factory employs hundreds nearby (as do two Monsanto labs), yet a middle class resembling our own is nearly non-existent. Tourism is a growing service industry because the country is desperate for cash. Will our dollars go to the Canadian who opened a coffee shop on our street or the two Mayan women two doors down who weave crafts?

Yet for all of the hard choices, the people of Guatemala are warm, welcoming, and excited to be neighbors in a way that many US neighborhoods have forgotten. Practicing Catholics, sending their children to school and husbands to work, talking over fences about local news and love of country, anxious to preserve their culture--but for an accident of birth in a nation not our own, each could be us. The converse, of course, is also true.

And this, perhaps, is what made our service such an easy choice.  We watched dozens of mothers learn about nutrition basics (with a visual aid of an imported Doritos bag with a red “X” through it); then we went to their homes (sewerless, sometimes floorless, and made of corrugated steel and plastic) and installed simple water filters. In a single stroke we had eliminated 80% of water-borne illnesses their children might contract. This was highlighted the next week when every bag of medicine we distributed contained Pepto-Bismol.

We worked with children in an elementary school, teaching them basic English where we could, but as significantly learning from them what instant and unconditional friendship (and mad skill at futbol!) looks like. We also watched teachers read aloud the single textbook each classroom had so students could copy down their homework.

We scrubbed walls and repainted a community project house which had not been cared for in ten years. And though the paint was a thin sugar and water-based cover, we knew the fresh look of the building was as powerful as any home makeover; the small staff seemed to work ceaselessly with basic medical and dental care, prenatal education, and pharmacy needs.

And throughout their work for themselves (work in which we were only minor transients), the promise of a richer material life haunts them. For if the US exports something beyond oil, food, and machinery, it exports television, film, and music which tell them about the lifestyles that might be, or might never be.

I don’t know if we have a “responsibility” to help others, but I know that a trip like this compels in us a perspective on power and our sense of entitlement. And as a young woman we met ran through the streets on July 4 yelling “Amurka!” I wanted to remind her that the people of these countries south of Texas call themselves Americans, too.

Thank you for following our blog and reading about our first international service trip, one we hope to repeat in coming years.  I could not be more proud of how our students engaged this new community, made friends, and continue to reflect upon our community futures.

• Interact of Royal Oak plans to make a gift of laminated regional and world maps to the teachers of the Colego Kubin Junan school where we worked.
• In lieu of a full disaster relief trip to Moore, OK, Interact and Royal Oak Rotary are donating Home Depot gift cards to the residents there, which I will be delivering myself later this month.
• Interact students (along with the RO Model UN team) will be at Arts, Beats, and Eats selling beverages and raising funds for numerous charities. Visit our tent!

If you would like to assist in any of the dozens of Interact service projects—locally, nationally, or internationally—please write to us at interact@royaloakschools.com.