Day 8 and it's Great!

1/20 Nathan and Mayhah

As the sun began to set on the second to last day of service, the new community we have created was thrown into sharp relief. Participants clumped into inadvertent groups with community members. Some continued to decorate a blank wall with words in Spanish and English, fumbling over unfamiliar vowels and accents. Others played a game of soccer, an equal mix of AB participants and community members, although perhaps with unequal levels of skill.  Another group of participants explored the wonders of the iPhone camera with younger children, making goofy faces at each other. Others sat on the stoop, playing hand games and trading stories about our families. Even though we have only known each other for a few days and come from “vastly different” places, there was still a deep sense of community that felt comfortable, natural, and everlasting.

The initial awkward hesitation we feel when meeting new people almost completely vanished because we were all working toward the same goal. When we meet people in our daily lives, it is in a comparative atmosphere. There is a pervasive need to compete. In Los Andes, that has not been the case. Our intention is to be open, vulnerable, and connected. The goal is not to prove anything to one another. It is simply to coexist. We have shared losses and gains, successes and failures. Knowing that Nelson and Vilma are going to school doesn’t make us feel the need to do better than them. Knowing that Lily has lived in so many different parts of the world has not made us feel as if our lives have been boring. There is an African term, “Ubuntu” which means “I am, because we all are.” Our individual experiences have become our shared knowledge. The group dynamic of laughter, support, and commitment has brought a powerful dimension to the impact this experience is having on each member of our newfound community, both independent of and within Los Andes.

We have a tendency to place more weight on the future than what is happening in front of us. We restrict our experiences because they may not have a tangible benefit to our future. We choose not to be vulnerable due to a fear of future betrayal. We put less effort into temporary positions and programs because we know they will end soon. Yet all of us, the participants, community partners, and community members have fully thrown every inch of our souls and minds into working with and knowing each other. During reflection we all agreed that there is an inexplicable focus on the future in the States, as opposed to the desire to live in the moment. What would life be like if we appreciated everyone we met rather than competing with them? As a group we have been half-joking that the community of Los Andes is a utopia, a perfect world that only exists here. Could bringing these intentions with us into “real life” get us closer to a perfect world?

During our reflection tonight, we discussed the impact of privilege on our lives before Alternative Breaks. From there, we moved onto how those privileges or lack thereof have influenced our experiences here in Guatemala. A particularly heavy thought was that the cost for someone to participate in this experience was $1350. The cost for only three people to attend would be more than enough to completely pay for Nelson and Vilma’s education to be paid in full. There is something daunting about the fact that cost for us to come to Guatemala and support this community is equal to the amount of money needed to completely change multiple people’s lives.

However, the sense of utopia still exists. The need for us to do something with our privilege after our time in Guatemala has ended still remains. How we fuse these experiences will be the true measure of the impact that this experience has had on us, and the impact that we continue to make on this community.

Yet despite the great need in Los Andes and the great abundance in Maryland, we were able to forge a bond based on our similarities. Last night we went around the dinner table coming up with words to paint on a wall outside the school. We thought of words to inspire the students like friendship, faith, trust, and happiness, to paint in both English and Spanish. The list continued to grow as we went around the table. Today we asked Vilma to choose the words she wanted to see written on the wall and she chose 32 of them. She suggested we title the wall “Los Valores Compartidos Entre Los Andes y Maryland” which means “Shared Values Between Los Andes and Maryland.” The wall reflects how we all truly want the same things, even though they may be obscured by the physical differences in our daily lives. In a few days, we will no longer be breathing the same mountain air but our community will live on.