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VOLUNTEER IN LATIN AMERICA
Or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation Building Latrines and Teaching English
BY LIZ HARRIS
© Copyright 1999 by Parents' Press
Leaving all the comforts of home, every summer hundreds of stalwart teenage travelers from across the United States head for rural Latin American villages where, as volunteers in Amigos de las Americas, they'll build latrines, dig gardens, plant trees, and perform other community service projects.
In the school year prior to their departure, the high school students attend biweekly meetings to prepare for their adventure, and they spend countless hours selling poinsettias and some 160 cases of grapefruit and oranges to pay for their trip.
This is no ordinary summer vacation. The students live with very low-income families, in communities where only Spanish is spoken.
Costa Rica
Overcoming shyness
For Niki Clarke, a senior at Sir Francis Drake High School in affluent Marin County, California, it was a life-changing experience. A serious student, Clarke viewed Amigos as an opportunity to travel and improve her Spanish.
Last summer she opted for Costa Rica, where she planted gardens and nearly 600 trees, and taught English to village children and young adults.
Every day she and her American partner, equipped with their trusty wheelbarrow, shovels, and sapling trees, "would go door to door asking people if they wanted trees or gardens," she explains. Some of the families would join them in the plotting and digging, while others would let them take on the project from start to finish. It was hard work, says Clarke uncomplainingly.
Throughout, Clarke was forced to shed her shyness and test her foreign language proficiency. "It was a big step for me. I just went for it."
But most importantly, her eight-week stay in Cristo Rey offered another first: sisters. She lived with a family of six, including boys ages 2 and 8, and girls ages 12 and 14. Four more grown children and their families lived nearby.
The head of the household was a seeker of odd jobs, his wife a part-time clerical worker in the nearest town. Neither was highly educated, notes Clarke, "not like us. But they were smart in different ways."
The family, she says, "was great. They were the best part. They just took me in as a daughter."
Admittedly, her first week or two was "really hard." Clarke felt unsure of her Spanish, and needed time to adjust to her surroundings in the village of 750. Her two-bedroom cement-block home was relatively luxurious by local standards, with running water (cold only), electricity, and a makeshift toilet ("You had to pour water down to flush").
But quickly enough, Clarke passed a watershed. Not only did she feel comfortable and confident in her volunteer role, she felt bonded to her newfound family.
On evenings and weekends, "I played with the kids and my sisters and their friends," she recalls, often taking off to have fun at a nearby river.
In retrospect, Clarke says the toughest part of her trip was the initial, nagging homesickness.
"I've never really left my family before," she says of her mother, father, and two brothers. "But that made me grow closer to my family down there."
