Summer Adventure Broadens Student’s Perspective

By Nancy K. Crevier

Ever since she was little, said Emily Bernson’s mother, Kim Jaeckel, “she wanted to go, go, go.” So this summer, Kim, a graphic designer, and Peter Bernson, a Newtown schoolteacher, indulged their 16-year-old daughter’s wanderlust with a learning experience that took her far from the insulated world of Newtown.

From August 9 to 16, Emily was submerged in the Mayan culture in the small town of Tecpan, nestled on a mountainside in south central Guatemala. It was an experience that the incoming Newtown High School junior said changed her perspective on how people live in a third world country, and made her far more appreciative of what she has.

“People were a lot happier than I expected,” said Emily. “I thought that they would be depressed about how little they have, but in Tecpan, they seemed okay with how they live. I thought that the kids there would be sad that they have so little, but they were happy with what they did have. I think that because there is still not a lot of outside influence, they don’t know what to miss, so they are fine with what they have,” she said.

Emily traveled to Guatemala with 19 other young people from all over the United States and Canada through Global Learning Adventures, an organization dedicated to educating youth on being better global citizens and providing them with the opportunities to learn about other cultures through hands-on community service, workshops, and exploration of a region.

Emily and her parents had considered other options to visit abroad, such as a six-month AFS experience to Australia, but because she had not been outside of the US before, aside from a trip to Bermuda, Emily was not sure she wanted such an extended trip. “My mom started looking online and found the Global Learning Adventures. They offered a two-week program to South Africa that really interested me, but it was booked. Then we found the one week Guatemalan trip and I thought that would be a good way to go somewhere different,” said Emily.

Following a two-hour ride from Guatemala City, Emily settled into a hostel in Tecpan. “It wasn’t what I thought of as a hostel. It wasn’t a big room full of beds and a communal bathroom. I shared a room with another girl and we had our own bathroom. It was also an educational facility to teach local people about agriculture and where we had sessions about the culture,” Emily said.

The climate was another surprise to the Newtown girl. “I thought because it was in Central America, that it would be hot and tropical. But it was the rainy season there and we had to wear sweatshirts all of the time. I don’t think it ever got above 55 degrees. That was hard, especially because we didn’t always even have hot showers. The hostel owner only turned on the hot water certain times of the day, and if too many people showered at the same time, the hot water ran out. So it was a lot colder than I expected,” said Emily.

Scarce Resources

She witnessed a level of poverty beyond anything she had ever seen before. “There were dogs and cows and animals walking all over the streets, really skinny and malnourished, and no one seemed to care. The housing and resources are scarce, and not everybody has electricity,” Emily said. For water, the townspeople pay for bottled water to be shipped in, as the water from the river and often the town well, too, is extremely unsafe to use for cooking or drinking. “We just take so much for granted here at home,” commented Emily.

After a chilly wake-up shower every morning, a bus would take the students to a nearby town where they painted the walls of a local school and played with the young children during recess. Certain things stood out for the American student about the school: one, was that it was not a little shack in the woods as she had anticipated, but a well cared for building. Another thing that Emily found unusual was that the grades one through six were gathered in just two rooms in the school.

“The school was not set up like a conventional school here. The children start school at different ages, so you might have an 8-year-old in kindergarten. The parents are really into education, though, and want more for their kids than what they have. But because so many farm and families can have eight or nine kids, the older children are often needed to stay home while the parents work in the fields. But once a family decides to let a child start s­chool, they don’t take them out again,” said Emily.

According to the director at the school, said Emily, this was the first time that volunteers had come to assist in any way at the rural school, and for many of the children, their first contact with outsiders. That, and a local legend that told of “gringos” who would come to kidnap the children of Tecpan for slaves, may have been why the initial reception by parents to the young people was cautionary. “The first day, the parents seemed wary, and came and watched us really closely while we played. I would say by the second day, though, that they realized we weren’t going to take the children away, and they relaxed and were pretty friendly,” she said.

The language barrier was no barrier to building relationships with the children in the brief time that the group was there, though. “I absolutely fell in love with this one little boy, Alios. He was so cute and so happy,” said Emily. “The kids were so great. They would come up to us and just grab our hands and want us to go play. They didn’t care if you spoke Spanish, or not,” she said.

After a lunch prepared by the wives of hostel employees, the group spent the afternoons exploring the nearby region. Food, said Emily, was a bit of a challenge to her, as she said she is a rather picky eater.

“We ate a lot of beans, and there were corn tortillas with every meal. Breakfast was pretty typical, with ham and eggs, and lunch was usually beans and rice and a little salad.” Because the hostel catered to tourists, eating raw vegetables prepared on site was safe to do, she said. Dinner usually involved a chicken or beef dish, but not always prepared in a manner with which Emily was familiar. “But I always tried things. That was important. I didn’t want to be disrespectful, and I only took a little if I didn’t think I was going to like it, because throwing it out would be offensive. For them, it is terrible to waste any food,” Emily said. It was a good lesson in stretching her boundaries, she said.

The Legacy Of Civil War

One of the field trips was to a women’s cooperative outside of Tecpan. Emily was impressed by the cooperative, founded by a woman following the civil war of the 1980s in which the woman lost her male family members and determined to find a way for herself and other women to support themselves. “It’s dedicated to empowering women, who are mostly discriminated against in this culture, and kept at home and out of the work force. The ‘medicine women’ of this cooperative grow herbs and plants that they package and sell as natural medicines,” said Emily.

Just a five-minute ride from the school, too, is the site of a mass grave discovered just five years ago. “During the civil war, people who were against the government or with the guerillas just disappeared and families never knew what happened to them. I think that these remains were not identified, but they found about 20 to 30 bodies at the grave. It really made you think how lucky we are to live somewhere where people don’t just disappear overnight because they disagree with something,” said Emily.

Just outside of Tecpan center is the site of Iximche, the pre-Columbian capital of the Kaqchikel Mayan empire, from whom the people of Tecpan are descended. At Iximche, the group viewed the ruins of the early empire, but pouring rain that day prevented them from attending a Mayan ceremony there. “We did go to Antigua the next day, though, and while we didn’t actually see a Mayan wedding, we had a group explain the traditions to us. That was really interesting,” Emily said.

“The last day, we went back to the school to say goodbye, and when I left, my little ‘boyfriend’ Alios cried. He just got so attached. I wanted to take him home. No wonder the parents worried!” she said.

The value of the trip was not so much in the manual labor that the students provided, said Emily, but in learning about a different culture. “It is so important that we travel and learn about other countries. If you don’t educate yourself about other places, you stay ignorant and stuck in your own little world. It’s interesting to learn about other cultures, and with this trip, I got to help people, too,” said Emily. “I would recommend any person to just go to another country, even for a little bit.”