Building (a) Community Together

I spent last week in El Progreso, Honduras, with 30 W&M students.  We were working with Students Helping Honduras (SHH) to lay the foundation of a learning center in a colonia of Progreso, and to bolster children’s education during school break in an afternoon Kids Camp.

Our construction efforts were based in Villa Soleada, the colonia created by the joint efforts of its residents and SHH.  Residents of Villa had been living in a squatter community vulnerable to flooding and landslides and lacking any infrastructure.  After two years of weekly meetings, networking, thousands of students’ fundraising efforts and lots of sweat and shoveling, they moved into their newly constructed homes just before Christmas.

One of the most striking scenes on our trip was our first arrival to Villa Soleada.  Our brightly painted Blue Bird school bus, bouncing on the rutted roads to the tempo of the Honduran hit “Mi Nina Bonita,” deposited us squarely into about four inches of mud at the entrance of the community.  As we made our way down the road to a community gathering spot, we could see dozens of people awaiting us.

They broke into applause and cheering as we got closer.  Children came up to each of us, hugging us and saying their tiny “hola!s”, giving each of us several construction paper cards.  One of mine reads (in my basic Spanish translation), “We are very happy because you have come here to Honduras.”

This scene was illustrative of the sense of human connection we felt throughout the trip – rather than going to serve a community, it was as if we had gone to join a community.  Throughout the trip, whether it was learning the proper ratio for mixing cement from the men in Villa, or picking up digging techniques from a boy named Roberto who made his mark on all of us, we were for a time participants in the community of Villa.

I’ve been going on alternative break trips like this since my first spring break in college, 17 years ago.  Whether in Abiquiu, NM, Homestead, FL, New Orleans, LA, or Imbaseni, Tanzania, amidst the different languages and landscapes, it isn’t unusual for strangers to form a bond, held together by smiles, laughter and shared work.  It all resonates with a quote I recently read by Pablo Neruda, from “Childhood and Poetry”:

To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.  But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses – that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

We certainly felt the love of our new sisters and brothers in Villa, and I’m sure they felt ours right back – widening our understandings of what it means to be human, and uniting us in a common spirit of joy, compassion and love.