The art of volunteering.
The air was uncomfortably cold and humid as rain began to sprinkle down from the sky. I walked over to my bag and grabbed my rain poncho, wishing the pleasantly warm sunshine in Guatemala would return. The blisters on my feet rubbed uncomfortably in my worn out converse as I trundled down the hill towards the tree where all of our belongings were. My fingers fumbled with the zipper of my backpack, scrapped and raw from carrying cinderblocks 100 yards uphill for 8 hours the previous day. I pulled my fuzzy sweatshirt over my head, reveling in its warmth and cleanliness, and headed back towards the work site. After 4 days of toiling in the dirt, digging and re-digging trenches for the foundation of our Habitat for Humanity home, clipping and bending wire and piecing together poles of rebar, I was bruised, frustrated and exhausted. Despite my throbbing irritation and fatigue, my overbearing work ethic and intense competitiveness barred me from taking even a moment’s break from work. There was also the fact that I was working to construct a home for a family that had no shelter, and I could not stand the idea that my laziness might prevent them from having a suitable roof over their heads. I continued to trudge uphill to the house site, grumpily retreating into my big sweatshirt, looking like a giant yellow duck in my neon poncho and baseball cap.
Picking up a pair of wire cutters, I walked through the small cornfield next to the site to the quaint house the relatives of the family we were building for lived in. I plopped down in the rain sprinkled dust and began cutting pieces of wire to lace more rebar together. As I worked, white and brown chickens scrambled around the yard, clucking and fighting for pieces of grain. A mother duck emerged from the bushes at the far end of the clearing; 7 tiny, fluffy chicks followed her into the open air, looking around and huddling for safety. The two stray dogs that lived on the property lay, partially obscured in the corn stalks, looking cheerily, yet longingly towards the grill where the grandmother was starting to cook dinner. My hands ached and my blisters screamed every time I clamped down on the cutters to slice off a piece of wire. I wished I was one of those dogs, laying peacefully among the cornstalks with no responsibilities to humanity to act upon. Whap! I sliced down on the line of wire and the piece I was cutting went flying across the yard towards the chicken pen. Starring at it, menacingly sitting 10 feet away in the now wet, mucky dirt, I dragged myself to my feet and walked over to get it. Reaching it, I leaned down to grab it, and turned to walk back to my wire cutting spot, feeling the rain patter on the hood of my poncho. I took one step up a slight slope and felt my feet slide out from underneath me. I slammed down flat on my back, feeling the mud full of chicken poop and God only knows what else squelch underneath me. The irritation inside of me sizzled, rising up to, and then quickly overtaking my boiling point. In a fit more becoming of a two- year-old, I huffed loudly and angrily, got up, threw the wire down and headed back towards the construction site on the other side of the cornfield.
I stormed past everyone, grabbed a bag of fruity snacks out of my lunch bag and sat broodingly on a pile of cinderblocks, vigorously chewing on a gummy grape. As I sat, sulking with my snacks, the two youngest daughters of the family, who lived in the house across the cornfield, came leaping down the hill, running towards me. They stopped in front of me, smiling and breathless and I offered them each a pack of fruity snacks. Their names were Maria and Lucrezia and their story was heart wrenching. Their parents, unable to provide for them, had left them with their grandmother (she owned the small home across the cornfield.) The grandmother, however, was also unable to fully provide for them but all of the members of the community pitched in to make sure the girls were fed, clothed, cared for and received good education. We sat in the grass, talking in Spanish, joking about my poor pronunciation and playing the Guatemalan version of “Down by the Banks.” Lucrezia told me her favorite singer was Hannah Montana and took off her sweatshirt to show me her Hannah Montana t-shirt. Laughing, I pulled out my iPod and scrolled through the artists, selecting Hannah Montana. I handed the iPod to Lucrezia so she could pick which song she wanted to listen to. The device was bigger than her hand, and her eyes glowed with delight as she looked at the screen and used her whole palm to scroll through the options. I smiled, realizing that the iPod, a common appliance in my daily life, was fantastic, and wonderfully amazing to her. I took one of the earphones and gave her the other one. She chose “Best of Both Worlds” and tried to sing the lyrics in English, giggling and stumbling on the words. I showed her how to put the song on repeat and we shared a bag of strangely seasoned chips as she attempted to learn all of the lyrics. I gave my headphone to Maria so she could listen and sing along too.
We sat in the grass for over an hour, the breeze tickling the long blades and making the vividly hued, reaching lilacs sway in the wind. Eventually, I stood up and returned to the construction site to help erect the rebar structures that would reinforce the house. As I made my way through the deep trenches of the foundation with the rest of the Habitat team, twisting pieces of wire around the rebar and shoveling out excess dirt, I felt an extreme sense of comradeship and unity. No lingering feelings of guilt, stemming from my long break and not contributing to the construction remained. That day I learned, there are innumerable ways to give back and to enhance people’s lives. Volunteering is not just about mechanically completing a project, creating four walls and a roof for some intangible others to inhabit. Giving is about coming together, sharing a piece of yourself and your life, learning about others and showing those in need they are part off a tightly knit, mutually beneficial community; they are cared about and they are not alone.
To do what Alex did and volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, visit here.
