Habitat for Humanity: Sebring

The week before spring break, most of my friends were packing up their bathing suits, tank tops and sunscreen, getting ready to head to Mexico. I was packing sunscreen too — but not for swimsuit tan lines. My suitcase was full of gym shorts and t-shirts because my time in the sun would be on a construction site in Sebring, Fla. Even if I was longing for a little beach time, I was also really looking forward to my alternative spring break trip with the Habitat for Humanity Collegiate Challenge, their nationwide program that provides alternative breaks for high school and college students.

And I had good reason to be excited. The week turned out to be one of my favorite Georgetown experiences. When our group, consisting of 24 Hoyas, arrived on the work site the first day, we all stared at the concrete slab on the ground before us. But after five days
full of hammering, lifting, measuring, hammering, power drilling, climbing on the roof, more hammering and sweating, we walked away from the beginnings of a home, complete with exterior and interior wall structures, roof structures, plywood on the walls, plywood covering the roof, windows installed and everything properly nailed and hurricane-clipped in place.

We were also very fortunate to be able to meet the future homeowner, as well as her son. Perhaps one of the most rewarding parts of the trip was hearing her call a friend and describe our progress, her voice quivering with excitement. Habitat for Humanity provides opportunities for affordable housing for families that need a “hand up, not a hand out,” in accordance with their motto. Working alongside her and realizing what this home could mean for her family inspired in me an indescribable feeling. I think those of us that overheard her conversation were probably nearly as joyful as she was.

In addition to the hard work and amazing progress that we contributed to the house we were building, we also had plenty of opportunities for fun and bonding. Our journey down south was sprinkled with stops at Sonic (a fast-foodnovelty for most Northerners), a trolley tour of beautiful and historic Savannah, glasses of famous Southern sweet tea, van breakdowns in sketchy parking lots and non-stop listening to Miley Cyrus. After we finished our workdays in Sebring, we partook in adventures ranging from a tram tour of Highlands Hammock County State Park (we saw wild alligators!), to the lamb jumping contests at the Florida Strawberry Festival, to bingo at a retirement center, where we were up against some pretty intense senior citizens. We also had a lot of down time to just hang out, play Catchphrase and the Six-Word Game and simply get to know each other.

While building a home was inspiring and every activity the trip leaders planned was fabulously fun, it was truly the people on the trip who made the difference. The Habitat volunteers — mostly retirees who travel south and volunteer for the winter — and staff constantly praised our hard work and willingness to give up our beach time to help them help families in need. As far as the other Georgetown students go, I could not have asked for better fellow group members. We represented every year, every school and many different states, and yet each person willingly opened up to all the others, allowing for a truly amazing bonding experience for everyone. The most striking aspect of our group dynamic was the constant positive attitude. Hardly a complaint was heard all week, and it was clear that every single person had come on this trip with a true desire to help others. The friendship of people who cherish service and social justice in the same way I do is, to me, an invaluable blessing. I will definitely never forget this experience — or any of the lyrics to “See You Again” by Miley Cyrus.

— Nicole Cronin

Blanket New Orleans

On our first night in New Orleans, the members of the Blanket New Orleans alternative spring break trip sat down and enjoyed po’ boys for dinner in the Lower Ninth Ward. You could still see the remnants of spray paint markings on the door, left by those who searched the building in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

It has been roughly two and a half years since Hurricane Katrina roared through our nation’s Gulf Coast. I must admit that I, like many Americans, had begun to forget about the horror that befell the victims of the storm. Whatever my expectations about the trip were, they were shattered when we arrived in New Orleans. I was prepared to see utter devastation in the Lower Ninth Ward. I was not prepared to greet a city that looked as though it had been though a war. Block after block of abandoned and decaying homes, sometimes with the dead body count still written on the facade.

Perhaps the worst sight of all was the homeless tent city that has cropped up underneath the I-10 interstate. Sixty percent of the tent city’s inhabitants were made homeless by Hurricane Katrina, according to research compiled by UNITY of Greater New Orleans, an organization devoted to ending homelessness in New Orleans. It was difficult to swallow the thought that this seemingly third-world tent city was located a mere three blocks from the affluence of the New Orleans Ritz Carlton and the city’s French Quarter.

Before enjoying the aforementioned po’ boys (which, for the record, consists of fried seafood and sauce on a bun), the group explored the hardest-hit areas of the Lower Ninth. Some homes in this area were completely swept away when the levee broke and others lay in shambles, waiting for repair. But hopeless the Lower Ninth is not; some of the owners have returned to their homes and begun to rebuild. From gutting houses to planting trees and everything in between, throughout the week, Georgetown students made a noticeable difference in the lives of residents there.

Perhaps the most rewarding experience was the two days we spent painting the home of Lionel Simmons, a man who spent two plus years rebuilding other people’s houses before starting work on his own. If that’s not selflessness then I don’t know what is. The feeling of helping someone like him was inexplicably rewarding.

Although this was my first trip to New Orleans, some members of the group had been there at least a half dozen times to do Hurricane Katrina relief work. In the evenings, we visited with some of the people that they had helped in the past. One of the people we visited was Lenora Zimmerman, a 72-year-old retired schoolteacher whose house literally filled with water during the Katrina floods. Kayla Towey (SFS ’10) and a group from her high school volunteered to gut it about two years ago. Zimmerman’s home was recently completed, and she was finally able to move in on March 1. It was remarkable to talk to Zimmerman, who was overwhelmingly grateful for the help she had received from Kayla’s group. “I’m not putting down city leaders, but a group of teenagers gets more done than the government officials,” she said.

The members of BNO and I talked with Zimmerman about the lingering effects of Katrina, specifically the high crime rate in areas where some people have reclaimed their homes and others have not, as well as the monetary hardships that come with trying to rebuild a home from the ground up. “I hardly have money to buy groceries,” she said. Remarkably, Zimmerman never complained about her situation. Rather, the feeling of gratefulness was palpable as she gave us the tour of her newly finished home.

Unfortunately, Zimmerman’s monetary situation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is not an exception but the rule. Our group also visited with Paulette Davis, for whom Jim Hilson (COL ’08), a former senior opinion editor for The Hoya, and Dara Fulstone (MSB ’09) laid tile on the 2007 BNO trip. “When I came back, I thought I’d never be able to live in [my house] again,” Davis said.

Davis works two jobs and sleeps only in three-hour shifts in order to pay for the repairs to her home and a new car after hers washed away during the storm. Although she was fortunate enough to escape to Baton Rouge during Katrina, Davis returned home to find entire brick walls knocked down. After suffering from nosebleeds caused by the mildew in her FEMA trailer, Davis was ecstatic to be back in her own home. Similar to Zimmerman, Davis was utterly grateful to the help she received from Georgetown students, and had a framed picture of the students from the 2007 BNO trip proudly displayed in her new home.

For me and other first-timers in New Orleans, it was difficult to discern which areas of the city were run-down because of hurricane damage and which were in disrepair even before the storm. Regardless of how it got that way, New Orleans is still a city in desperate need of attention. “So many people need help,” Ziliang “Bruce” Wei (GRD ’09) said. This simple statement epitomizes the situation there. Many people want to come home to New Orleans and start rebuilding but cannot afford to leave their jobs in cities where they were relocated to during and after the storm. Because of this, neighborhoods may never be the same. One of the saddest things I saw was a newly rebuilt family home sitting next to what had once been a house but is now a pile of rubbish.

New Orleans is nothing if not resilient. The tourists are retuning and frequenting the French Quarter once again. Po’ boy shops and jambalaya joints have reopened their doors. The Superdome is once again home to the New Orleans Saints and not to thousands of refugees. Nevertheless, underneath the roaring brass bands, the people are straining for their cries to be heard. They are searching for help; For a friend; For a home. For a new life. It is up to those of us who are privileged enough to attend a school like Georgetown to answer that call. I implore you to open your heart and consider going to places like New Orleans instead of Cancun or Cabo next spring break. It will change your life. It has irrevocably changed mine.

— Lauren Zelt

GUHERE

Why would a person ever agree to spend their spring break traveling to Biloxi, Miss., to do manual labor for a week? This is the question I could not get out of my mind early Saturday morning as the GUHERE group departed from Georgetown, southbound for Mississippi. The typical college spring break usually involves a beach, alcohol and beautiful college-aged women wearing minimal clothing (luckily, two of these spring break characteristics did come true for me). I had chosen to participate in an alternative spring break, one that involved plaster, dry-wall, not drinking and lots of southern culture. What had I gotten myself in to?

Sunday, I was still sitting in a van cutting across Georgia and Alabama, and I felt delirium tremors set in as my body adjusted to its new non-alcoholic state. The pain subsided as my co-pilot (College Dean Bernie Cook) and I rocked out to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” as our van passed through Birmingham (unfortunately we did not have time to stop to get a read on how much the citizens there loved their governor). Along with Dean Cook, a fellow participant and I began taking turns picking music from each other’s iPods, and I finally began to realize that the trip would be bearable after all.

Arriving in Biloxi on Sunday evening, we started work the next morning at a home in Bay St. Louis, Miss. The home belonged to the Deans, an elderly retired couple whose house was still not repaired from the hurricane that passed through two and a half years ago. We helped them clear rubble from underneath their house so that he could eventually raise the house to the new government standard of 25 feet above sea level.

The next day, we arrived at a different family’s home. This home belonged to the Cap family and had already been rebuilt, yet lacked drywall and paint. We immediately set to work, helping in every way we could. Most of the group ended up working at this home for the remainder of the week. Fortunately for the group, the father, Hub Cap (I kid you not), worked alongside us the entire time. He shared with us much of his knowledge of construction, his appreciation for our help and, most importantly, his outlook on life.

Wednesday evening, Hub invited some of his relatives over to the house and dumped several pounds of boiled crawfish onto the table. The group and the family gathered around as Hub taught us how to break the heads of the crawfish and eat the meat. It was at this moment that I realized the beauty of the southern culture. There was nothing more important to Hub than having his family, a home, good friends and a delectable meal of boiled crawfish to share.

This perspective came to me at just the right time in my life. At Georgetown, I tended to think that there was nothing more important than receiving an “A” on a dreadful econometrics midterm exam. As a second semester junior, the pressure of getting a summer internship and, in the very near future, a real job weighed on me like a ton of bricks.

Things have changed since coming back from my time in Mississippi. Of course I still want to do well in my econometrics class, and I will still look for an internship and a job. However, Hub taught me a valuable lesson on life that I do not think I could have ever learned here at Georgetown: There is nothing more important in life than family, a home, good friends and a good meal.

From diving head-first into the Gulf of Mexico in my boxers alongside a newly found friend to sitting on a stoop with Hub Cap and his family eating crawfish, my spring break trip to Biloxi, Miss., will be a memory that I will hold on to for the rest of my life.

— Dale Sevin

Native American Experience

How would you answer if an exchange student like me asked you, “What is American culture?” Coming from Japan, a homogeneous country, I am always surprised to see how diverse this country is, and I wonder how I could ever define “American culture.” Every time I walk through campus, I hear foreign languages, and walking five minutes off campus, I encounter a variety of ethnic restaurants. I dance in the Ballet Folklorico, a dance club at Georgetown composed of people of Mexican or other Latin American descent. Having studied here for about half a year, I have come to know that America does not only consist of the rich, white people commonly found in Georgetown, and that “American culture” is not just the McDonalds and Starbucks that serve as representatives of America in many countries around the world. And this spring break, I got to spend time with the people who started it all after I applied for Native American Experience, an alternative spring break program.

After driving for some five hours, 11 American students and I got to Lumberton, N.C.. It was my first time in a southern state. It was warmer than D.C., and I realized that the people there were more laid back as we entered a local waffle shop. The nice weather and the country music from the radio made me smile.

As the first activity there, we went down a river by canoe. It felt like I was being held by Mother Earth herself. It was truly special, feeling the gaze of animals, the respiration of plants and the calm sunlight through the leaves. Before we started canoeing, Ms. Mary, a Native American medicine woman, gave us a short lecture about her herbal medicines and cosmetics. I realized that even though there are so many things to learn from nature, I have never been taught about them in school. Also by living in a big city, I tend to rely only on vision and forget to use my full senses. But once I closed my eyes on the river, not only could I feel those movements of nature, but I felt that I was breathing at the same pace as the earth. At the middle of the short trip on the river, the coordinator of this program, known simply as “Mac,” told us that both culture and nature are becoming less diverse. I found this to be true after we learned about the Lumbee, the regional Native American tribe. They told us that they have been losing their culture but are now working to preserve it by offering to children many kinds of classes based on traditions, like pottery to dance.

In the same manner as culture, it is a known fact that the number of existing natural species is decreasing. Ironically, it might be either the generalization of globalization or extinction that will make us finally realize how important is it to have our own identity, and how precious the originality of our own roots and the variety found in nature are. Nothing is interesting if everything is the same.

The next day we met Rhiannon, Mac’s daughter. She works for an non profit organization that worked for sustainable development and social justice called the Center for Community Action. Even though she could have taken advantage of better opportunities elsewhere, which would have enabled her young daughter to achieve a better formal education, she decided to come back to her hometown and devote herself to the improvement of the community where she grew up. According to her, it is a common practice that people either stay in the community or return to it after going off to college somewhere else. Those people then devote themselves to community development using what they have learned both within and outside of the community. In comparison, in Japan young people from rural areas tend to leave their hometown for Tokyo or another large city to go to college and then continue to work in those big cities. The population in these rural areas are dwindling as the younger populations leaves and the older population begins to age. Some villages can no longer support themselves financially and are forced to merge with a bigger city or be combined with other villages facing similar problems.

This trip was absolutely eye-opening for me and has motivated me to realize one of my dreams of becoming a public servant and work for my hometown. Ever since I was young, I have always been fascinated with foreign cultures and languages. I wanted to work and live abroad so much that my family allowed me to study abroad here. The longer I spend time here, however, the more opportunities I have to reflect on my own family and culture. Not only did this trip give me one more piece to complete my understanding of America, but it also gave me the chance to think about my own roots and inspired me to work toward improving my community.

— Fumi Takeuchi

Border Awareness Experience

Border Awareness Experience. Experience Awareness at the Border. Border the Experience of your Awareness. Invert the integral parts of the sentence and switch them around, and each time the whole has a slightly different look and meaning.

This was one of the first lessons we learned on our trip to El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico. All of us — 11 students and one staff member — found that whatever preconceptions we held as true in the style of black-or-white judgments so typical of those who only theorize, and don’t really know, were thrown on their heads.
We found that from 1,722 miles away here in D.C., it’s easy to pretend that you understand how U.S. policy works, especially regarding Mexico. Similarly, it’s easy to think that you “really” understand the U.S. border situation with Mexico. It’s also easy to believe that you have a defined standpoint on what is “right” in terms of U.S. foreign, economic or immigration policy and what is “wrong,” morally or legally.

We did. We are 11 Georgetown students and one staff member from the Center for Social Justice, coming from a diverse array of backgrounds and life experiences. At Georgetown, we represent three schools, all four undergraduate years and an assortment of majors ranging from international politics and economics to women’s studies and social justice — quite the combination to produce debate and challenges to one another’s beliefs.

However, we seemed to find that we were all arguing for the outcomes, the same ends. No matter what we had thought we believed before, all of us found ourselves questioning our own standpoints and theories.

We arrived in El Paso on March 1 and spent the next seven days crossing back and forth over the border. We lived in a sanctuary house in Anapra, a colonia on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez. Colonias are the settlements that have sprung up for miles around Juárez over the past few decades in response to the employment opportunities at the maquilas — mostly foreign-owned (95 percent are from the United States) factories that benefit from the advantages of production on the Mexican side of the border.

Every day, we crossed back and forth, in a van and on foot, over the small stretch of land and beginning stream of the Río Grande that is the U.S. border with Mexico. We had to do this, you see, to make sure we were exposed to all sides of the border. In the end, it seems there are more than just two.

We were introduced to Annunciation House — both the physical house and the organization that it is named after (see www.annunciationhouse.org).We learned about the sanctuary house network, operating in El Paso and Juárez, and the necessity for these safe houses on both sides. We played soccer, ate, cooked, cleaned and simply hung out with volunteers and guests at the A-House. Many guests shared their stories as to why they had crossed the border, where they were coming from, whom and what they were leaving.

We met with Border Patrol. We were briefed on the mission and operation protocol and technology of the BP agents at the U.S.-Mexican border, and why safety and regulation is a necessary component of U.S. border policy and enforcement.

We visited non-profit organizations run by women on both sides of the Border, Casa Amiga in Juárez and Mujer Obrera in El Paso, and witnessed the strength and struggle of these women determined to make change in their communities. Casa Amiga is dedicated to ending violence and domestic abuse within Juárez; Mujer Obrera provides employment and community revitalization to the Segundo Barrio in El Paso, which suffered greatlyonce U.S. companies shifted their factories to the Mexican side.

We visited the U.S. Consulate in Juárez, the largest non-immigrant visa-processing consulate in the world. We witnessed the lines of people hoping to have the opportunity of visiting, living or working in the United States and learned why the consulate does or doesn’t grant these people entry.

We visited a U.S.-owned maquila, a highly controversial factory that produces the fiber optics and minute chips that allow us, and all of you, to have cell phones. We also visited one of the few active labor rights groups that fights for the Mexican government to recognize the many abuses of worker and human (especially women’s) rights in these maquilas.

We attended a meeting of a group dedicated to protecting areas in El Paso and our colonia, Anapra, from “re-development” by extremely wealthy individuals who have decided they are not wealthy enough and hence want to wipe out these colonias and the Segundo Barrio to build casinos, entertainment centers and the like.

We witnessed all this and more. Words can’t really do justice to all that we understood, but out of respect to and responsibility for sharing our experience with those who have not been to the Border, we are trying. However, we now recognize that the best way to learn something is to live it.

— Eleanor Boli

Habitat for Humanity: Covington

Stranded by the side of the highway in southern Virginia was not on my list of activities for the students returning from Habitat for Humanity in Covington, La. A flat tire only eight miles north of the hotel where we “slept” for two hours foiled our plans to make it back to Georgetown’s final home game where we secured our victory as the Big East regular season champions. It was an incredible blow to our Habitat team spirit. With all our vans on the side of the highway in the pitch dark, I was fuming as I waited for our auto repair friend Bobby to come replace our mangled tire, thinking how close we were to making the game. Unfortunately, our minor setback became a huge delay when we realized that the donut would only get us about 50 miles and that we would definitely need a new tire to complete our 300-mile journey back to the Hilltop.

Our group of 24 had become such a close group, and I was waiting for the collective look of disappointment when I delivered the bad news that we would not be able to make it to the game. Instead, to my surprise, when we arrived at the auto repair store in the tiny town of Abingdon, Va., everyone jumped out of the vans (it was still only 7:30 a.m.) and started running around the repair shop with smiles on their faces and suggested they would be fine with stopping to watch the game on TV somewhere. I was blown away. The students were so understanding of the situation and, though disappointed, were just as happy to watch the game all together during lunch. I was so impressed not only with everyone’s willingness to be flexible, but also with the sense of cohesiveness among our group.

I then began thinking about the past week and our work with Habitat for Humanity in Covington. I realized that for as much as this trip is about building homes for a few of America’s 95 million people who live in substandard housing, it is also about the connections between people. Our group of 24 extremely diverse personalities was somehow able to come together and take part in this shared experience. However, it was not only the connections we were able to build among each other, but also the connections with the people whom we served that were so enriching to our experience. Our hosts at Trinity Church were able to give our students an unexpected but rewarding sense of life and culture in southern Louisiana. The regular volunteers we worked with at St. Tammany West Habitat hailed from all over the country with a wide spectrum of stories and experiences about Habitat.

More importantly, the families for whom we were building were a great presence and inspiration for our work. Our main projects were on the future site of the Anderson family home. We later found out that the two Anderson houses would be the homes for Joe’s family. Joe was a Habitat employee with whom we had worked closely over several days, who was unknowingly building his house for his fiancée, mother-in-law and soon-to-be-born baby.

Obviously, ending my fourth and final Habitat spring break trip with a flat tire at 4:30 a.m. was not ideal. However, watching the commitment of the group to stick together through this little road block and witnessing the bond that was created within our group reminded me why I kept coming back to Habitat every spring break — it’s about the people. I may not have returned with the wonderful Cancun-bronzed skin of my fellow Hoyas, but I believe the 24 people that worked with Habitat in Louisiana gained a true sense that they did something meaningful with their time. From building lasting friendships between some of Georgetown’s finest to the rewarding knowledge that we made an impact on Joe and his family, the trip gave me the greatest sense of humility and pride — humility in the face of how grave the housing needs are in the United States, and pride in the knowledge that we helped accomplish a small part of Habitat’s goal. I was reminded that these are the experiences and memories that have shaped me as a student and member of the Georgetown community, and they will follow me long after I leave the Hilltop this spring.

— Amanda Evans