Colorful Messages

“A mi me gusta la forma de trabajar de los Amigos de las Américas. Me gustó lo que hacían y como convivían con los niños, los jóvenes y todas las de más personas de la comunidad.” (Approximate English translation: I like the way Amigos de las Américas does its work. I liked what they did and how they lived together with the children, young people, and all the other people of the community.)

When asked to describe her favorite aspect of the summer, a bright 13 year-old from Casa Blanca, Michoacán, Mexico known for her stoic nature, scribbled the thought noted above on a piece of colored construction paper.  She folded it as many times as she could and handed it to me with her eyes cast to the floor. I added the folded purple square to the pile of other papers handed to me by the rest of the class.

The expression of this 13 year-old sat in my backpack for days unread. It wasn’t until a three-hour layover in Houston, Texas en route to the Dane County Regional Airport that I realized I hadn’t read all the colored construction paper messages crumpled and folded into the nooks of my carry-on bag.

As I dug through maps of Mexico, hot pepper-covered candy, an empty water bottle, and smelly socks from the previous travel day, I pulled out the rainbow collection of papeles (papers) and separated them into two piles… one with legible messages and the other consisting of incomprehensible chicken scratch. After all was in order, I glanced at my stacks and noted that one of the piles sat in the shadow of the other. This miniscule showing of messages turned out to be the only legible, A+ English class caliber work. I carefully repacked the larger of the two stacks (I was sentimentally attached to them) and settled myself into a chair outside my gate for some light reading. What I encountered weren’t forced, high school yearbook comments but rather real, honest feedback.

Asking for feedback or carrying out a “Performance Evaluation” was just one element suggested by the U.S. non-profit, international, service organization Amigos de las Amerícas.  Through this organization, I recently joined an army of 600+ Volunteers from all over the United States for a summer of living, learning, teaching, volunteering, growing, and interacting in Latin America. My AMIGOS co-worker Aaron, a young man from Denver, and I concluded our summer in Casa Blanca, a small town of 100 residents in the state of Michoacán, México, with one of these evaluations.

What performance needed evaluating? Waking up at 8:30 every morning five days a week made it feel like Aaron and I were going to summer school. The fact is, we were. The only difference was that we were the teachers and all of our students only spoke and understood Spanish. Maybe it was our brains that needed evaluating. What could we possibly have been thinking, trying to teach a bunch of five to eleven year-olds, in Spanish, about respecting their surroundings through picking up trash or emphasizing the importance of healthy hygiene?

When our teaching job was done for the day, Aaron and I stepped out of our teacher costumes and into our negotiating “business suits” to chat with residents of Casa Blanca, political figures in the municipal government, and Project Supervisors to assess the progress of the asset-based development project taking shape in our town. Many meetings were scheduled to talk about building a wall and benches in the town center. The outcome of these negotiations resulted in a signed contract stating that the municipal government of José Sixto Verduzco would carry out the project with the help of the residentes (residents) of Casa Blanca.

After signing contracts, conducting important meetings, and waking up five days a week for summer school, we were in need of some serious evaluation. With that in mind, we called upon our most honest and trusted critics to do the evaluating - a group of five to thirteen year-olds which we knew would give us the brutal and honest truth. Thanks to colored construction paper and crayons, we got a rainbow of responses.

Sitting in the airport reading the comments of our critics, the words of my 13 year-old host sister, Perla Almanza-Hernandez, really struck a chord with me. Her words helped me realize how much me encantaba lo que hacían y como convivía yo con los niños, los jóvenes y todas las de más personas de la comunidad. (Approximate English translation: I loved what they (my family and friends) did for me and how I lived together with the kids, young people, and all the other people of the community.)