San Jose — Some compare it to the
Peace Corps, but several local Amigos de las Américas volunteers say
the programs couldn't be more different.
First, these volunteers are still in high school, making immersion into
the Latin American communities they visit unusual. When they come back,
they struggle to explain the experience.
"When they ask how it was, what can I say?" says Lauren Schenck, 17, a
Homestead High School senior who went to La Estancia, Honduras, for two
months during the summer. "There's no short answer for it."
The volunteers come back with many memories and a love of their host
communities. Lauren says she had little trouble with culture shock,
because her host family was so welcoming and caring.
"It felt a lot like home," she says.
Further south, Cupertino High School senior Eva Roa, 17, a young
activist who speaks with smiles and contagious enthusiasm, found the
people of La Martillada, Panama, to be just as hospitable. She worked
with the 200 to 300 residents to create a project on their terms.
"They bring you into their house to have coffee, and it's very
genuine," said Eva, the co-founder of her campus Amnesty International
Club.
Lauren's host community had welcomed Amigos volunteers the previous
summer and was accustomed to the Amigos philosophy, which centers on
sustainability and community-based initiatives. Eva's community had
hosted Peace Corps volunteers before but was new to Amigos.
Amigos does not
pay the host families anything, the idea being that the volunteers'
help is part of the exchange. The community shares the burden of
feeding them, and often gives their guests their last egg or slaughters
chickens for them.
"It's really important to be open, to know you
know some things and they know some things," Eva says. "You both have
to be on the same level."
Eva found that building a drinking water storage tank and aqueduct in
La Martillada hinged on this tenet, as well as hauling four yards of
sand bags and 500 cement blocks up a muddy hill.
Renee Fagot, the training director for the Santa Clara Valley Chapter
of Amigos, says volunteers are prepared to be facilitators.
"They are really looked at as leaders, as role models," she says.
Although 17-year-olds may not have those skills when they arrive, they
are taught to inspire the community, identify resources and bring
people together.
"Giving the ownership to the community makes these projects
sustainable," says Fagot, 26, who started with Amigos as a volunteer to
Bolivia in 1998.
It is hard to say whether Amigos projects remain intact years later.
"Are they going to keep brushing their teeth every day now that we
taught them to? I don't know, but I hope they do," says Audrey Feldman,
who helped teach dental hygiene, nutrition and environmental protection
to children and build two concrete garbage-burning receptacles.
Feldman, 18, is a Monta Vista High School graduate now studying at New
York University.
Regardless of construction success, which must be judged in relative
terms, the cultural exchange element of Amigos' mission is undeniable
and indelible.
Amigos volunteers and their parents have to face the facts before they
go that they could get sick from parasites or such tropical diseases as
malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever, which are endemic in parts of
Central America. Most volunteers have some touch of illness, usually
nothing serious, and no one has died since the organization started in
1965.
Feldman had one such brush when she was diagnosed with dengue in Capulín Uno, a community of 3,000 near Granada, Nicaragua.
The aspiring journalist casually describes taking a taxi to a doctor as
if it was an adventure and says she never freaked out. Similarly, Eva
laughs as she describes her partner pointing out that her lips had
turned blue from a stomach virus.
"There are some risks associated with traveling internationally," says
Fagot. "But the Amigos organization mitigates that risk in a couple of
different ways."
One of those ways is to have a strict conduct code for the young
Amigos. They cannot leave the community without permission, cannot ride
motorcycles, cannot smoke or drink and cannot have amorous interactions
in the community.
Parents say they are nervous at first.
"It was kind of rough as a parent, of course, because she was not going
to just any place, and the fact that she was going for six weeks was
kind of extreme," says Millie Roa, Eva's mother.
Eva and Lauren hope to serve as training supervisors, and Lauren is
speaking in front of Homestead Spanish classes, hoping to inspire the
next generation of Amigos.
"Cupertino is all I know," says Eva. "It's interesting when the world as you know it expands."
