Not only was this month about ¨mission¨, but also an opportunity to reflect and gain new perspective and insight. I have officially survived my first month-long mission trip with teenagers! Mes de Misión is a month long service trip that the students of both Miguel Pro and Cristo Rey must make before entering their second to last year of high school. Both schools are Jesuit so one of the main lessons that they try to instill in the students is the importance of loving and serving others. Regardless of ones own situation you must always seek to serve others in need. This is what the mission of the month is...to teach the kids how to love and serve. This means not just loving and serving the outside community, but also the community of students. They were forced to learn how to live together for a whole month, without many of the commodities they were used to. They had to learn how to rely on one another, and how to have a group mentality rather than an individualistic attitude.
Mes de Misión 2011 took place in Ticaco, Peru which I truly felt was a wonderful site for the experience. It is a very small town in the mountains, where the people rely almost exclusively on the land for their survival. The landscape is stunning with the green mountains and all of the farms on the hillsides. It being a mountain town made it challenging however in our ability to breath. It is about 3,200 m high...essentially two miles!!! The altitude became a bit of an issue when it came to the work that we were doing. We spent almost the whole month cleaning paths that the people use to access their farms. We thus walked up and down up and down up and down these dirt paths kicking and moving rocks aside for a month. It was incredible seeing the people from Ticaco traverse these trails. As we struggled some days, we were often greeted by elderly townspeople that were no strangers to hard work and especially not to the difficult climb to and from the farm. I say that Ticaco was a wonderful site, because it was great for both the kids as well as for me to learn about a different way of life, and to recognize how indebted we are to these people for the food that comes to our table. How easy it is to go to the market to buy food without giving a second thought to where it comes from or the people who brought it there. It seems so unjust that these people whose sweat and tears help feed us are so often the ones that suffer a terrible poverty.
I had many surreal experiences in Ticaco. I had a feeling on more than one occassion that I had gone back in time, simply because the town did not have many of the commodities that I am so accustomed to not only in the U.S. but also in Tacna. Since the people live off the land, they are at the mercy of Mother Nature, thus while we were there we too learned just how precious water is. On several occassions the water got cut off so we had to go to a nearby canal with buckets to carry back to the school. I neared the canal one day and was greeted with the site of our students on their knees washing clothes in the canal. On my return trip to the school, with water on my head, as I passed by the adobe homes, I also passed by sheep and donkeys in the streets. While surreal at first, by the end of the month these sites became a normal part of the experience. One aspect that was difficult to get used to was the wood-fired stove. Although they say that the food can be tastier when cooked on one of these stoves, they are so incredibly labor intensive, especially when cooking for nearly 40 people. We also had to go look for firewood, which required some incredibly difficult hikes to locate a decent amount. The moments hiking up hills with wood tied to our backs or shoulders also seemed a bit surreal, but gave me an incredible appreciation for the gas stove we have in Tacna, as well as tons of respect for those people that do those hikes on a regular basis for years and years in order to survive.
I knew that Mes de Misión would surely not be an easy experience, but I think it might have been even more challenging than I anticiapted. The work was certainly not the most difficult component for me, but rather dealing with the students. The experience forced me to take a critical look at myself, which is never easy either. I became painfully aware of personality flaws previously unseen to me. Before coming here I told myself that even if I might not be the best teacher and certainly not the most experienced, I would be able to make up for these in the love I would show the kids. As difficult as it is for me to admit, I found it much more difficult than I imagined to show love and kindness to the students. The lack of respect and whining really brought me down. I was shocked at how lazy these kids were. I couldn´t seem to understand how some kids thought it was fair that while they were sitting down doing nothing, their classmates were still working. I felt like I was consantly nagging them, and it was exhausting. When we´d finish work, I was always so tired not from the labor but rather from trying to get them to actually work. I hated feeling like a nag, but it was especially tough when my partner didn´t support me or help me to motivate the kids so it fell on my shoulders to be the one to keep them going.
One of the most difficult aspects of the experience was figuring out exactly how to motivate the students. I quickly realized that what motivates me is very different than what motivates teenagers. The work was admittedly boring and incredibly monotonous, but it was work that the townspeople needed us to do. Whenever someone would pass us on the trail on compliment us on our work or thank us, I found motivation to keep going. One day an old lady passed us as we were working and she commented how she had fractured her leg when she tripped on a rock in trail and now she feels confident going to her farm even at night because the paths are so clean. These moments moved me and motivated me, but sadly I don´t think the kids were as affected by those interactions. I suppose it is mostly a maturity thing...
I realized that balance is going to be one of the most difficult things while I am here. I struggled with how to get the kids to listen to me without yelling, how to get the kids to respect me yet still keep them disciplined, how to love them and keep them in line and especially how to get them to feel comfortable enough with me to be able to share their lives, while simultaneously maintaining some distance recognizing my role as their teacher.
The root of most my difficulties was of course the struggles with Spanish. I felt like I could have done so much better in my position as a group leader had I been able to communicate better with them. Granted I learned a lot, especially the command form of Spanish, but I was really missing the words to have profound conversations. There were so many moments when I hoped to have a meaningful conversation or hoped to comfort the kids in their moments of need, but lacked the words. It was incredibly frustrating and humbling.
Nevertheless, the experience was also filled with beautiful moments. I had a few conversations with kids that made me grateful to be there. The afternoon when I was sitting down and two girls came and layed by me, their heads in my lap...missing their famlies, in need of some loving. The night that the girls decided that us volunteers needed to get out of our grundgy clothes and into their clothes for a birthday celebration. (Nothing like fitting into 14 and 15 year olds´ clothes for a confidence booster!!) The laughter, the smiles...these were the moments that I had to hold onto. I was also especially grateful to my fellow volunteers that were an incredible source of support to me. They were there to listen to me, to comfort me, and to understand me.
I am certainly glad that Mes de Misión is only a once a year type of deal but I am grateful for the experience, and the lessons I learned. I made it out alive, with no injuries or illnesses (despite an obsene number of health codes violated), with a renewed sense of what it is to love and serve and to give fully of oneself. Both the challenges and positive moments will help me to grow, but nevertheless it´s so good to be back in my home away from home...Tacna.
