Lakeside School

Every summer, groups of Lakeside students embark on Global Service Learning trips around the world. Students write blog entries to document their learning and share aspects of their experience. The following post is from the first week of the group’s stay in Peru.

Today was our first day of service, where we would be helping our host families build an additional bathroom next to the weaving center. When I arrived, my initial job was to help shovel the concrete mix into straw sacks to transport to the building location. I expected it to be easy, as I watched one of the locals effortlessly shovel mounds of concrete into people's bags. However, I was quickly humbled, as my shovel hit rock time and time again and my shoulder became insanely sore after only a little bit. At the same time, the man I was working with constantly motivated me to keep going, telling me that I was doing a good job and that I could do it.

I had a similar experience after lunch, as I worked with Norbu to help clear out the space where they would be building the bathroom. We were handed a pickaxe to dig the dirt, rocks, and sediment away, and a shovel to move the dirt to a wheelbarrow, to be dumped elsewhere. The tricky part was that the wheelbarrow was located about 5 ft up on a small embankment. Watching the locals throw dirt into the air and into the wheelbarrow, I thought I could do it too. However, on my first attempt, it was a complete failure, as the dirt fell straight to the ground. Fortunately, they gave me another chance, and over time I got slightly better at throwing the dirt, so that at least some of it would land in the wheelbarrow.

These moments showed me the importance of humility when entering a new and unfamiliar community. Particularly salient to this experience is the notion of leaving our ego at the door as the key to understanding a new culture. At the same time, integrating into and understanding the people of [our village] is never something we can do by ourselves - instead, we can and must rely on our homestay families, Awamaki (which translates to Hand Made in Quechua) and the people of the community to help us do so.

After all, a community is much larger than the sum of each individual that resides in it. When I arrived in [the village] on the first day, I quickly felt like I belonged here, as my host parents offered me hot water and mounds of food. The first day I spent time with my host siblings sitting at the table blowing massive bubbles, or bent over the table looking for Lego pieces and building the set that I had brought for us to share. Throughout this experience, my definition of community has definitely changed. Rather than a community being merely a group of people, community is a feeling built by connecting, communicating, and learning from others.