Wilson Service Learning Trip: Cultural Exchange at it's Finest!

Last Sunday morning, while most people were either sleeping or at church, I was anxiously and excitedly preparing to begin one of the busiest and most fruitful weeks of my service. As I boarded don Marvin’s private mini bus, I was both relieved to be traveling in something other than the crowded public bus, and pleased that this trip was supporting the independent transportation company of someone in my town. This wasn’t just any drive to San Jose. Don Marvin and I would soon greet 12 high school students and two teachers from my beloved Woodrow Wilson High School. Unlike many of the young people who travel to Costa Rica, these kids weren’t coming for the beautiful beaches or the big volcanoes. They (or their parents, rather) had actually paid money to travel to my hot, land-locked community to work with at-risk youth (which constitutes essentially all youth in my town). The teachers and I had worked together to plan a week filled with service learning, which is only my favorite thing in this world (along with TCBY blueberry soft-serve ice cream with chocolate chips). I didn't even know most of these kids yet and I already loved them all.


First of all, let me just say that this is one brave group of gringo teenagers. Not only were they traveling abroad to a marginalized community that spoke a different language from their own, but they were going to stay with host families. While there is no doubt that this makes the entire experience more enriching for both the host community and the students, it is not an easy or comfortable situation to be thrown into. I remember how nervous I felt at age 25 when I was first dropped off at my host family’s house in San Jose, so I definitely felt for these youngsters as we took them immediately from the airport to their home stays in Buenos Aires. I had no doubt that the kids would adore the host families I had selected, and that the families would love having them in their homes, but I also knew that the situation could present its challenges. The kids and their families could not have responded better to the challenges, and I think everyone’s expectations were exceeded in their host family experience. Throughout the week, the kids from the U.S. frequently debated who had the best host family, everyone arguing that theirs was superior to the others.

I decided to break in my new troops early on, with a hike to a nearby mountain on the very first morning. This is a hike I often take with groups of youth or members of my exercise class, and the peak provides an excellent view of Buenos Aires and the surrounding area. At the top we played a game that I learned while waiting for them at the airport (another camp-like group was playing it). It involves everyone chopping each other down like trees and making ninja-karate-chop noises, so obviously that went pretty well. I won’t lie and pretend like the entire hike went without complaints of being hot, tired, and thirsty, but I think everyone felt a sense of accomplishment upon reaching the top of the mountain, and it was a nice way to bond the group before they began a week filled with working as a team to reach their service learning objectives.

That evening the real work began when we all went to my English class. My English students had prepared short presentations about Costa Rican culture, in English, while the kids from the U.S. had prepared cultural presentations about Washington DC, in Spanish. Everyone learned a lot about Obama, coffee, go-go music, cumbia and meringue, Frisbee, jacks and elastics, and much more. The fact that both groups were presenting in their second language made for a very comfortable, pressure-free environment which allowed everyone to relax and have fun learning about different aspects of each other’s cultures. The U.S. kids had brought a DC/CR banner and everyone took pictures in front of it at the end.

The second day began with a trip to the indigenous town of Boruca, which is the largest indigenous group in Costa Rica. We received 5 brief workshops about how the people make their extraordinary and elaborate masks and textiles. I was in awe of the work of these strong, patient women, who spend days and months carving and painting masks and creating textiles from scratch. I was inspired by their firm belief that nature does not exist to serve them, but that they exist in order to serve nature. The trees in the community provide wood for their masks, drums and weapons, and leaves to dye their textiles. We learned about the process of turning the cotton plant into the yarn made to make clothes and bags, and then the different plants used to dye the yarn different colors. I felt like the most spoiled brat ever after those workshops. When I want a shirt, I just go to a store and buy one. Or in the States I would just order it on Amazon and it would arrive at my door. Omg. So embarrassing. We ended the trip with a short hike to the community’s beautiful waterfalls. We were ready to cool off after walking around the steep hills of the community, so the cool river water was a perfect way to end the trip.



Upon our return to Buenos Aires, the kids spent quality time with their host families and enjoyed their delicious home-cooked meals. They couldn’t stop talking about how good the food was, which made me very happy. My host mother was hosting two of the girls, and she nearly died of joy when they told her she should open a restaurant in the States. She still brings up the compliment on a regular basis (and she SHOULD…that lady can cook!). Unfortunately we were supposed to paint a park in the afternoon, but the rainy season put a damper on those plans. Instead of painting the park, the students came to the field across the street from my house to climb trees and play soccer in the rain with the neighborhood kids. I have never seen so many people fit in one tree before!




At night the entire group came to my exercise class, which for me was fun because we filled the entire room (or shack) where I teach. All but one of the boys tired out after about 5 minutes, but most of the girls hung in there for the entire class (I had coached a few of them in soccer back in the States, so they were a little more used to the torture). Those who tired out quickly played jump rope and rode bikes with kids for the remainder of class. Perhaps one of my favorite quotes from the week came from the one guy who hung in for the entire class. He later told me, in the most genuine way possible, “Yeah, I actually really hated you the whole time you were teaching that class.” Made me a little teary eyed (not in a sad way of course).




The nonstop movement was only enhanced on the third day of the trip. This was one of our full days at the small, crowded, resource-deprived elementary school in my town. My junior Peace Corps troupe could not have been more helpful, getting a lot done in a short period of time. While the majority went to the field to play Frisbee, soccer, duck-duck-goose, tag, and Indian chief with over 100 kids, a couple of the girls came with me to my hyperactive kindergarten class. We tried our best to wear them out and then sent them off so we could help the Kindergarten teacher to fix up her deteriorated classroom. All day long kids from the school helped the group from the U.S. to wash toys and paint the classroom.







So many local kids wanted to help that I needed to start turning people away and telling them to go play outside with the other volunteers. The director of the school had about 40 tree seedlings that he wanted to see planted, so in addition to the kindergarten work and recreational activities, a couple other volunteers planted trees with the sixth graders in the blaring sun.



Once we finished painting the kindergarten and putting the toys away, we moved on to the fifth grade classroom, which was also in need of a paint job. We finally finished after all the kids and teachers had been long gone, and everyone hobbled their tired bodies home to rest up for the party with my English class which was to happen that night.



My English class had planned a party to celebrate the successful completion of their presentations and enhance the intercultural exchange between the groups. The Tico students provided Latin dance lessons and traditional Costa Rican party food (chicken and rice, pejibayes, tortilla chips with refried beans), while I brought a big gringo batch of chopped raw vegetables and taught a hip hop line dance to everyone. People had so much fun that it didn’t even matter that we couldn’t fit in the house and had to stand outside in the mud. Most importantly everyone got lots of food, language practice and got their dance on, so overall the event was a success.

The kids received a well-deserved break on their fourth day when they traveled to Manuel Antonio national park for their day full of sight-seeing and beach time. I stayed in Buenos Aires to prepare for the next day’s events, but heard that the trip was a blast, filled with monkey-sightings, bird watching, wave-riding, and sun-burning. They came back stinky, dirty and tired, but totally ready for whatever was to come their way the next day.

Day five of the trip was similar to day 3 in that it was spent all day at the elementary school. The volunteers got a taste of the difference between U.S. and Costa Rican elementary schools as they participated in the fiestas the day before the kids went on their 2 week vacation. While kids in the States often have parties before vacation, there is often some structure and organization to these parties. The party at my elementary school included a little less structure, and a little more blasting music, screaming children running everywhere, wrestling for piñata candy, crying, and bruises. In spite of the injuries the kids LOVE this madness. The volunteers did a GREAT job entertaining the kids – helping me teach dances, leading cheers, playing group games, and helping the teachers with the piñatas (which is quite possibly my least favorite activity ever, but apparently I’m just weird in that I don’t like greed, crying, punching, or high fructose corn syrup). In addition to entertaining the kids ALL DAY the group also finished painting the second classroom and the kitchen, which made the teachers very happy.



The final full day of service happened at the high school. While the volunteers were at the beach some of my students and I had drawn and painted the humongous rectangle that was to serve as the background for one of the largest Peace Corps world maps ever (I actually have no idea if it’s one of the largest ever, but it’s ridiculously big). Before putting the two groups together, the teachers had a long reflection meeting with the students from the U.S. while my Tico group and I prepared the activities for the day. Relfection is critical to the process of service learning in that it allows students to share what they have gained from the experience. It is important to discuss not only how the work affects the people being served, but also how the participants have grown both personally and as a group.

After reflecting upon their week of service, the students from the States joined my group of 13 Tico youth and worked diligently all day to draw a world map mural. And I mean the WHOLE world. Like, every country, drawn to scale. This is no joke. And it's big. Really big. Because there were too many of them to all fit in front of the map at once, those who were not drawing were busy playing games like Jenga, Gran Banco (Tico Monopoly), Uno, and soccer. While both groups were a little tentative at the beginning to mix and test out their language skills with people their own age, I basically had to tear them away from each other by the end of the day.








We eventually left the Tico kids to finish up the map drawing and walked in the pouring rain about 30 minutes uphill to spend the rest of the afternoon in the shantytown. We arrived soaked, tired and muddy, but again this didn’t stop these energetic teens from giving it their all as we approached our last service project of the week. Half of the group played soccer with kids in the muddy, slick road, while the other half headed over to the “salon” (a.k.a. shack in front of someone’s house) to teach community members how to make friendship bracelets. Within 10 minutes the entire space was filled with women, men and children making knots with the colorful string brought from the States. Several community members decided they could use this in the future to sell the bracelets in order to help their families and give themselves and their families something productive to do in their free time. Everyone was sad but satisfied when the last of the string was used up and it was time to go.

The young volunteers spent their last night with their host families, and shared teary eyes early the next morning as they said their goodbyes and boarded the bus for San Jose. You’d have never known they'd only been living with these families for a week if you’d seen the attachments that were made and the relationships that had been formed. I was sad to see everyone go, but very proud of the courage they had shown in coming here and the hard work they put in to bringing positive change and LOTS of smiles and happiness to the people in my town. I learned more from this experience than I ever could have predicted, both personally and professionally. The most powerful impact came from simply watching the students from the U.S. interact with members of my community. When I first arrived to my site and did not have projects in progress, I spent lots of time just playing, or talking about nothing, or sitting and observing. Now that I have many projects in progress, I am constantly "doing" instead of just "being," which is just as important. While it is my job to do all that I can do work with community members and promote community development, I can be a much more effective volunteer if I take time away from working to just play or spend time drinking a cafecito with people here. A goal of mine for this second year of service will be to take time each week to engage in some activity as though I was a volunteer coming in for just a week. Writing work plans, holding meetings, and engaging in long-term activities is all fine and good, and creates sustainable development, but relationships are made stronger and batteries are recharged when we step back from all the long-term stuff and play a game of pick-up soccer or sit on the porch and drink a good cup of Tico coffee. So, I thank the kids from the U.S. for giving me this insight.

If anyone out there is planning on or interested in doing an exchange like this, my primary piece of advice is…DO IT! Here are some things that I did (and others that I didn’t do but wish I had done) to make the most out of this experience:

- Plan for groups to teach a skill or craft that the community can use (crafts that result in useful items made from recyclable materials are the best)

- Ask school principals, teachers and other community leaders for specific projects that they would like to see and help them get organized to ensure that the project is ready when the group arrives. Have the volunteer group raise money and/or become trained to execute the project while they are still in the States.

- If groups bring donations for the community, have them sell some of the products with members of a group that is trying to raise funds for a particular project that can benefit the entire community.

- Have brief reflections at the end of each activity.

- Have reflection with host country group (e.g. map group) after the exchange.

- Use fun ice-breakers that make everyone feel comfortable with each other at the beginning of inter-group activities.