another kid-friendly letter to kids

To all my dear friends at Northeast Kids Count,

Welcome back to school! How was your summer break? I hope you all got to spend some quality time with your friends and families over the last few months. To tell you the truth, I've had quite an eventful summer myself—I've made it pretty far south since my last letter. When I last wrote to you I was still volunteering at the school on the northern Colombian coast. Since then we traveled through Colombia and into Ecuador where I volunteered for a short while before heading south again into Peru.

It was there in Peru that Gabby and I spent the last four months. We only planned on staying for two months but we liked it so much that we couldn't leave! For the first two weeks we made our way through the beautiful mountains in the northern part of the country. We even had the pleasure of hiking through a mountain range called the Cordillera Blanca, which is the highest mountain range outside of Asia. We met a couple of folks from California on the coast and they too came along for the mountain adventure.

The hike took us four whole days and was some of the most beautiful, breath-taking scenery that I've ever laid eyes on. We hiked over high mountain passes at almost 5,000 meters, dove into sky-blue glacier lakes, and wove through high altitude pastures as the snowy mountains reached all the way up to the sky around us. We sat atop massive boulders and cooked fresh curry over a small campfire; filled our bottles with the nearly-frozen water from the mountain streams. We huddled together to keep warm as the raging winds whipped at our tents and tried to rip them from the ground.

Then, after our hike came to an end, we headed south once again to arrive in Pisco. Pisco is a small city on the dusty, Pacific coast, just a few hours south of Lima, the capital. It is an area known for the wine that it produces, but more so for an earthquake that destroyed the region just over 4 years ago. It reached 8.0 on the Richter scale and the destruction that was left behind is unimaginable. Pisco and neighboring villages along the coast were all reduced to rubble, driving thousands of families from their houses and communities—places that they had called home for generations. Now, four years after the earthquake, much of the city remains in ruins and a majority of the people still live in abject poverty; families of 10 huddled together in tents, huts, and crude shacks of plastic, metal, and cardboard.

During our four months in Pisco, Gabby and I had the pleasure of working on a large variety of projects for a volunteer organization called Pisco Sin Fronteras (PSF). PSF has been in Pisco for 3 years, working to rebuild the homes, schools, and communities that were left devastated by the earthquake. The volunteers, which range in number anywhere from 50 to 100 on any given week, work day in and day out to ensure that the organization keeps moving forward and that they continue to aid in the reconstruction of the homes and lives of the local people.

I had the pleasure of leading my own project after working on a wide variety of others over the first couple months. Our team of 5 helped to provide a new, safe, and comfortable home to a family that had never had one, even before the earthquake.

The house that Elena, her husband, and her 5 kids had previously lived in was made of whatever scraps they could find or afford: pieces of plywood and tarp held up a makeshift roof of cardboard and old broken pieces of bamboo. The children, the oldest of which turned 13 just after we finished the house, had never even had a bathroom. When asked what they do when they needed to use the toilet, the mother told me that they used a bucket and then emptied it into a plastic bag to go out with the trash.

Although none of us on the team were carpenters, we managed to put together a home that would endure time and weather, and hopefully make the family proud. The house we built for Elena and her family isn't fancy. In fact, most Westerners would probably consider it a shack by their standards—not much better than a tool shed. After all, it doesn't have the comfort of sealed windows, insulation, and a two-car garage. But to Elena and her five children, it’s just enough. It has a concrete floor, solid wooden walls with plastic insulation, lights and electrical sockets, a door with a lock, and even a bathroom with a toilet and a shower. No more bathing underneath the knee-high tap where they fed and watered their ducks and the seemingly ever-pregnant street dog that hangs around the house.

The volunteers at PSF are always working on a variety of projects like that which we did for Elena and her family. They build houses, schools, hospitals, parks, public gardens, and practically anything else you might imagine that could help improve the lives of the local people. They work together with locals to lift roof beams and raise spirits, lay bricks and improve livelihoods, teach english and slowly chip away at poverty.

During our time at PSF, we left only once. My mom and dad came down to see us for two whole weeks but it felt more like just a few days. We packed our days to the brim, going to beautiful places, hiking steep mountains, eating food both foreign and delicious, and enjoying what time we had together. We covered an enormous part of the country for a short two-week trip, spending a lot of time traveling from one place to the next, but it was great to be together and see a new place alongside moms and pops.

We met them in Lima (just in time to catch the opening of Harry Potter) and then headed to beautiful Cuzco. From there we went on a short trip to Machu Picchu and the surrounding mountain towns. We arrived at the ancient ruins before the sun had time to rise and watched the warm, red glow climb slowly up behind the sky-high mountains in the distance. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the fog crept eerily away to reveal more and more of the sprawling rocks and ruins. We had just enough time to clamber up the steep, rocky slopes of Mount Machu Picchu for an epic vista before we caught the train back into town. And you know what made the view even more incredible than the mountains in the distance? I got to look out over them and the ancient ruins from behind my awesome tie-die Kids Count t-shirt that you were all so generous to make for me!

After Machu Picchu we explored tiny mountain towns where llamas outnumbered people and everything closed before sunset. We took an 11-hour bus ride to the Bolivian border and discovered the beauty of Lake Titicaca, the world's largest high-altitude lake. A small boat took us far out into the deep mountain waters and introduced us to the floating islands and the people who still inhabit their shaky surfaces. We spent the night with a family on another small island and learned what it was like to live as a native in such an isolated place—both from Peru and the rest of the world. They shared their food and culture with us while we shared stories and smiles around the fire.

Another bus brought us half-way across the country to Arequipa where we feasted on local specialties and let our eyes soak up the gorgeous colonial arquitecture. Then, before they returned to Lima for a flight home, we introduced them to Pisco—the place to which we'd dedicated so much time and love over the last few months.

In truth, we saw much more of Peru during those two weeks than I would have imagined possible, and even more so than I could describe to you in a few short paragraphs. But most of all, we enjoyed each other's company and the opportunity to share a smile and a game of cards with a couple people who we hadn't seen in so long.

We stayed in Pisco for another 2 months after my parents left. We still could have stayed longer, could have done more. But the end of our trip was closing in on us and we still had so much left to see. So we finally packed our bags and hit the road again, headed farther south yet. We traveled through the south of Peru, the north of Chile, and into Argentina in a very short (and yet long) week. But that story's for another time.

I hope all of you are enjoying what is left of the summer. There is nothing more beautiful than a summer in Ithaca. And that's the truth. I miss you all and hope all is well with you, school, your families, and your friends.

Best wishes from down south!

Wren

P.S. One of my teammates took a bunch of photos when we were building a house for Elena and her family, which you can check out here.

P.P.S. You can see more photos of our trip that we took with my parents here. I'll be uploading the rest of them in the next couple weeks once Flickr lets me do so.

To See Fear

This entry is part of my recent application to an internship that required two documentary journalism pieces and one personal story. This is the personal story. I've held off posting for so long now because I knew I would first need to write about this experience before I wrote about anything else and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It's not that I couldn't, but rather that I didn't want to. I didn't know what I would say. The internship application gave me the incentive I needed to get it all on paper.

On April 22, 2011, my girlfriend and I were robbed at gunpoint. I’m not talking about some trivial street mugging where the guy motions to the revolver stuck half-way between his navel and the inside of his pants, says, “give me all your money,” and then runs down the nearest dark alley with your wad of bills stuffed deep in his pocket. That almost seems too Hollywood to even be true.

My girlfriend Gabby and I had been traveling for the last four months, slowly making our way down through Latin America, and had just arrived in Ecuador. It was our first full day in the country, having crossed the border the previous night from a bridge in rural Colombia. The border crossing was scary enough, but we felt relieved to arrive in Ecuador after already being robbed at knife-point in broad daylight in Bogota just a week before. By comparison, Colombia seems like the big brother who dropped out of high school and can’t stay out of trouble—the narco-trafficking, the civil conflict, the kidnappings, the armed guerrilla groups. Ecuador is more like the parents’ favorite child who can’t do anything wrong. After making it through the danger zones of Mexico and Colombia over the last few months during the biggest drug war in Mexico’s history, we were relieved to have a breather and finally feel safe in the rolling green hills of Ecuador’s highlands.

We spent most of our first whole day enjoying the sprawling market that takes over nearly all downtown of the rural, northern city of Otavalo. We stuffed ourselves with traditional corn and pork dishes and bought hand-made sweatshirts to warm our torsos, now cold in the thin mountain air.

We only had a few days in the area and the receptionist at our hostel recommended we hike up to the large lake that bordered the town’s rural neighbor, lying just on the other side of one of the many surrounding hills. Two cold beers were stuffed into our bag with which to enjoy the darkening pink of the afternoon sun and we started up the two-lane road to the next village.

The hike took us up a steep muddy path through the woods and up to another highway that led down into the next valley. We set foot onto the road just as we crested the hill, a few adobe houses on either side of us and the mountain-encircled lake rippling below in the distance. It was beautiful, but our view from the top of the hill was even better. So we sat for a while on the side of the highway and stared mesmerized by the deepness of the green of the hills, their smooth yet jagged peaks, the bristling white snow of higher mountains in the distance. After a few minutes we were joined by another traveler, an Australian studying in Medellin, and swapped stories about our journeys between sips of beer as the sun painted the clouds on the horizon with thick hues of red and orange and pink.

When a fog started rolling in over the valley, so thick that it completely enveloped a neighboring house on another hillside, we decided we should probably head back to town. Bags packed and beers emptied, we started back down the road. We hadn’t even walked the length of a football field when we passed from fields into a patch of thin, towering evergreen trees on both sides of the road. Our eyes were drawn to the woods on the left of the road where two men hurdled bushes through the thick fog, their heads cloaked in black ski masks, their arms outstretched in our direction. At first, I didn’t understand. I thought it just might have been a coincidence that they were emerging from the woods at the same time that we happened to be passing through it. The ski masks didn’t even seem to register in my mind. They weren’t important. But yet we stood still and watched as they bounded toward us, their eyes focused and glaring into ours. When they reached us, climbed over the last bush and onto the road, I finally realized what was happening. I had to wait until a long-silver barrel was pointed in my face to understand that we were being robbed.

They came right up to us, grabbing us by our clothing, and lead us into the darkening patch of trees on the opposite side of the road. The one in charge never took his finger off the trigger, the barrel of the revolver focused intently on our heads. They lead us well into the thick trees—far enough that we could no longer see the road, and anyone who happened to pass by couldn’t see us. They forced us to sit down, “keep quiet,” they said, “or someone will hear.” One of them put a finger gently to his lips while the other hand kept the gun pointed at my face.

The next five to ten minutes pass in my memory like a blur, but one in which I can remember nearly everything: their persistent demands for us to keep quiet and sit down, their hushed tones, my girlfriend’s helpless sobbing, the dark, hollow center of their eyes that shown only a shade lighter than the black mask that engulfed them.

Then, after they’d gotten what they came for—all of our money, iPods, cameras—they motioned for us to head back to the road, waving at it with the tip of their pistols. They didn’t even run away; just shuffled their feet slowly out of the forest in the opposite direction, looking down into their bags and calculating the worth of their earnings.

‘Luckily, none of you were hurt. That’s all that really matters.’ We’ve heard this sung back to us every time we’ve recalled the story to our friends, family, and fellow travelers. That they may have taken all of our stuff, but at least we’re okay. But for the first few months after it happened, any physical pain they could have inflicted upon me seemed dwarfed by the psychological consequences of their actions. Sure, we got away and no one got hurt. But what if physical damage wasn’t the worst thing they could have done to me?

The passing days and nights of the months that followed were all plagued by a similar story. I’d find myself floating out of the bus seat, the dinner table, or the pages of my book and into a scenario in which I was protecting myself and Gabby from harm by beating a ski-masked assailant over the head with a crow bar or caving his face in with a shovel. I always snapped out of these daydreams to find my jaw clenched and my knuckles stretched tight over the sharp bones in my fist, wondering, ‘how did I end up there?’ I’m not a violent person, and the daydreams scared me—not only in their vivid realness, but also the way in which a part of me seemed to enjoy them, to need them.

But the dreams weren’t even the worst of it. The biggest collateral damage, at least as far as I was concerned, was the lasting impression the robbing had on me and the new manner through which I viewed the world and the people around me. No more unwavering trust, no more benefit of the doubt.

During my four years at college I took classes that constantly pushed the boundaries of my own world view and my understanding of how we relate to one another—how to challenge the status quo. Ever since then I’ve made a daily effort to challenge the prejudices and trivial skin-deep differences between us that I had been spoon-fed since elementary school.

Now all of that seemed to have been turned on its head. I was back to square one. I could no longer look at everyone with the same, blanketing level of trust or confidence in their character. Where I previously didn’t make superficial judgments, or at least tried my best not to, I was now doing exactly the opposite. Every time I saw a dark-skinned male walking toward me in the street that failed to return my passing smile, or gave me a strange look, they automatically registered as a threat.

In short, what some may view as no more than a stick-up had a lasting impression on me because it challenged everything that I believed in—my own ability to look beyond color in the face of a single trying incident, much less the ability of the rest of the nation.

What was happening to me? I felt myself slipping into a mindset similar to that of the same bigots and closed-minded people I’d tried so hard to change—whose views I’d so despised.

The reason I chose this story was not because of the adventurous or exciting nature of our armed robbery but rather because of how it made me feel. It ripped me squarely off of my (self-designated) pedestal as a color-indifferent “progressive,” and set me back down with the masses—the millions of other Americans who are still prejudice, who sometimes still feel fear because of color alone.