Reflections on My Week in Nogales

A week in Nogales Mexico , sleeping in cramped cots, bathing every night with nothing more than baby wipes, working during the days mixing concrete, hauling rocks, or digging trenches? Sign me up! When I began getting ready for the Nogales trip, it was simply an adventure. But as trips like these usually are, it was so much more than I had expected. The twelve of us met early in the morning to greet the sun and receive a blessing from Father Edmundo at St. Joseph 's and then we were off. Many already knew each other from school or past Mexico trips, but I was almost completely a stranger. We drove to Kayenta and met up with the directors of Windhover, the organization that takes us from Arizona into Mexico , and continued on to Tuscon. After a long night on the hard floor of a church, we made our way into Nogales . The days we spent in Nogales were far from luxurious, with a toilet that worked sporadically at best, no option to take a shower, and long days working on houses with Habitat for Humanity Nogales. We helped a man named Octavio pour his concrete roof, and a man named Cuko dig out and pour his floor, and another family haul rocks and gravel up a steep hillside. The work we did was not much in the large scope of a house, but what we brought was a feeling of friendship and solidarity to our poorer neighbors who don't often see the friendship of the United States . The thing that really stood out to me while we were working was the attitude of the group. No one complained about being tired, sore, or dirty, but on the contrary everyone was more than willing to do whatever needed to be done, from cooking to dumping buckets of concrete to fixing the stopped-up toilet. The interaction between our group members and the community members was perhaps the most valuable thing that both took from the experience. The community had the chance to see a group of young people and get to know them through rather unusual circumstances. Our group had the opportunity to see the way that many people live in this world, while we get in our hot showers without a second thought and flush our toilets without care. The simplest commodities that we take for granted are truly luxuries to many of the people we met, and this is a lesson that few are fortunate enough to learn. Under the conditions that we were in, the group became a tight family, something that is a rare blessing in my experiences with groups abroad. I went to Mexico for an adventure, but came back with a new family and an experience that will stick with me for a lifetime.

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last updated August 24, 2005

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