ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 7, 1996 TAG: 9603080010
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: IXMIQUILPAN, MEXICO
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITER
If it weren't for the upbeat jolts of salsa music blaring from the cassette player, you could have heard a peso drop.
There we sat, packed between sleeping bags and overstuffed luggage, in a Chevy van with a leaky tire, on the way back to the snowy North, with nothing to say.
It was one of those melancholy silences that falls heavily after an experience has challenged perceptions or changed a view of the world.
Virginia Tech sophomore Jay Sin might have been thinking about how relaxing physical labor really is. He spent several hours in the hot sun, planting dozens of prickly nopal cactus, and loved it.
Roanoke nurse Pat Garvin could have been remembering the dozens of healthy children she examined, and the few who needed more medical attention than she could provide.
Bucknell University senior Dan Whalen was probably recalling the fun he had teaching a man how to play Solitaire - without knowing a word of Spanish.
I was wondering how I was going to explain the wonders of this trip to my family and friends - let alone to newspaper readers.
For the first two weeks of this year, I joined 21 students, professionals and retirees on a trip sponsored by a Blacksburg-based humanitarian organization called Peacework. We ranged in age from 16 to 78, with backgrounds as varied as a Canadian nursing assistant, a retired Presbyterian minister and a Christiansburg High School junior.
Almost half of the group were college students, many of whom are international development majors. Some of us had extensive experience in Central America, but there were others, such as Virginia Tech sophomore Sarah Hammond, who had never stepped foot out of the country.
Whatever our history, we took vacation time and paid the $750 to Peacework to gain a better understanding of a culture so intertwined with our own - and do something constructive while we learned.
We lived and worked in the Mezquital Valley. Named for the mesquite forests that covered the area before deforestation stripped the region, the valley gets only about 12 inches of rain each year. The Otomi, an indigenous people who speak Nahnu, make up about 90 percent of the valley's To make a living, many of the women sell crafts in the weekly market at Ixmiquilpan (pronounced eecks-mi-KEEL-pan), the valley's largest town.Our work was hard labor: mixing
We mixed cement for new concrete homes originally sponsored by Habitat for Humanity or planted nopal, a cactus used for food.
``It's not the results of the project that are important,'' explained Peacework Director Steve Darr. ``This group is present to help them get though a portion of the project. Most [foreign] people are amazed by the amount of enthusiasm raised when they come to help.'' Cross-cultural understanding, he said, does more to promote peace than any government could accomplish.
By the time we scrunched into that van, our hair felt grimy, our clothes were tinted brown, cement covered our shoes and tiny cactus prickles poked our fingers.
I, for one, wasn't ready to leave.
A wall crumbles
Peacework developed out of a 1989 trip to Nicaragua, when Darr paired eight Americans with Soviet citizens to build homes for people displaced by the Contra war. Bringing together regular people from opposite sides of the Cold War would not only crumble preconceptions, Darr reasoned, but also would increase awareness of the Nicaraguan plight.
A year later, the Berlin Wall fell. Darr, a Methodist minister whose office at Cooper House in Blacksburg serves a number of ecumenical campus ministries across the state, expected that to be the end of Peacework's role. But a group returned to Nicaragua the following year. Several Americans headed to Russia in 1992; two months later, a Russian delegation came to Ivanhoe to help construct a community center. Other Peaceworkers have traveled to El Salvador and Ghana, Africa.
Peacework organizes dozens of trips yearly, mostly for university or church groups. Individuals who sign up for trips provide most of the funding.
Working, playing together
One of the longest running projects has been Peacework-sponsored visits to the Mezquital Valley. In five years, strong ties have developed with SEDAC, the valley's community development organization that housed us, fed us and put us to work.
Made up of almost 200 communities, SEDAC oversees projects such as planting and reforestation, heifer farms and cheese production, and a women's cooperative where crafts are sold at a fixed price.
With little money coming from the Mexican government, even the building we lived in symbolized the constant struggle SEDAC faces to raise living standards. Local residents donated materials, and volunteers from the valley and from other nations laid every brick in the two-story structure.
With room for a cheese factory, a large kitchen, offices and an open center courtyard, the building was a luxury in an area where many people use large dried maguey leaves to cover their huts.
We slept in bunks, about eight to a room. Most mornings, we woke to the sight of our breath - nights dropped to a chilly 35 or 40 degrees.
Traveling to and from the work sites, we hunched in the back of SEDAC pickups. As we ascended into the hills, I could look down at a sprawling valley sectioned into small squares for growing alfalfa or corn. Unless the dust or the smog smudged the view, I could see the line of jagged mountains that cradled the valley and deep blue, cloudless sky that went on for miles.
We worked Working side by side with volunteers from SEDAC and people in the community, we cleared a field for planting trees or excavated dirt from the rocky mountainside to level a floor of a new Habitat house.
One day, several of us formed a line to pass rocks downhill from where a kitchen addition was planned for a family of eight. As we sang Christmas carols (the only set of songs we all knew), one daughter - an elementary-schooler named Sedina - joined our line.
After work, we played soccer with local men on a dusty clay field about 6,000 feet above sea level. After about 15 minutes, our wise leader, Blacksburg resident Tom Hergert, called for a ``low-altitude gringo'' break. But Christiansburg High School soccer star Stewart Milton did impress everyone with her fancy footwork - the spectators cheered ``bonita'' (beautiful) after she scored her first goal.
Everyone benefits
At the end of the trip, Milton said her experiences with the locals changed her belief of what it meant to be ``poor.'' Others marveled at the pride and warmth the community expressed.
Between the people and the projects, most in our group believed they had gained a great deal more in knowledge and experience than they had given.
Not true, said Alejandro Martinez. As director of one of the community organizations, Martinez oversees several Peacework and other foreign volunteer groups each year.
People in the valley benefit most, he said. They get to interact with foreigners, which ``breaks down the preconception of gringos lying on the [Mexican] beaches. They don't expect them to pick up a shovel and help, and it makes them feel good.''
LENGTH: Long : 134 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. & 2. Dave Steinberg (right) carefully drops a nopalby CNBcactus sprig into the dust parched soil stripped by deforestation.
About 15 acres were planted by volunteers such as Dave Angle and Jay
Sin, who wisely carry more nopal on a canvas bag. Volunteers Liz
Kohler and Mary Mayzel (below) join in a game of basketball. LISA
APPLEGATE