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Week without Walls
Ms. Elizabeth Wyant
When I arrived in Cebu on the Week without Walls Trip during the
New Year Semester Break, I was not ready or what one would call
terribly prepared or terribly enthusiastic. This does not mean
that I was not committed--abstractly I was. In the abstract I
could envision helping others, seeing part of the Philippines,
and reliving part of the life on Guam that I had left to come to
Taiwan. I had a mental picture of swaying palm trees, maybe a
beach, and only a very vague idea of the house building side of
the enterprise. I had raised money for Habitat for Humanity in
the past, but I had never even for my own benefit done any
construction work. I was coming off a hard semester of work. I
was tired. I was fired up inside about the “charity” side of
this trip, but I wasn't ready. I was going through the motions.
Like a sleep-walker, I went through the proper actions. I
packed, I got on the plane, and I went through a chaperone's
checklists: Do I have supplies for the small emergencies all
students have? Do I have sunblock? Do I have bug repellant?
Have I packed light enough? Then I was occupied with the next
set of concerns: Does everyone have their passports? Boarding
pass? Bag?
I found myself in the bus going to Toledo and Tubodville (our
village), and the power of the landscape hit me. While the
students around me passed out, I just sat back and soaked in the
beauty of the mountains, the breeze coming off the sea, the
glimpses of terraced fields and the beds of brilliant tropical
flowers. Then like lazy trains, the water buffalos began to
cross the road--stopping our bus without the slightest sense of
a schedule. And I began to relax. I was off the treadmill. The
clock was not ruling my life. I was on vacation. When I went
on the first tour of the afternoon in Toledo, I enjoyed the
familiar feeling of warmth--warmth from the sun, warmth of the
smiles and the sound of the Spanish dialect spoken in Cebu
trilling around me. By the time I was enjoying a tour of the
local mansion of the former mayor of Toledo, the power of
history in this place--written in the art collection in the
dining room, the contrast between the whitewashed colored bricks
of the elite haciendas, and the barely standing huts of many of
the poorer people in town--emerged like the colors of a vivid
mosaic. Only then did it hit me--I was going to be doing
something positive for the people at the bottom of this society,
something beyond going to the local cathedral and praying for
them to have better luck in heaven or maybe in the next life.
Suddenly, the sun was a burning disc on the horizon, and we were
on a jagged dirt road in the twilight, going to Tubodville.
We got out of our vans, and the wave hit us; wave after wave of
children, smiling, taking our hands, pressing our wrists to
their foreheads in thanks. Shocked out of my complacent
reverie, I was borne along on a festive, triumphant wash of
spiritual grace. We were treated to a dance performance.
Everyone was ready to greet us. My exhaustion eased. I felt
light. I suddenly realized that these people did not need us
nearly as much as we needed them. To my great pride and
delight, the students from IBSH realized this great truth along
with me. As each student thanked the village for giving us part
of their life and warmth, as we moved from eating a great dinner
to having a wild dance party in the rain, my soul soared. We
worked hard in the next week to build houses in Tubodville. In
return we received love, compassion, acceptance and total open
gratitude. This feeling put us all on a high--that most
wonderfully natural of highs--the feeling of truly connecting
with others. That was the gift the villagers of Tubodville gave
us, a gift that will be with me for the rest of my life. Our
group of twenty five juniors from IBSH learned about culture,
history, the gap between rich and poor, the conditions of life
in a world without many material possessions, where everyone
must labor hard to survive. But the most important lesson of all
was the great underlying reality: so easily obscured, hidden
under assumptions, easy judgments, and distance--cultural,
linguistic, or political: We are one planet. We are one people.
We are humanity.
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