Essay Two

It would be the first time I was to leave the country without my family: A week in a small town 45 minutes south of Tijuana. I don't recall what inclined me to sign up for the trip - possibly the need to fulfill my volunteer requirement or the overwhelming desire to fall in somewhere now that the last of my friends had graduated. More likely a combination of the two that, in either case, resulted in an experience that would go on to radically change the perception of my entity and the strength it possessed. 


It was a nine hour drive to the border, another two after passing through customs. It was dusk when we arrived at the camp sight, a wide open expanse of land encapsulated by a sudden thrust of mountain range, purple now in the early evening light. We spoke little as we set to work on our tents, tired from a long day and the anticipation of what was to come in the morning. 


Waking to the sound of our director banging a steel pot, I dressed quickly, filling my thermos with instant coffee before heading out. We traveled parallel to the city's limits, the horizon faded with air pollution, as we weaved in and out of motorcycles and horse-drawn coches. Turning into our family's neighborhood, my nervousness settled in my lap like an old dog. How would we be perceived? A group of mostly white high school kids from Marin? I could feel what little Spanish I knew drifting far above the tin roofs until it all but disappeared.


"...It's a young married couple with two young girls and their third on the way." My director managed before the van came to an abrupt stop. Unpacking our tools, we surveyed the area where we were to build: a small, 8 by 10 space of dry and fleeting earth. 


Those five days would become the most physically strenuous I had ever encountered. Hours were spent beneath a high sun mixing and pouring cement by hand, bathing with the rain water collected in large plastic drums by night, arms blistered and burned from cheap insulation. All moments briefly accentuated by a quick game of tag with the barrio's countless children before adding a coke to our growing tab at the local convenient store. 


The house was more a shack with four walls and a tiled roof, but it was a house. I was painting alone when he approached me. I had been introduced quickly to our family when we first arrived, shaking their hands before turning away embarrassed that I couldn't communicate like I wanted to. The girls would grow to like me, shouting my name as they raced along the street, and their father noticed, laughing gently as I passed. 


"I wanted to thank you." he started, eyes following my slow and tired strokes. "At first, I thought all Americans were the same. That they didn't care for us, looked down on us from up there." He pointed upward, toward California. "But I've seen how hard you've worked for me and my family. Strangers to you. But you built us a home and I'm grateful for that..." I had stopped painting, and turned to face him. I tried to smile, faltered and instead began crying.


"I knew you understood me. You see, your Spanish isn't so terrible." He patted my shoulder and turned to leave me as I half sobbed, half laughed. 


That night, we ate dinner together as a family within that little house, now a home. We took turns recounting the highlights our journey, the girls on either side of me, picking at what little arroz y frijoles I'd left behind. It had never mattered that I couldn't speak fluent Spanish or that I came from a world they may never see, but that I had ultimately been successful in whatever it was that drove me to sign up for that trip - working on something far larger than a house in a small town 45 minutes south of Tijuana. Something much larger than myself, and that I would forever be remembered for.