Compañeros Student Reflections

Bob Finan ‘09:

"The idea of community became applicable to our small group of companions.  Each personality had its own particular role to play in shaping the experience that we all shared.  We became our own community with circumstance as our adhesive.

One result of the trip was recognizing a truth that is hard to see in American culture: The world is bigger than me.  I came to see that it is necessary to put things into perspective.  A problem at home, a dramatic situation, or maybe a terrible grade is not important when compared to the vast spectrum of the world and all the horrific situations of real and everyday life that that encompasses." 

Chris Rider:

“The Dominicans lived a poor, but generally adequate life. The Haitian bateys we visited were a different story. The refugees lived in destitution. Describing the conditions is pointless. I know that because I saw the pictures, heard the facts, and it still did nothing to prepare me for what I saw. The only way to attempt to wrap my mind around the hopelessness I saw in them, and felt in myself for their situation, was to try and put people in my life into their situation. I saw a little girl playing with a clearly used bedpan. My mind would have skipped right over that, tried to blank out the memory, if I hadn’t made a conscious effort to put my youngest sister Claire into that situation. Then my mind simply went on overload. How can people be living this way? In this world, with all its glitz and glamour, its abundance of technology and “knowledge”, how can this happen?? Those questions raced through my head at that time and still do today. I now realize there is no answer, there is only trying to work towards a solution.

The acceptance of that fact in and of itself marks a change for me in attitude and maturity. Before this experience I would have stopped at the question. I would have been overwhelmed by the injustice of it, and my mind and body would have stopped there and dwelled on those questions until I became so wearied I gave up. Maybe walking around garbage dumps watching people eat meat off the ground changed that. I think most likely it was the ability of the people to carry on despite their circumstances that made the change, though. If they can live a meaningful life in those situations, what right do I have to give up on them because my mind can’t fully comprehend the injustice?”

Jacob Moy ‘09:

“The most significant change stemming from this trip is without a doubt the personal and spiritual development we underwent. The people we encountered, the way we were received, and the atrocities we saw are all memories and sights that will never be forgotten. They are things that have changed us on a personal level in ways that are impossible to express in words. The experience was the single most formative of my life and has forever changed my perception of the world.

…Aside from this, it also did something extremely unexpected given the gravity of some of the atrocities and despair we witnessed: It strengthened my spiritual life…I have never been an extremely religious individual. Yet as the days passed and I spent more time with our host families, the notion of thankfulness became increasingly apparent in my journal. I began finishing my entries with a note of gratitude, and would close every night with a prayer for the families we met. Even after walking through the horrid conditions of the Haitian villages and the surreal experience of the garbage dump, the first inclination I had was prayer when we returned to Crossroads. I never would have thought that I would be praying to God after seeing kids pick through garbage and walk barefoot through brown, tainted water. Yet the experience also made me realize the presence of God in all those children we met who jumped on our shoulders, and His presence among the people we spoke with in the dump. For the first time in my life, the words ‘blessed are the poor’ struck me on the innermost level.”

Will Butt '09:

“More so than anything else, I think I really struggled with the questions of justice that we constantly faced. It was almost impossible not to lie in bed wondering why I have the privileges and opportunities that I have while my host brother, whose entire wardrobe of maybe a dozen pairs of pants and shirts hung above my head, would most likely be stuck in this village for the rest of his life. The experience took everything I thought I knew and understood about the world and flipped it upside down and inside out a couple of times until I was forced to ask why things are the way they are. Being in the D.R. gave the word unfair new meaning. The statistics we talked about before the trip and at the bateys concerning our economic standing relative to the rest of the world were absolutely staggering to me. I had never considered just how few people in the world actually have the opportunity to attend college. As I walked through the garbage dump where people live, eat, and work, I couldn’t help but feel dumbfounded. So much of what we saw was simply incomprehensible to me.

It was also difficult in that part of the focus of the trip was our spirituality, and yet we were experiencing true third-world poverty. I think one of the most difficult aspects of faith for most people – certainly for me – is trying to understand how an omnipotent God can let people live in such conditions. Dealing with the injustice of poverty made focusing on spirituality a challenge. I don’t think I really ever learned how to answer the question of injustice, but I became more focused on the importance of people. One of the easiest ways to find God’s presence in my life is through other people. I can’t think of an example of that presence shining through in people any better than in the people we got to know in the D.R. In a way, this took precedence over my questions of injustice, and, at the same time, reinforced my belief that God is in the people around me.”

Tim Sardinia '09:

“Every day was the hardest I have ever worked in my life. It was just hard labor every day from about 6:30 am to 7:00 pm. We worked hard and truly lived the simple life. There were no televisions, computers, radios, hot showers, or even board games. It was incredibly simple and there were no distractions to us getting to know each other and ourselves. It was possible to just go up to one of the hills, look out on the mountains, and just think about my life. Where it is going, where it has been, and of course, “the man question.” Who exactly am I, and what sort of man can I be? This was what I had been looking for. This is something I could not get back home. With the constant rush of schedules, computers, cell phones, and all the things that really do not matter, it is so hard to just be. Just to think. We left the village and it was incredibly sad. The women were all crying, singing us songs, giving us hugs, kisses, flowers, and even a few love letters. It was amazing. How could I, just a kid from Buffalo, have this sort of impact on people from a completely different culture? Maybe I am more than I thought I was. This is not a self-righteous thing. It is just an awakening.”