From the Field
Finding Light: AJWS Alternative Breaks in Honduras
by Alina Olshenitsky, University of Toronto ’05
Alternative Breaks participant March 2005
We load our backpacks into a pickup truck and tie them up with rope. We leave the airport from the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, and drive into the mountains of the western region of Comayagua. Eventually we reach San Rafael, a tiny place, hidden deep in the mountains and home to no more than 100 residents.
This is where my personal discovery begins.
We are a group of 13 students from Hillel of Greater Toronto, participating in AJWS’ Alternative Breaks program. We are in Honduras to work with AJWS project partner Proyecto Aldea Global (PAG), a local Christian non-governmental organization, committed to grassroots sustainable development. Over the next week, we are to help community members rebuild a school.
As we arrive in San Rafael, I find myself asking the same question over and over again: Why did I choose to come to Honduras with a Jewish organization, and with a group of Jews?
Every day, we wake up at 6 a.m. to the sounds of roosters, donkeys, and fresh mountain winds, and begin work on the school. Together with the local workers, we mix piles of sand and cement, fill in the cracks in the floor, and paint the walls.
The kindness with which the locals welcome us to their village, and the spirit of mutual cooperation that develops between us, gives me an intense and powerful human connection to these people.
The question of why I chose to come here as a Jew, and not simply as a human being keeps creeping up in my mind. Why were we here as “Jewish students” and not simply as “students who care?”
Slowly, slowly, things begin to clear up for me.
During one of the community meetings, Hector Immanuel, the head of San Rafael, talks to us about the hard living conditions his people have faced.
“Ever since the 1800s life in the village has been an every day struggle,” he says. “In the past, it took us 15 days to get to the city by wagons, and now, if one of our residents gets sick, it is still extremely hard to get him to a hospital. The government has tried to build some projects but always failed. They make promises all the time but they all add up to lies.”
As the week passes, I find another level of connection between “us” and “them.” I find myself thinking about our own history as Jews and the continuous struggles which we have faced throughout much of our history: suffering, oppression, neglect.
But it is through one of the women of the village that I realize something that hasn’t hit me before.
Donia Erundina is 63 years old. She had 14 children – 10 are alive and four are buried in the ground. Every morning, she wakes up at 3 a.m. to prepare breakfast and lunch for her husband and sons who work in the sugar and corn fields. Despite 63 years of unrelentingly hard work, she is still smiling. And her eyes light up as she smiles.
As I look at Donia Erundina, I see God. The light in her eyes assures me that she, just like the rest of us, was created in God’s image, b’tzelem elohim, and the answer to why I was here as a Jew becomes clear.
Donia Erundina’s smile convinces me that God’s light is present in every human being, and that as Jews, one of our roles is to make sure that this light is able to shine as brightly as possible. It is this powerful sense of duty that made me glad to be in San Rafael, not only as a human being, but specifically as a Jew.P>
