Day Six

Today I forgot to bring my camera to the work site, but we went back to the community center. Pretty much all day, we worked on tearing plaster off the walls. It was hard work, but it felt good. I took out a lot of aggression by beating on the walls with a hammer and crowbar.

I did a bit more thinking today at work about the community center and the whole "It takes a village" mentality. It not only takes a village to raise a child, I think it also takes a village to create this community center. Building a playground and painting a house are certainly "community" endeavors, but I think we sometimes could lose sight of the larger picture while doing some menial tasks at the community center. But we supported each other through all of that, and we came together to do a very substantial amount of work in a short amount of time. And like I said after the first day, we've paved the way for other groups to come in and start finishing floors, walls, etc. The community that will help build that space will likely stretch across the country, and it feels really good to be a part of such a large effort.

I can't believe this was our last day of work. There's so incredibly much work left to be done...I really can't imagine going home for Christmas after this. The trip as a whole has really changed who I am as a person. You rarely hear about recovery efforts in the mainstream national news media, but there is so much left to be done. I don't understand how we can just ignore what's going on down there.

Maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that the population scattered when the storm hit, so the people don't really have as much of a collective voice.

I really don't know, but I'm so grateful that I've had the opportunity to come here and make an impact on a few lives. I wish I could have done more. I want to do more.