when i returned from Honduras earlier this year, i had a conversation with someone about the discomfort that dogged me almost every day i was there. there we were, a bunch of bright eyed and bushy tailed kids from an ivy league institution, descending upon the slums of Tegucigalpa and the sloping sides of Joyas, like crows so eager to help. we were but ten inexperienced children with some time during the school holidays, many swollen ideas of public health and what could be done to improve the conditions of these people, and our two hands. school taught us to think about these things- things beyond ourselves into which we could apply our strength and intellect, and do something good for people who didn’t have the resources or opportunities that we had access to. before the trip, we raised money for our own airfare and solicited medical donations from friends, families and doctors, which we would then bring to Honduras and delegate. when we got there, we were to assist in building sustainable structures such as latrines, septic tanks, ceilings, floors and stoves that would, we were told, change the lives of the villagers in Joyas, one family at a time. every morning we would gather and have a reflective talk about the magnitude of our presence and role in this project. i think we were all proud of ourselves and how we were doing this crazy wonderful thing called service work; that we could actually see the results of our toil, one layer of brick and mortar at a time. we took many photos, kissed the cheeks of the families we worked with, shared half of our PB&J sandwiches with the kids and even the stray dogs that would lick our toes hungrily as we ate our lunches amidst the labour.

it was strange, but the whole time i felt quite angry at myself for having gone on the trip and allowed myself the unconscious prescription to an ego balm. what were we really doing there, if it took us three days to build one latrine, when one young strapping Joyas local would take only ten hours to perfectly complete the structure? why were we bringing bags full of Tylenol when the health afflictions of the villagers ran far deeper than headaches and stomach pains? why were we even building these monstrosities if some locals thought them useless, and would take them apart after we’d left, to sell the building materials in the market for some petty cash? it’s easy to feel helpless and deflated when you realize these things. we may as well have put the money that we spent on airfare into capital towards a small construction business run by the Joyas locals, or other such microfinance initiatives. to think that we were so proud at having dipped our hands in cement, when the locals were really just letting us have a taste of what volunteer work feels like. they were, at the very least, kind enough to give us warm smiles and watch patiently as we took way too long to saw planks in halves and mix cement the wrong way.

perhaps it is cynical of me to approach volunteer work from this angle, but i wished that in Honduras we could have done something real with our intentions and energy. it would be nice to know that time and resources were being optimized, instead of being expended unnecessarily and at a sub-optimal rate, just to… what exactly? i’m still not sure where the benefit lies– be it on our part, or that of the villagers, or that of the organization we traveled with. sure, we take away valuable life lessons about the importance of teamwork, service work and what it means to play a small role towards sustainable development, small steps big change etc, but what about the people we were told we were there to help? they get this brand new cement floor, latrine, ceiling or stove. that’s really nice but apparently they could have built it faster and better themselves. why did we fly all the way there to do it? it also seems that they may just dismantle everything to sell the scrap metal. further, latrines just weren’t their way of life, and there’s really not much point putting a small band aid over a large wound if other public health problems (such as the lack of clean drinkable water) weren’t first addressed. correct me if i’m wrong but the most valuable benefit seemed to have been taken home with us instead of being left there with them. how did volunteer work come to have so little real impact, and become almost self-serving?

for some time i struggled to understand our place and purpose there. during some nightly conversations with the team, i would carelessly and insensitively rain on everyone’s parade by expressing my slight dissatisfaction surrounding the aforementioned conundrums. who were we really there to help? how much exactly were we helping in terms of what we thought we were there to do? could we think of ways to be more useful? could we push the envelope a little further? can we address some of these questions before we clap on our proud arsenal of shovels and saws?

there are many ways to answer these questions that would make sense of why we went and what we did. some popular ones: (1) it doesn’t matter that we essentially went there to play in sand, as long as we show people that our intentions are good and that we care and are willing to take steps to help; (2) we take away the important lesson of understanding how small our roles were in Honduras, and it will push us to think about bigger things that we can do to truly make big and helpful changes; (3) our mere presence entails expenditure on airfare, accommodation, food, and building supplies that will directly stimulate the local economy; (4) we can bring back to New York the eyewitness account of an impoverished community, and spread awareness of problems beyond our borders; (5) some effort is better than none at all… and so on and so forth. while these responses are highly relevant ones, a quick glance and some thought will quickly reveal the problems with each, and how ultimately they just do not answer the question of why we went there to do what we did without actually doing what we thought we were doing. yes, residual effects are important, but so is the main task at hand, which was to directly improve the state of public health in the villages of Honduras.

i don’t regret the trip. it wasn’t the fairytale volunteer experience that i’d thought it would be, but it stretched my mind and my heart so far, even despite the realization that we hadn’t been all that effective as a brigade that championed public health. it forced me to reflect on every single volunteer work experience that i’d had, and to pick out all the plausible reasons why we did each one and why we were made to do it (big distinction). it was a clear lodestar towards what was important, and even further towards the understanding that ‘what is important’ isn’t something static.

ultimately, being in Honduras taught me that the best way to help people is to allow them the knowledge that our helping them helped us back more than we helped them, or just as much as. in that way, they have done us the big favour of gratuitously helping us even though we were originally there to help them. this, i think, empowers the Honduran a whole lot more than some latrine hastily constructed out of misaligned bricks. we may have done this one small thing of building one family a stove with a piping system, but they did us the bigger real deal of educating us. the crucial ingredient however is that they have to know they did us this favour, otherwise that potential is wasted. they have to know that they did so much more for us than we did for them in the short time we spent there. that despite being ‘impoverished’ and ‘uneducated’, they are equipped with the ability to teach and do many things better than these random americans who fell from the sky with secondhand clothes and free medicine. such knowledge, even if unfurling from a very small flicker of pride in showing the random malaysian volunteer how to mix cement the right way, can be so powerful if harnessed correctly. i only wish i knew how to convey this information to them at the time, but alas i think i was either too shy or too stupid to recognize what my real role in Honduras was.

there was a girl from the family we built a latrine for who patiently kept refreshing my memory of the spanish words she’d taught me earlier in the week. her husband showed us how to hammer a nail into a plank in 3 hits and smiled encouragingly when we kept breaking the nails. they shared their food with us. explained the religious script on their doors. the women of the sanitation committee first bore children at the age of 11 and then raised many more in the years to come. the young boys that moved like greased lightning on the football field could kick a ball harder and faster than any of us could. all so awesome in their own right– why are we the ones who get to say that we are ‘helping’? what exactly were we doing with our hands in Honduras that is worth more than what they know and can do? i still dont have the answers but for all the above gifts from Honduras and for the questions they inadvertently raised, i’m grateful that i had the opportunity to go, and that we did what we did.

we’re going to Panama this year, hopefully with a bigger and better brigade with clearer goals!

#1 putting the tin roof on an almost finished latrine

#2 laying the base for the latrine

#3 starting on a water storage tank

#4 an average Honduran water storage tank, where the locals store water for cooking, cleaning and bathing as there’s no proper pipe system in the mountain of Joyas. also a big contributor to mosquito breeding

#5 nino!

#6 the men of the house helping us with the cement, which they mixed 10x faster than we did!

#7 G working on smoothing out a cement floor. most of the homes in Joyas don’t have floors, which renders the family members (who often walk around barefoot) very susceptible to the fatal Chagas disease which is caused by parasites from the ground.

#8 stray chickens doing a run

#9 M and B making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for us and the kids of the house. isn’t this picture super adorable :)

#10 playing games with the rest of the Joyas kids, who really love games

#11 young man with perfectly sculpted double eyelids, proud to receive a Superman sticker

#12 evening soccer with the boys, who run and play like superstars

more photos soon!