Quierda Puerto Rico, siempre hay oportunidad.
— Deborah Kuzawa
Every day during my first week in San Juan, I walked past abandoned and crumbling buildings, threatening to be reclaimed by nature, and I walked by well-kept homes with intricate ironwork and occupants washing off sidewalks. I passed carefree chickens clucking down the street, semi-feral cats lounging in the sun, and embraced the salty ocean breeze that cooled my sweaty face in the intense (and glorious) Caribbean sun. I admired the varied architecture, and especially the vibrant graffiti and street art. At the top of my street was the interesting mural by @epicuno and @andrescortes_aca pictured above:
siempre hay opo[o]rtunidad.
There’s always oppo[o]rtunity.
I contemplated its meaning every day of this project: in opportunity, there is unity, or opportunity doesn’t exist without unity. The double O (opoortunidad) formed by the skull creates homonymic Spanglish, opoortunidad—there’s always (poor) opportunities, despite poor-ness/poverty there is opportunity.
In my experience, this reflects the core of Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican identity. It’s about blending language and culture, coming to together with others to not only identify better ut also create opportunities despite or because of poor circumstances and challenges.
When STEP provided the opportunity to create a transformational project, I knew instantly I wanted to create a community service project. Community service has been part of my life and identity for almost 25 years, and my community service work was some of the most transformational and meaningful experiences as an undergraduate student. I also knew that I wanted it to be in Puerto Rico. There was something about the island that grabbed me when I visited in 2017, that stuck with me.
I made the right choice(s) in so many ways: choosing to create a community service program, choosing to go in Puerto Rico, choosing to partner with ISLA and Ponce Health Sciences University.
The undercurrent during our service work was making the best with the resources that were available, and learning to embrace uncertainty. Wallesca Rodriguez, Community Liaison & Diversity Officer from Ponce Health Sciences University, said (paraphrasing), “Resiliency is in Puerto Ricans’ DNA,” and this resiliency is partly about making do and succeeding with/despite uncertainty.
Embracing uncertainty was probably the most challenging aspect of this project for many participants. My response to many questions about trip details was a smile, and “we will respond to the needs that are present when we are there,” because we didn’t have a final itinerary of the two weeks until close to the trip started, and generally did not know what we would be doing for our service partners until we arrived on site—and sometimes even then, there was uncertainty about what needed to be done and what could be done by our group. Some of the organizations did not have regular volunteers, so it was a learning experience for everyone. Sometimes our tools and resources were less than adequate for the tasks, but in the Puerto Rican spirit, we made what we had work for us to the fullest extent possible. By the end of the trip, I think we all better appreciated how community service is about the community, its culture, and its immediate needs, and that necessarily means a bit of uncertainty in the process.
We also discovered that our group’s can-do attitude, openness, and willingness to learn and work hard made us stand out to our service partners. I was proud to see everyone engaging fully with Puerto Rico—people, food, nature, culture— asking questions in English and Spanish of nearly every person we encountered, from the Uber/taxi driver, to the tour guide, to the servers and employees of the places we stayed and our service partners. We were able to hear about the experiences and perspectives of a wide range of Puerto Ricans from around the island, helping us better understand the diversity among Puerto Ricans and in turn better understand what it means to be an American from the Caribbean.
We could see and hear how much the island—people and environment—has recovered from María and the delayed recovery efforts, but we also heard about and saw where there are still gaping holes in recovery. Hundreds of schools remain closed because the damage was so great, and now, the population has dispersed so much that schools are being consolidated and students bussed.
The W School (one of our service partners), for example, has a quarter of the students it had before María, mostly because families moved away. Families couldn’t survive months and months, hundreds of days without power or water or access to food and other necessities, so they relocated to other parts of the island or the mainland United States.
Similarly, we worked with Centro de Resiliencia en la Comunidad in San Salvador, Caguas, a rural mountain community about 45 minutes from San Juan. Its students are bussed 20-40 minutes away for school because the local schools have not reopened or reopened and then closed. With narrow, steep, and winding roads and overall challenging (but beautiful) terrain, the community was told after María that help would not be coming any time soon, if at all. As a result, the community has been working on becoming an electricity and water co-op, pointing to a positive outcome in many communities (and this one in particular) post-María—the strengthening of community collaboration and unity. Community and kindness seem to be the hallmarks of Puerto Rican life.
From a tourist point-of-view, we had to adjust our expectations of the landscape and natural areas, such as in El Yunque. As the photos demonstrate, it was breathtaking.
But we wanted to hike, many of the trails still closed due to hurricane damage. Swaths of the mountains still bear the scars of María, with stripped spindly trees looking like the survivors of a fire still visible among the lush, new growth.
The natural areas are slower to recover after hurricanes because people generally worry more about meeting the basic needs of those on the island. However, as Dr. Francisco Murphy from Adjuntas and Ponce Health Sciences University pointed out to us, the natural areas are central to both the health and identity of the island.
Luckily, we worked in Monte Guilarte Forest with Dr. Caridad Báez Mendizabal and Ron Miller from the Department of Natural Resources. All the students (and myself) liked this service work the most because of the gorgeous mountain, sub-tropical rainforest surroundings, and perhaps most because at the end of each workday, we could see the progress and could feel the (physical) impact of hauling corrugated roofing and wood up a steep, rocky hill. We worked on cleaning debris and repairing camper cabins that used to be rented out. The DNR did not have a timeline for when these would re-open to the public. After our two workdays, they estimated that they would be open in about 2 months, bringing some income to the DNR.
Dr. Murphy told us that due to our presence in Adjuntas/Guilarte, local groups have decided to volunteer in the forest and local companies have donated goods. He said, “you have had a domino effect you cannot see the impact of.” I think this sums up our service experiences and service work in general: we can never truly know the small and big impacts of our work, the ways in which service and kindness can radiate out like a pebble dropped into a pond.
In Ponce, we worked in Plaza las Delicias, painting the cement walls of the garden beds. The Plaza is always busy—it has been the center of Ponce for four centuries—and passing Ponceños would say “gracias” or “thank you” or stop to ask us questions about who we were and what we were doing, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish, and often a mix of both. One man observed me working for a moment, and launched into Spanish way too fast for me to completely understand, but then said in slower English, “if more persons did good work like this then more persons would do good work and everything would be better.” A seemingly homeless woman said, “thank you for making Ponce beautiful.” Everywhere we went people were warm, welcoming, and always willing to chat about their lives, about our lives, about where our lives meet.
Being able to chat and connect with ordinary Puerto Ricans was one the best aspects of this experience. We hope that seeing us volunteering inspired others to consider how they might serve their community and others to improve the world and themselves.
Our opportunity to serve Puerto Rico and better understand the island—the values, cultures, people, and language—created opportunities for us to better understand ourselves, to better understand what it means to be an American, and what it means to serve others. We hope our service may be an opportunity for others, including our fellow Buckeyes, to engage and consider how they might also continue to serve the island and their own communities.
Service is why I am a STEP mentor; I see the goals of STEP as fostering connection with/between students and aiding their transformation. Through this trip, I learned that mentoring, like service, is definitely a two-way street. This project has transformed me in ways simple and in ways I am still trying to understand.
Siempre hay opportunidad.
There is always an opportunity to be kind, to help others, to consider your communities.
¿Cuál es su próxima oportunidad para retribuir?
¿Qué oportunidad crearás a continuacion?
STEP Puerto Rico 2019 