It was 4:56 AM, the sky was pitch black, yet my eyes were open due to the loud beeping of my alarm clock. Why was I waking at this hour in order to travel to a third-world country where all I would have as food were beans and tortillas and the showers were cold? My parents had signed me up, against my will, to go with my youth group on a summer mission trip to El Salvador, and the dreaded day had come to depart. I could hear my mom shout from downstairs, “Elizabeth! You are going to be late!” I was more than content in my own bed, with the food in my refrigerator, and the availability of as many hot showers as I desired. Again, my ears burned as I heard my mother’s words, “We are leaving in fifteen minutes!” I imagined the country of El Salvador to be dry and desolate filled with nothing but stray animals and littered trash. However, whether I liked it or not, in just a mere two hours, I would be on a plane to San Salvador working to build a high school.
After a bumpy flight filled with my anxieties of the unexpected, my over-packed suitcase and I piled onto a bus and began to drive through the beautiful countryside. Looking out the window at the miles of nothing but green pastures and beautiful mountains, I decided maybe this place was not so bad after all. As our 18-passenger bus with its folding seats trudged up the unpaved hills of El Salvador, my attitude from earlier that morning began its 180-degree turn, opening up to a new outlook on what might be in store for me through this experience that I had originally been so unwilling to accept.
On my first day of work in the small town of Copapayo, El Salvador, I encountered a multitude of kind and welcoming faces. However, one in particular caught my attention. His name was Alexei. Alexei came to school everyday dressed in the same clothes as the day before, and the same broken sandals to attempt to protect his feet. Alexei and I first connected on the soccer field as we worked together as teammates to score on a goal made from two pieces of trash. We spent hours passing the soccer ball back and forth, dancing to Latino music, and eating tortillas quickly building a strong foundation of friendship. Of course our conversation consisted of no more than my few butchered attempts to say “Hola! Como estas?” followed by his returned looks of confusion and laughter, yet we still developed a tie of genuine bond.
On our last day of work in El Salvador, I said a sad good-bye to Alexei after the party we threw for the students at the school in Copapayo. About ten minutes later, I saw a familiar face wandering back to the worksite. It was Alexei again. After making friendship bracelets for one another out of some old yarn, we said a second round of farewells and parted ways. Yet after another hour, as our group began to board the bus to leave Copapayo, I looked up one last time. Alexei stood standing on that same soccer field where we had first met. Running up to me and planting a kiss on my cheek, he and I shared a tearful last “adios,” for the third and final time.
As I arrived back at home the next week, I no longer found myself dwelling on the comforts of my own home as I had done early that morning of my departure, but instead found myself looking at those “comforts” of my own life with new eyes. Compared to the cardboard boxes I had seen families like Alexei’s live in, my own house was a mansion. To their three daily tortillas, our refrigerator was overflowing. Coming back that third time to say good-bye, Alexei was my reminder of what genuine happiness looks like. Though Alexei and I were faced with cultural, lingual, and economic barriers, his passion and love of life inspired me to live a more wholesome life such as his. While I was a 16 year old girl with a closet full of shoes and a drawer full of shorts, this nine-year-old boy, with holes in his shoes and a single pair of shorts to wear for his every day, was never seen without a smile on his face, illuminating life’s light.
In our world today, we are held to a certain standard of perfection, in which it is easy to forget the element of truth and substance in life. Embedded into the heart of the American consumer based society, we are told what clothes to wear, what food to eat, and how we should live, assuming the attainment of these things will result in happiness. In an endless chase for achievement and success, we find ourselves entangled in the materialistic web spun by society’s spider, having lost sight of life’s true meaning. Can we even begin to fathom life as Alexei, with hardly any money, a single outfit, and the same food everyday, and at the same time imagine happiness? After my cultural exchange and witness in Alexei, I found my eyes had been reopened to a new perspective on life.
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