| South America, Asia, destinations for alternative winter break trips BY MIKE UNGER As AU students filtered off campus last month, most destined for weeks of rest and relaxation with family and friends at home, a few dozen fanned out across the globe, hoping to enrich not only themselves but also the people they encountered. Four alternative winter break trips provided opportunities for students to do community service in small towns and villages in Bolivia, Brazil, Thailand, and China, and educate themselves about issues confronting the natives in those parts of the world. While each country is facing unique challenges, the trips, sponsored by the Community Service Center, were united by the sense of purpose the students gained through their travels and interactions. Yang Wang, a second-year graduate student, led a delegation of 15 students to her homeland, China. The group toured five major cities and journeyed into the countryside hoping to learn more about the environmental challenges facing the nation with the world’s fastest growing economy. 
Photos courtesy of Shoshanna Sumka
Their stops included a museum detailing a major dam project, a city that utilizes solar energy, and a farm. “I’ve been in China for so long, but this is the first time I’ve seen China through different eyes,” Wang said. In a minority village where a regional ethnic group, called the Naxi Family, farms, the students used hoes and plows to prepare a field for a pepper harvest next year. “My whole conceptions of China were changed,” said James Spadaccia, a first-year graduate student in the School of International Service. “I thought there would be a lot more government control, I didn’t expect it to be as modern as it was. Beijing and Shanghai were just as western as any city I’ve ever been to. Getting out to the countryside, we met very nice, well educated people. The farmer we were with, his daughter was a college graduate, he showed us all her education awards. They were very friendly. They sang for us when we left.” Carla Trippe encountered the same characteristics in the indigenous Bolivians she met during her time in the South American country. She and her trip mates went to gauge the support for newly elected Bolivian president Evo Morales, but in the process she learned much about the country’s history and peoples. “I really felt like I took a Bolivia 101 course,” said Trippe, a sophomore, of her time spent with a guide touring pre-Incan ruins. “The first few days we spent immersing ourselves in the culture. We went to Lake Titicaca. We spent a day at the Incan Fountain of Youth. When we originally got there we had a welcoming ceremony allowing us to be present on their land. I felt very privileged to experience something like that. We ate aptapi, the local dish, a mixture of locally grown potatoes, corn, and beans. They made chicken, eggs. It was the freshest, best food that I’ve ever had.” 
The group also met with Morales’s ministers of justice and health and dined with the country’s former president, Eduardo Rodriguez. On the same continent, 12 AU students were traveling through the south of Brazil, learning about MST, Brazil’s landless workers movement. A law in the Brazilian constitution allows peasants to take land if it’s not going to good use, and more than 500,000 have organized to work their way out of poverty by taking advantage of this provision. Of course obstacles, mainly in the form of powerful land owners, remain. 
“I’m specifically interested in poverty, and I think a lot of times the way people approach poverty alleviation is belittling to the poor,” said Mike Haack, a second-year graduate student who led the trip. “I think the MST do a really good job of alleviating poverty without compromising dignity.” They went to both settled villages and squatters’ encampments, and met with landowner advocates in Sao Paulo. Haack was most struck by the pride evident in the MST. “It was poverty in a way that people in the United States don’t usually experience poverty,” he said. “But the people are empowered. Usually when I’m talking to someone with a fourth-grade education, you can feel the power difference between you and that person. But the movement has taught them so much, you don’t really feel that difference.” The trip to Thailand was political in nature. Led by Tim Renner, a second-year SIS graduate student, it was designed to educate participants on the political situation in neighboring Burma, which has been ruled by various military dictators since 1962. “The purpose of the trip was to shed light on the Burmese democracy movement,” Renner said. “There’s a lot of activism that goes on there due to the massive refugee population living there. The exiled Burmese government is there.” The students met with various groups working on a litany of issues involving Burma, including women’s rights, political prisoners, and refugees. They also had the opportunity to meet Charm Tong, a young woman who founded the Shan’s Women Action’s Network, a Burmese advocacy group based in Thailand. “She was very inspiring but at the same time I felt like she was an average person like the rest of us,” Brenner said. “She could have easily been a student studying at AU. She was very inspiring and very passionate, I hope she would serve as a good role model to the rest of the people in our group. “My hope is that people made a personal connection to the issue rather than just gaining the insight that one would reading off a Web site or newspaper. We met people who had to flee their homes and been imprisoned. I’m hoping it sparks a desire to do something to help that otherwise wouldn’t have been ignited.” The Community Service Center already is planning its alternative summer break trips to Ecuador, Guatemala, and South Africa. For more information, log onto www.american.edu/altbreak |
