Over spring break, under the auspices of Mrs. Sarah McLean and Mr. Steffen Tweedle, a dozen Saints boys flew south to Guatemala. In cooperation with Project Somos, an organization that is establishing a supportive and nurturing orphan’s village near the town of Tecpán, the crew assisted in the construction of a school playground, a sewage system, and the town’s main water line. For half the trip, the crew remained on location. They ate their meals on site, bathed using thermal retentive shower bags, and slept at the village in tents.
For several months prior departure, the Guatemala team spend innumerable hours fundraising for the organizations involved. They sold fair trade coffee at our Saints Player’s productions and held both a live and silent auction at the school.
While the focus of the journey may have been of a work-related nature, the trip was not spent solely at the orphanage. The boys’ second week abroad was spent traveling throughout the region not as builders, but as tourists. They ventured from bustling cities to the quiet countryside and back again, touring the cobblestone streets of old Antigua and grabbing some grub at a local shack just off the shores of the Lago de Atitlán, the deepest lake in central America.
The boys claim that their time spent abroad was truly humbling. Grade 11 crew-member Ian Spoor remarked, “Those kids have nothing and they’re the happiest kids I’ve ever seen.” The team worked long hours under a hot sun as the poor of that country do, and they witnessed on an intimate plane a people who manage joy in the absence of wealth or any glimpse of the “21st century dream”. They have come home safe, humbled, and happy, just as we all hoped they would.
