Reflection by travel team leader
Some of the greatest memories from college, I believe, are from these trips that we are fortunate to go on, through Engineers Without Borders. We were very lucky to have the opportunity to stay with our two primary contacts in the Don Juan community, Father Ron Gaesser and Sister Maria Polezo. Every night after we walked back to Maria's from the school, Maria would come out with cakes, donuts, fruits, juices, and other snacks for everyone, and she would send us off to breakfast with apples every single morning.
On one of our walks getting back to Maria's one night, two girls came out of a house and began asking us if we were the girls that Maria was walking with in the morning. They began pointing at people in the group, and I told them how we were students from the US and some of us, the girls, are staying with Maria. We then had a few boys a little down the road say they would walk the entire kilometer to Maria's house with us, and did end up accompanying us for a good minute or two of our walk, asking us if we were American and what our names were.
One of my most memorable interactions with the kids was when we were at the school, and we were doing a few chlorination tests. A couple of kids came up to the fence, since they did not have school, and the security guard began talking to them, so I went over to say hi and tell them about what we're doing.
The kids' faces lit up when I came over, so l asked them about their families and if they went to school at the school we were at or the one down the street. I then asked them if they had ever seen snow, and showed them a picture that I had from my home back in Maine, and they were very intrigued, asking if it was always cold in the US and if we get the same weather that they do.
Around town, we ran into a few people that recognized Dwight from his previous trips. In former trips, we would stay with host families, so we also went to visit familiar faces like Chichi, mentioned in the second monitoring trip by Andrew Balogh, and learned about how all of the kids had grown up in the past 3 years.
We were incredibly fortunate to have timed our trip with the celebration of the Epiphany, so we took part in a couple of celebrations and Mass in a neighboring community. Everywhere around us was decorated with bright lights, and there were celebrations happening into all hours of the night that we could hear from Maria's house.
All of our chlorination testing, bacteria testing, and structural repairs progressed smoothly on this monitoring trip, and I will never forget all of us strapping Petrifilm tests onto ourselves, just hoping that our sweat wouldn't cause our contraptions to slide down our bodies for those 18 hours.
I am deeply grateful that I was able to arrange our trip early enough to get our two seniors, Andrew and Rosemary, former president and vice president, the opportunity of traveling through Engineers Without Borders that they deserved to experience in their time at college. I have learned so much from these two about how to manage projects and the club, and I will truly miss them after they graduate this spring. Also on our trip, Bridgit, our new Project Lead, and current freshman, was able to see and learn the system in person, rather than pictures and a general blueprint, which will benefit her greatly as she undertakes this role going forward, and will help her teach those who come after her.
As the first international trip that Engineers Without Borders has been able to take since the pandemic, 1 am confident that we will soon get back into semiregular trips in the near future. The goal of an engineer goes beyond just building something. Being able to take these trips and see how what we design and monitor can impact a community first-hand is a gratifying experience that really shows how engineers can truly make a difference, not just in designing something that works, but by providing access to these needs like clean water.
- Hannah Rickert
On one of our walks getting back to Maria's one night, two girls came out of a house and began asking us if we were the girls that Maria was walking with in the morning. They began pointing at people in the group, and I told them how we were students from the US and some of us, the girls, are staying with Maria. We then had a few boys a little down the road say they would walk the entire kilometer to Maria's house with us, and did end up accompanying us for a good minute or two of our walk, asking us if we were American and what our names were.
One of my most memorable interactions with the kids was when we were at the school, and we were doing a few chlorination tests. A couple of kids came up to the fence, since they did not have school, and the security guard began talking to them, so I went over to say hi and tell them about what we're doing.
The kids' faces lit up when I came over, so l asked them about their families and if they went to school at the school we were at or the one down the street. I then asked them if they had ever seen snow, and showed them a picture that I had from my home back in Maine, and they were very intrigued, asking if it was always cold in the US and if we get the same weather that they do.
Around town, we ran into a few people that recognized Dwight from his previous trips. In former trips, we would stay with host families, so we also went to visit familiar faces like Chichi, mentioned in the second monitoring trip by Andrew Balogh, and learned about how all of the kids had grown up in the past 3 years.
We were incredibly fortunate to have timed our trip with the celebration of the Epiphany, so we took part in a couple of celebrations and Mass in a neighboring community. Everywhere around us was decorated with bright lights, and there were celebrations happening into all hours of the night that we could hear from Maria's house.
All of our chlorination testing, bacteria testing, and structural repairs progressed smoothly on this monitoring trip, and I will never forget all of us strapping Petrifilm tests onto ourselves, just hoping that our sweat wouldn't cause our contraptions to slide down our bodies for those 18 hours.
I am deeply grateful that I was able to arrange our trip early enough to get our two seniors, Andrew and Rosemary, former president and vice president, the opportunity of traveling through Engineers Without Borders that they deserved to experience in their time at college. I have learned so much from these two about how to manage projects and the club, and I will truly miss them after they graduate this spring. Also on our trip, Bridgit, our new Project Lead, and current freshman, was able to see and learn the system in person, rather than pictures and a general blueprint, which will benefit her greatly as she undertakes this role going forward, and will help her teach those who come after her.
As the first international trip that Engineers Without Borders has been able to take since the pandemic, 1 am confident that we will soon get back into semiregular trips in the near future. The goal of an engineer goes beyond just building something. Being able to take these trips and see how what we design and monitor can impact a community first-hand is a gratifying experience that really shows how engineers can truly make a difference, not just in designing something that works, but by providing access to these needs like clean water.
- Hannah Rickert
