As a volunteer
at YCHS, part of my weekly routine is to head to our new campus and participate
in Saturday ground clearings. Fr. Mickey
and Fr. John were reminiscing about their days in the novitiate when they had “Work
Saturdays” that they often did cleaning or landscaping. I thought I was hilarious when I said that
the only activities I have been accustomed to on Saturday mornings are sleeping
and cartoons on “One Saturday Morning.”
I got about half a chuckle out of the group… I need to work on my Yapese
delivery.
Now, these “ground
clearings” can encompass a vast variety of tasks in just a few hours. To date, I have been a trash collector, log
re-locater, machete-ist, tree climber, coral/stone shoveler, ground raker, rock
collector, path clearer, hole digger and of course hole filler. Most of these jobs involve getting covered
in dirt, mud, stone, coral, smoke, and some things that I am not sure the
proper term for. The heat and humidity
quickly makes for the most intriguing blend of sweaty, bodily scents as you
begin to pray silently for a cloud, a breeze, or best of all – a downpour. At today’s clearing, we were blessed with a
day full of cooling winds, and an occasional opening of the heavens. Unfortunately, stone and coral become much
heavier and difficult to shovel when they are saturated… I told myself it was
character building.
It
is truly inspirational and motivating to see how many people from the community
come out on these Saturdays to work on the new campus. Most of the men work on moving logs, cutting
down trees, and shoveling. The women
build fires with the wood chopped down, clear the other side of campus, and
spend the morning cooking a glorious lunch of local food that usually includes
barbequed tuna cooked directly in the coals of
the fires, giant pots of rice, and usually some combination of cooked
breadfruit, banana-like fruit – except the bananas are gigantic, and taro. There are Yapese, Phillipinos, and Outer
Islanders. There are a minimum of 4
different languages being spoken. Some
people are in t-shirts and shorts, while others are in native garments. I am amazed that some of the men work so hard
in their thus, and it still catches me off guard to see topless women cooking
my lunch over a fire that they started with trees that they just cut down with
a machete… mind-blowing.
I spent a
large part of my day working with Fr. Mickey, Fr. John, and this young Yapese
man, Dickson (my spelling could be completely off – also, I initially had been
calling him Vincent… I blamed it on my accent).
Dickson is headed to Syracuse, NY next Saturday to begin his journey to
becoming a Jesuit priest in the novitiate.
He was an incredibly cool guy and a phenomenal worker. I am excited to hear about his transition
from Yap to the United States and to see where he ends up throughout his Novice
years.
Today,
a fair sized group of us were working on filling in the dug-out paths between
the school buildings with coral and stone.
However, we did not have the greatest selection of tools, so we were
using shovels with random sticks for handles to load the back of a pick-up
truck with a metal sheet in the bed. The
truck then would drive the 100 or so feet to where we were filling the path,
where we would proceed to empty the truck with a variety of pieces of scrap
wood and construction materials to push it all out. I got hit countless times with shovels,
coral, stone, and wood – and I just could not have cared less. We then raked out the piles with our pieces
of wood once again. This continued for
about 2-3 hours before lunch. My hands
are still raw and calloused – but it was such an awesome experience. After lunch, a group of the women who had
been cooking lunch wanted to help us, so they began taking buckets, paint cans,
bags, and whatever they could find to start carrying the coral over and dumping
it in the path- like straight up … It was one of the most beautiful things to
be a part of and to just smile, laugh, and have a great time while working
ourselves to the bone.
“In fact, effective solidarity
with the poor, both individual persons and entire nations, is indispensable for
the construction of peace."
-Claudio Hummes
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