Additionally, the boys helped lay a floor for a family whose entire second story was torn off during the storms. With neighbors working next to them and using buckets and shovels, the boys made significant progress on rebuilding the second floor of the house. Finally, students worked with rebar, fashioning columns that would be used to reinforce the walls for an elderly couple who lost practically everything to Maria. Through a translator, the husband told some of the boys how he and his wife huddled in their kitchen when the hurricane hit. It was the only section of their home that was built with reinforced concrete. “We couldn’t afford to complete the house with concrete. It’s too expensive. During the storm, we could hear the rest of our house being ripped apart and torn away.” Apart from work in the community, the boys also worked in a tropical rainforest. Las Casas de las Selva is the home of Tropic Ventures, an educational, research, and sustainable forestry project above the town of Patillas and very near where Maria made landfall. Over the course of 30 years, this ongoing project has restored nearly 1000 acres of rainforest. Due to their efforts, Puerto Rico is one of the only places on earth where rainforest is increasing. After the storm had passed, Tropic Ventures Directors, Thrity and Andrés, emerged from their shelter to find 80% of their trees down, their access roads washed away by landslides or covered in debris, their buildings destroyed, and their hillside threatened by standing water. It was here that the students cleared downed trees and dug irrigation trenches to divert the water, open up the roadway, and stabilize the embankment. While there, Thrity also shared the human and emotional cost of the disaster. She and her co-director rode the storm out for 14 hours in a small bunker on the property as the eye of the hurricane passed directly overhead. She told the boys how the solid concrete walls of her shelter vibrated as the air pressure dropped. She described hearing her house being destroyed 50 yards away. She fought back tears as she related coming out of the shelter and seeing all the ruin left behind. “Trauma is real,” she said. “It’s not just the physical destruction. It’s not just that we still have no power or that the trees are down or that the buildings are in ruins. There’s a heavy psychological toll on the people as well.”
“I can’t believe how happy and generous these people are. I mean they’re making our meals, sharing their food with us. They’ve lost every- thing, and they’re still smiling and joking and working through it. I stress about my math grade, and this woman is making my lunch.” Perhaps the most significant outcome of the trip was not the amount of work we completed, but the depth of the connections we made. The stories people shared resonated with the boys. Many of them went down with the idea that they would aid these helpless people. In many ways, those people helped our boys. They learned lessons that can never be taught in a classroom. William, a local leader in Villa del Rio, showed the boys the power of community, organizing his friends and neighbors to help each other rebuild as a group rather than individually. Maria, the foul-mouthed matron of the barrio, taught the boys the importance of resilience, schlepping buckets of concrete alongside them, cooking them meals, sharing her story while laughing and smiling the entire time. Angel, a local carpenter, taught the boys the importance of generosity, putting in full days rebuilding his neighbors’ homes while he still lacked a roof, electricity, and running water. Victor taught the boys gratitude, taking the first steps on his new floor with all of the students alongside him. When all was said and done, and the students returned to their homes and the day-to-day routines of being an eighth grader at Cathedral, they brought back more than souve- nirs. Sure, they got some t-shirts and trinkets. But they also brought back memories of people and new-found friends. They brought back the realization that ordinary people are the ones who make change. They brought back the feeling of empowerment that comes with working all day, every day to complete a task that you know will benefit someone else. They brought back empathy, and that won’t fade in the laundry or get lost behind a dresser.
“This makes me think I can do anything. If I want to go around the world and make a positive impact in different communities, I can do that. That’s something people do. I want to do that.”
FALL 2018 • RED & GOLD | 31
30 | CATHEDRAL SCHOOL FOR BOYS
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