“He said, ‘There is a clash of interests between the laws of economics versus the laws of nature. Your job is to bring balance.’ He did much to inspire these students to become active participants in bettering our world.” “What stuck with me most is when Mr. Hayes told us that any dummy can make a list of problems, but it takes a wise person to solve them,” said Brittenburg. The students also stayed connected to the world via the World Wide Web by blogging their trip experiences. Though blogging was part of their course requirements for the trip, many of the students found it to be a valuable piece of their experience. Ortiz noted that the blog requirement helped keep her focused on what they were learning in Mexico in addition to what they were doing and seeing. For freshman Danielle Wilson, maintaining a trip blog had the added bonus of keeping her family and friends connected to her while she was abroad. “It was neat blogging about my experience in Guanajuato, and it also taught me how to use a blogging site,” said Wilson, a Saylorsburg, Pa., resident who plans to major in horticulture. “It gave my family and friends a chance to not only read about, but see pictures of what the group and I learned each day on the trip.”
At the village, Hayes introduced them to Pedro, whose four-acre farm provides just enough food to subsist. They also met Pedro’s father, who, like many Mexicans, spends much time away from the family working abroad to send money home. For the last eighteen years, he has worked legally, he proudly reports, at a nursery in Santa Barbara for eight months out of the year. “They showed us the water source that was used for the village. It looked green and contaminated. I didn’t want to put my finger in it let alone drink it,” said Brittenburg. “They often depend on water deliveries. It just brought home that all of the environmental issues are making things worse for these people.” “I knew there were problems in the world,” said Ortiz, “but to see it in person made it very real.” Hutchinson and Kackley-Dutt could see very clearly that Hayes knew exactly what he was doing when he made this the final destination of the trip. They posit that even some of the UG students, most of whom come from middle and upper-class families in developed areas of Mexico, had their eyes opened by what they witnessed in the village.
“It was the culmination. It connected the dots for them. You could see it on their faces,” said Kackley-Dutt. In fact, Bittenburg was so impacted by the beauty of the area, the friendliness of the people, and the enormity of the need, that he is considering traveling back to UG for their summer language program and possibly making it his home post-graduation. “Sam is an incredible humanitarian. One of the solutions he has come up with to combat these issues is to inspire the younger generation to take up the cause. He succeeded,” said Hutchinson. Both Hayes and the Penn State Lehigh Valley team hope that this trip was just the first chapter in the partnership between them and UG. Hayes stressed how important education is in making the world a better place, and sharing knowledge with future students by offering this opportunity again will benefit both the institutions and the communities the students will come to serve. In his own words: “We should not let a little trickle of water like the Rio Grande keep us from working together. Our hope is with the young people. They can work together to make North America a better place.”
Reaching the ejido You may wonder why Hayes placed the hike to the rural village at the end of the trip. Would it be a bit anticlimactic following the agave genome research center, the acres of strawberry and mesquite fields, and the breathtaking architecture of Guanajuato city? The answer would be decidedly ‘no,’ based on what the students recalled as the most memorable part of their entire experience. “When we finally got there, I wanted to complain that my feet hurt and I wanted a drink of water, but I had no room to be saying anything. There are people living in villages that only get water when Mother Nature provides it, which is hardly often, and they work a lot harder for their money than most people might,” said Wilson. “It was such an eye opener. It made me realize how much most citizens in the United States take so many things for granted.”
Students cross the bridge that will lead them to Pedro Ramirez’s ejido. Most people in these small rural villages attend school until sixth grade. In this particular village they have to travel ten miles to the next town for middle school, which only about 40 percent of the children do.
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