A Hard Day's Work

Today was one of the most tiring and rewarding days of my life.  It was our first day of work today! Woo hoo! It was intense, especially for someone like me who can't handle the sun and heavy objects. But it was so rewarding and we made a lot of progress. We did our work today at St. Mary's Primary School near Treasure Beach. The school has kids from grades 1-6, and is located in a mountain range forty minutes from Taino Cove. They have been constructing a netball court for the kids to play in, since they were in need of a playground.  It was quite a long day, and the work was tough. I went in thinking we were putting up a fence for the netball court, but that had been finished already by the previous GSI group. We ended up starting to fill more of the stadium seating for the court. It involved moving (presumably) two tons of rocks into a structure made of cinderblocks.  Yep. It was rough. It was monotonous. It was tedious. IT. WAS. ROUGH.  But all that roughness, monotony, tediousness, and more roughnes was worth it. I came out of it a changed woman. I learned so much and I'm sure my soreness from the rock collecting is a reflection of it.  I always had bad anxiety around people, and when I mess up I get absolutely flustered. Today is the day that I felt the anxiety begin to go away.  I had moments when I messed up and didn't do things right. Sometimes I wouldn't get the buckets over to the rock dump as fast as I should have. The old me would have had an internal panic attack telling me that I messed up my opportunity to help out and that no one would take me seriously next time. That was DEFINITELY not the case. We all raised each other up when we struggled. Even when we messed up, we just looked past it and went back to work. It was business as usual. All that mattered was the progress we made. And I'm so grateful for that.  I also pushed myself. I make sure that I'm the first to admit that I am not the strongest, especially when it comes to arm strength. But I was surprised at how much I could do. Some of the work came easier to me, such as shoveling the rocks and rushing the empty buckets back to the rock dump. However, the harder stuff, which was lifting full buckets filled with rocks, nearly got me. There were times when I needed to bow out. Despite the setbacks, I viewed my biggest accomplishment as simply doing that. If I wasn't in this scenario and someone asked me to do this, I would easily have come up with some excuse not to do it. Now that I am surrounded by amazing people, I gained the confidence to push myself to do the heavier stuff.  My favorite part of the day was playing with the kids. This was the easiest part for me. I love kids, and babies, and anytime I get the opportunity to play with kids, I take it.  I had brought large jumpropes that my sister and I used to play with as kids. Before I left, my mom suggested that I bring them to Jamaica to give to the children. I made the right choice. The jumpropes were a huge success. The kids love playing with jumpropes, and earlier in the day it seemed like they only had singular ones. When I brought the larger ones, more kids could play. I even got in on some of the action and played some of their jumprope games. I hadn't done that since probably fifth grade. I made the effort to write a note to the school to go along with my donation. I said that my sister and I had a blast playing with these as kids and that I hoped the kids enjoy them as much as we did. I thought the gesture was small and a cute thing to include with the donation, but it was way bigger than that to the school. While I was working at the end of the day, a teacher came by looking for me. She took the time to thank me for my note and for my donation.  It was in that moment that I truly realized the difference I was making here. One small gesture meant the world to those kids. I never knew I had the potential to do that until now.  Even though there was so much heavy busy work, and even though I got a sunburn that literally outlines the back of the top I wore, today was one of the greatest days I have had in a long time. I am so excited for tomorrow. I can't wait to see the kids again, gain new experiences (I never mixed cement before!), and make more differences in the world.  Wow I wrote a lot but I have a lot on my mind! Good night!!  -Monica M. :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Queenie to Papaya

It's already Wednesday and it's unbelievable to think we'll be leaving this beautiful country in a few days. This trip has been everything I could have imagined and more. We found a little home at Taino Cove in Treasure Beach. On the southwest side of the island, the resort is deep in rural land overlooking the ocean. The houses nearby a large and colorful, with large gates and lots of land surrounding them. The site we were working on was nestled into the side of a mountain - it's safe to say that I wasn't expecting this landscape. To be completely honest, when I thought of Jamaica I thought of beaches, some more beaches, and a few more beaches. It was breathtaking to see so much greenery everywhere we went. Our new home for the next few days, Whistling Bird, is a little piece of the jungle - beautiful and green - right on the beach in Negril. The tree frogs sing their song and the ocean breeze eases the humidity. The landscape is totally different than Treasure B...
Read more

The Work Ends

The week has come to an end and the Saturday when we first flew in seems so long ago. Thoroughout the week we not only did service and experienced the culture of Jamaica but we also bonded as a group. We talked about who gets ore out of service, the ones receiving the service or the ones providing it? I feel like I have gotten so much out of this experience that it is hard to say it affected the people we helped more. The children at the schools are receiving bleachers or an extension to their school, but i received an experience i will never forget. I formed close bonds with people who were strangers to me before this week. I got to see actual progress being made on these projects and know my sweat and hard work went into it. When we left the worksite today it looked like a building was taking form there and not just a few stacks of cinder blocks. I had so much fun on this trip and felt like I did a lot of good work. I'm going to miss Jamaica but who knows mayble I'll be back!...
Read more

To Higher Heights

Today was our first day at Higher Heights Academy. The kids are younger, the school is smaller, and the worksite is alot hotter. And by alot hotter i mean 105 degrees. I honestly do not think I've ever sweat more in my life, but the progress we made, made it all worth it. Our goal was to lay a meager 2 rows of blocks to make the foundation for an extension to the school, and we surpassed it. We laid 5 rows! That progress made the entire day of blistering heat, dripping sweat, and even a little nausea completely worthwhile. I would say that today was the most rewarding day solely in terms of work that we've had yet.  Something I have to note is everyone's concern for each other's well being, on and off of the worksite. I can honestly say that there was not more than 10 minutes that passed by without someone asking "Do you need someone to switch out for you?" on the worksite, or more generally, "Are you okay?", "Do you need water? bugspray? sunsc...
Read more