Gift idea preschool teacher

At first, Mark Cameron had planned to take his sons to Hawaii for the holidays. The idea of sharing Christmas cheer surrounded by warm sands and crashing surf sounded wonderfully alluring. Instead, Mark, a vice president for the University of Phoenix in Salt Lake City, Utah, took sons Blake, 17, Bryce, 13, and Bryan, 11, to Garbanzo, Mexico. A tiny village at the end of a dirt road, Garbanzo is home to 80 impoverished souls who scratch out an existence growing meager gardens and herding bedraggled goats. In place of comfortable Hawaiian condos and dreamy palm trees, the Camerons would find stone huts with dirt floors and no electricity. The only toilet in the entire town is a two-hole latrine dug into the yard behind Garbanzo's tiny one-room school. Instead of relaxing on the beach and digging their toes in pristine sand, the Camerons would be working in the mud.

And they couldn't have been happier.

Ever since his brother, a travel agent, had told him about a secular volunteer organization called the Center for Humanitarian Outreach and Inter-Cultural Exchange (CHOICE), Mark had wanted to take his boys on a CHOICE expedition.

"My brothers and I were taught the lessons of service--that you find true happiness when you give of yourself," says Mark. "It was something I wanted to instill in my own boys." And while the Camerons had always been active in their church and community, this trip would be completely different, requiring a long and arduous journey from their comfortable home in the U.S. to the poorest regions of central Mexico. And it would change their lives forever.

CHOICE, a nonprofit agency based in Utah, leads small groups--including families--to villages in Vietnam, Mexico, Kenya, Bolivia, and Nepal. Volunteers help build schools, medical centers, and water projects. They vaccinate animals, work in literacy programs and, if they are doctors or dentists, dispense health care.

The one- to two-week expeditions aren't vacations. For the most part, participants camp outdoors; eat communal meals; use public latrines; and live without electricity, running water, or telephones.

Last Christmas, Dr. Douglas Mower, a family practitioner in Alpine, Utah, took children Mindy, 20, Matt, 18, and Clint, 16, to Huancuyo, a village high in Bolivia's Andes mountains. Mindy was overwhelmed by the reception when they arrived.

"The people were so excited to have us there," she says. "When we came into the village, a band was playing and the women threw confetti on our heads."

The Mower children played soccer with the village boys--who were a little taken aback by Mindy's athletic prowess. Mindy made plastic-bead necklaces with the children. The boys brought baseball equipment and introduced the game to the village.

"I've spent time with my children on family trips, but this was different," Douglas says. "They weren't just focused on having fun, but on serving people."

For a week, the Mowers helped construct a foundation for a school building, hauling rock, mixing cement by hand, and laying brick alongside the villagers. To the Americans, the Bolivian villagers were tough and exotic. The women wore distinctive bolo hats and wrapped themselves in bright shawls. The men squatted in the schoolyard each morning to divide up the day's tasks, drink tea, and chew coca leaves. The air at the 14,000-foot elevation was cold and thin; the weather capricious--intense sunlight for a time, then rain and large hail. Always, though, the family felt warmth and kindness from the people, and for each other.

"My brothers and I got along because we were in this strange place with one another," says Mindy. "We were all affected by what we did and saw. Now, something is there between us that wasn't there before we went." Such family bonding is common, born from roughing it together and sharing the realization of just how privileged their lives are back home. The Mowers got a perspective on that privilege on a visit to the farm of Alberto, the mayor of the town.

That day, under a light rain, Alberto proudly showed the Mowers his meticulously kept fields, dry farmed without irrigation and critical to his family's well-being.

Afterward, they entered Alberto's two-room adobe home, the big Americans ducking to get through the doorway. Alberto's wife and children sat on the edge of a bed. Alberto, looking about at his meager estate, apologized for his poverty. Douglas took a different view.

"I thought, `Here is a man who is raising his own food, caring for his family. This is a father who loves his children just like I love mine,'" he remembers. "I thought about his life. I thought about mine. And I considered him a greater man than myself."

In anticipation of his family's village experience, Mark Cameron tried to prepare his kids for the poverty and starkness of life in Garbanzo.

"It doesn't look like the poor you see back home," says Mark. "My boys were shocked." But they were also struck by the villagers' frugality. If a chicken was lunch, chicken pieces showed up again at supper. A vegetable one day was soup the next. A barrel of rainwater lasts a family two months. "These people waste nothing," says Mark.

That includes opportunities to celebrate. At the end of each expedition, villagers and volunteers gather for a farewell party. In Garbanzo, the villagers put on their finest clothes, and people rode horses over from neighboring villages. Under the moon and stars, far from any city, with the horses neighing and music playing, the Americans and Mexicans danced in the dusty roadways.

"It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced," Mark says. "All the gifts wanted to dance with my boys."

After the party, the Camerons had farewell gifts for Garbanzo's children. They met the village teacher at the one-room schoolhouse, a dim structure containing a table, some little chairs, and children's drawings stuck to the blue adobe walls. There, like latter-day Wise Men, the three boys unpacked paper, puzzles, preschool toys, and, finally, 50 cloth bags, each containing pencils, erasers, crayons, glue, a ruler, notebooks, and a pair of scissors. After the teacher understood that a bag was meant for each child, her dark eyes teared up. That's when she showed the Camerons a chipped, well-worn pair of scissors--the only pair in the school.

"To me, it was just all the stuff a child needs for school," says 13-year-old Bryce. "But when we saw her face light up, I could see it was much more than that."

For more information on expeditions or to make a donation to help in its humanitarian work, contact: CHOICE Humanitarian, 7879 South 1530 West, Suite 200, West Jordan, UT 84088; 801/474-1277. Or try their Web site: www.choice-humanitarian.org.

There are many other organizations offering travel and volunteer opportunities. Here are a few:

* www.idealist.org. Contains links to hundreds of nonprofit agencies.

* www.heifer.org. Heifer International explores solutions to hunger. Call 800/422-0474.

* www.volunteerinternational.org. A great search site for volunteer opportunities overseas.

--James McCommons teaches journalism at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.