Gallatin grad joins ‘Habitat for Humanity’ effort in Honduras

Amy Woodruff and a group of 10 Graceland University students and four other adults spent their winter term from Jan. 3-19 on a “Habitat for Humanity” type trip to Horconcitos, Honduras. Amy is the Sports Information Director, Champions of Character Representative and Women’s Softball Assistant Coach at Graceland. She is a graduate of Gallatin R-5 and daughter of Frank and Kay Woodruff.

Starting out on the trip, Amy described herself as “a timid and eager 24-year-old looking for adventure.”

Her goals were to help build an elementary school, meet the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the village of 700, and learn the customs of a people she knew nothing about.

Amy says, “Little did I know the magnitude of life-changing events I would experience in the next 12 days.”

Amy envisioned entering a stereotypical third world country with starving children – hungry for food, love and attention. She imagined beggars on the streets and unsanitary markets, homes and people. She imagined a world of poverty and depression.

Some of what she imagined proved true. During the two-hour drive to the small village, the 80 percent poverty rate of the country was visible from the bus.

“Some of the smallest homes were made from sticks tied together with wire or rope and topped with a thatch palm leaf roof,” Amy recalls. “The better dwellings were10 by 20 foot cement block houses with hinged wooden planks as windows. Inside, the living quarters had dirt floors with no trace of running water or electricity.”

Amy anticipated she’d be staying in a shack and swatting bugs during her stay. She was wrong about that. Upon arrival at her host’s home in Horconcitos, a small town near LaBuena Fe, Amy was awestruck. Her group would be staying in a three-bedroom guest quarters with a pool, servants quarters and security hutch overlooking the mountains.

“My first reaction was relief, but then I remembered the homes I had just seen along the highway, and almost hoped I would be witnessing the Honduran culture by staying in a stick shack,” she said. “But when I saw the swimming pool and felt hot water from the shower, I figured I could learn enough about the culture without total emersion.”

After resting up at the hacienda, the students arrived at the work site and learned about the job they’d be doing for the next 10 days. They would help build a 35 by 105 foot school building to replace one that was falling down. The new building would be made of gray cement blocks, highlighted with Mayan designs on the walls and speckled tile floors.

Only two of the nearly 12 young men from the village working on the site were paid.

“This amazed me because I have never seen a volunteer worker – or any worker for that matter – work as hard as some of those men,” said Amy. “They wore no gloves and didn’t take breaks.”

Amy found her niche pulling large rocks from the trenches and placing them into wheelbarrows.

“All of the guys stopped to watch me, a girl, pick up rocks,” she said. “Men of their culture believe a female’s job is in the home. But I worked hard and was determined and they soon accepted me as an equal.”

One day Amy and some other students were invited to eat a meal in the home of one of the native construction workers. Amy was moved by the obvious pride the man took in his family, small home and few possessions.

Before leaving, the group hosted a raffle for the volunteers at the work site. Throughout the week, they accumulated articles to give away, and prepared approximately 80 packages of gifts.

“It was just shoes, T-shirts, jeans, sheets, tools and miscellaneous items,” said Amy. “It was stuff we’d have thrown away. But they’d never received much of anything in their lives and were very happy with it.”

Amy was learning how easy it is to take her own life for granted.

“It humbles me when I think of the home I live in, the car I drive and the useless goods I own and wonder why I think I need so many things. I take for granted that I can turn on my shower any time and get hot water. I can flip on my heater to get warm or pull an ice cube from my freezer at any moment. I own a car and my house has solid walls and a roof made of shingles, not thatch. If any of these people owned any of my belongings, their total year’s income would be multiplied by 100. We complain about jobs at less than 10 dollars per hour, when the highest-paid workers at the construction site earned about five dollars per day. This is part of the humbling experience I hoped to live while I visited Honduras – and I did.”

But it was the children that taught Amy the most valuable lessons. As the group worked to build their school, the children watched from a playground. Amy’s group shared candy and stickers with the kids and played tag and soccer with them. Amy found that smiles were abundant in the poverty stricken community.

Another time when smiles were plentiful came on the day the group hosted a kids carnival. Nearly 120 youth from ages five to 15 poured into the high school for a fiesta that included a piñata and small gifts supplied by the group. The final event of the day was the bashing of the piñatas. Nearly every child got to take a swing at either Winnie the Pooh or Hello Kitty, each stuffed with candy and stickers.

“If someone would have bottled up the joy in that room, we could have sold it and made a fortune,” said Amy.

Before leaving, the students took one last trip through the village. They waved “adios” to the children and families they had seen every day for the past two weeks.

“This wasn’t the daily ‘adios,’ though, it was our final goodbye to a community that has taken us in with open arms and both given and received from us, the Americans.”

And then it was time to head home.

“Leaving was a struggle,” said Amy. “The thing I found the most impressive, was the way the people were happy about the littlest things. Before I went down, I imagined the people would be depressed. After being there two weeks, I learned to see everything in a different perspective. They make do with what little they have and don’t worry about material goods. The people laugh and smile and seem just as happy as we are, maybe even happier.”