Every year, Saint George's goes on a mission trip. This year, for the second year in a row, the mission trip was to Chiloe'. Chiloe' is a large island 20 hours south of Santiago by bus. All 5 of us went on the mission trip with about 75 students and recent alumni to the island starting on January 2nd. We had already been to several meetings to meet the students and to get to know our groups. There were 4 large groups made up of students, alumni and teachers, and the 5 of us were all seperated amongst these groups except for Molly and Brian who were together.So we embarked on the evening of January 2nd to Chiloe'. We took charter busses for our 20 hour busride south. We arrived in Chiloe' after ferrying across the channel seperating the mainland and the island. The first day all 75 of us stayed together in a town where we were introduced to one of the few priests of the island, participated in more ice-breakers and a strange right of passage on the beach late late at night in the cold.
The next day, the four groups seperated and headed to different communities in Chiloe'. My community went to the community named Agoni. I was accompanied by Natalie, a Holy Cross volunteer from the states that i was already friends with, a seminarian, another teacher from the school, and about 15 students and recent alumn.
The people of Chiloe' are very excluded, especially those that live outside the small cities there; for several months of the year, it is too dangerous to cross over to the mainland. So, on top of missioning in these communities, we were also there just to be people for them to talk to and engage.
Our typical schedule was as follows: we awoke at 7:30 every day, had a morning prayer, and then ate breakfast until about 9:00. After that, having already been divided into groups of 3 or 4, we set out to the homes in our community. At the homes, we normally would great the person or persons and just engage them in conversation. usually this lasted for at least an hour, sometimes more, then we would ask them if they would like to do a short prayer service with us and they always said yes. normally we would visit houses until about 1:00 in the afternoon depending on how far we had to hike to get back. We then would eat lunch at about 2:00 and then at 3:00 the children of the community would show up and we would play games with them similar to like a CCD setup. Then at 6:00 we would have a mass or liturgical service depending on if the priest could make it (the mass was always open to the community), and after mass we would put on a short "show" having to do with the days gospel. After that it was time to hang out with the teenagers of the community however there were only 2. Finally, at about 9:00 there would be dinner, then at 10:00 we would have a night prayer service just amongst ourselves that was always organized by a different pair of people from teh group. That would last at least an hour with lots of sharing of some sort and then we would discuss the day for about 30 minutes and finally have some sort of game or activity to end the night. Usually it all ended a little after 12:30. then, for the most part, it would all be repeated the next day...
It was a rather eye opening experience for me. Chiloe' was a very unique place even to other chileans. It was also a very difficult trip for me since so much of it was in spanish. when we would mission to the homes, i basically just sat there because it is hard enough for me to understand anyone speaking in spanish, but the people of the island have a very difficult accent that made it difficult for others in my group who are native spanish speakers to understand. fortunately i had a great group, and the students often broke into english for me and all in all i had a good time. I had a great time playing with the children of the island and they saved me on the tough days because they just wanted to play with me regardless of the fact that i hardly understood them speaking.
ok, in the photos
1st row: #1 and #2 are photos from teh ship that carried us across the channel, #3 is a picutre of a distant volcanoe across the channel, #4 is two kids from the community and #5 is their home.
2nd row: #1 is the view from their home, #2 is a cross in the field outside of the school where we stayed, #3 is the school we slept and ate in, #4 walking on a road to a house #5 the kids doing an activity
3rd row: #1 kids playing soccer, #2 me with the kids, #3 inside the church #4 the church which was across the field from where we stayed, #5 the beach near the school
4th row and 5th row are pictures of a cooking technique the people use there where they dig a hole in the ground, fill it with rocks and then light a fire on them to heat them up. Then they dumped hundreds of muscle/scallop looking things on the hot rocks, chicken, hot dogs, and this bread that they make there. After they put the food on they covered it all with these huge leaves (2 feet across) to keep the heat in. It all cooked for about an hour and tasted great. It fed at least 60 people. And the last picture is the guys in our group with some other men from the town.
