Undergrads Susan Ayer, Katie Homann,
and Daniel Wu plant trees at an
orphanage near Tijuana, Mexico.

Thoughts on an alternative spring break
Nathan Wozny

The Caltech Y recently sent a group of 14 students to a community center in Tecolote, Mexico, as a part of the annual Alternative Spring Break trip. The program is an opportunity to spend time away from academics, meet new friends, and make a difference in a community. To me, it was also an opportunity to experience a different way of living. After crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, we passed through the sights and sounds of Tijuana, which was as ready as ever to entertain tourists. After only a few miles further, the billboards and restaurants and crowded streets disappeared. A glance at the old buildings, the trash-filled ditches lining the dirt roads, and the sickly dogs roaming the streets convinced us that we had entered a different world. Perhaps the only tokens of the place we had left behind were the pristine factories looming above the town on the hills, which many residents rode up in the bus each morning to begin their day of work.

For four nights, we slept on the floor of a room in the local community center, a place for children to go after school, which lasts only half a day due to funding constraints. During the days of our visit, we laid tile on the concrete floors of two classrooms, tilled the soil of a lot where the children will help plant a garden and grow food, and planted trees at a nearby orphanage.

Like many of the other community service projects I have done through the Caltech Y, the trip gave me the opportunity to make a difference. However, Tecolote was unique in that I felt like we became a part of the community. Not only were we volunteering our time for a group of people, but we were also interacting with them and living the way they lived. We played with the children, ate at the local taco stands, and worked with other volunteers at the community center. Visiting Tecolote was an experience that let me see through the eyes of
another group of people.

After our last day of work was completed, the director of the community center took us to the U.S.-Mexico border at the Pacific Ocean. A wall, reaching as high as 25 feet in places, stretched about 100 feet into the ocean to prevent illegal attempts to enter the U.S. On the wall were the words “Alto a Guardian”—Stop for the Guardian, a United States program to prevent illegal immigration. The letters were made from several hundred skulls, each representing a person killed in an attempt to cross the border. One section of the wall had enough space between the metal bars for separated families to meet on weekends and talk to one another through the bars. One of the three border guards on the U.S. side of the wall informed us that the wall would soon be torn down and replaced with a bigger, stronger one.

The community center plays an essential role in the lives of the children of Tecolote. With no government funding, few resources, and a small volunteer staff, it is a far cry from the average U.S. school. Yet the people who work at the center are so dedicated that they are able to use what they have to give the children opportunities that would otherwise be unreachable. Although our work plays only a small part in the goals of the community center, we left Tecolote knowing that the children are one step closer to becoming stable, independent adults who could live a healthy life without trying to challenge the wall.

Nathan Wozny is a Caltech sophomore, majoring in physics.
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