Students venture to Trinidad

By Angela Campbell

Brasso Seco is a little rainforest community nestled in the northern mountains of Trinidad. Little did I know that going to this small town of 300 people for two weeks would teach me more about myself than spending $30,000 a year at a university.

I accompanied biology professor Dr. Bill Eisinger, his daughter Elizabeth from Gonzaga University, and another Santa Clara student, Juanita Abundiz. I was pleasantly surprised when we were not only greeted by our host family, the Pachecos, but Professor Leslie Gray and another Santa Clara student Paulina Flint whom had already been there for a week and a half.

Santa Clara has been involved with the community in Brasso Seco since 1998 when a group of students went down not only to collect information about the fauna and flora in the rainforest, but to interview people in the community about ethnomedicinal treatments for various health problems that would soon be lost due to lack of written records.

In the summer of 2000, five computers were donated to the village of Brasso Seco, and many in the community became interested in wide-spread computer literacy for the entire town. This past summer, it was our job to help integrate the computers into their educational system. By developing lesson plans to go with a rainforest ecology computer program, we worked with the teachers to develop a way to incorporate the computers in the classroom.

I was well prepared for that part of the Trinidad experience. I had spent weeks and months working on the lesson plans that I was responsible for. But it was unbelievable to me how unprepared I was to face previously ignored warnings of how different every day living would be.

Before I left for Trinidad I was briefed on what to expect: the humid weather, the mosquitoes, the chiggers, the constant rain. But I was set with my $10 mosquito net, insect repellent, and light long-sleeved shirts and pants. That was enough. Who wouldn't be prepared with that kind of defense?

One life-long lesson I learned the first night spent in Brasso Seco: there is no price too large for a good mosquito net. Juanita and I were roommates and we quickly found out that the dinky nets we had bought barely even covered the twin mattress. We developed a pre-sleeping ritual of a meticulous sweep of our beds and mosquito nets. And since the power went off almost every time it rained, many of these checks were performed by the aid of our trusty flashlight.

There were many times when we benefitted from these checks. We were both saved many times from the countless mosquitoes that had already found their way into our nets, waiting for sleep to come upon us before they attacked. Once I was saved from the wrath of a one-inch long black beetle, and for that I am eternally grateful. Juanita always had the luck of finding what we deemed to be bat droppings on her sheets. A thorough brushing with the hand took care of that.

And where there are bat droppings, there are sure to be bats. In our kitchen area in the house we stayed at were four other guests. They would sleep hanging upside down during the day and leave to hunt at night.

Initially I found them to be cute little critters. Occasionally when someone would go into the kitchen to wash a plate, the bats would be disturbed and fly around the house, but I could deal with that.

However, one night when we came back from a delicious dinner at the Pachecos, we were surprised to see that the bats had not left as usual to go hunt. Instead they were flying around the house circling low in all of the rooms. I found myself ducking through doorways for fear that one of the bats would smash right into me. From this I formulated life-long lesson number two: mosquito nets not only fail to protect against mosquitoes, but they also fail to protect against bats.

After a sleepless night of listening to the bats fly in and out of our room, listening to their flapping wings as they circled above in the blackness, and listening to their squeaks as they flew beneath the beds, I became conscious of the morning only when I heard screams from the other room followed by frantic stomping on the wooden floor.

I maneuvered around my mosquito net as to avoid getting tangled and I ran into Paulina's room. She was still frantic as she eventually verbalized what had happened: "There's a bat in my mosquito net!" Sure enough, there it was, hanging ever-so calmly from the top of her net.

Does it seem strange that the only life-long lessons I learned in Trinidad were about mosquito nets? Seems like time well-spent to me. But all joking aside, my time in Brasso Seco with the community and the children was the best experience of my life.

I hope to return next summer for at least a month. Hopefully if everything goes as planned, many other departments at Santa Clara will be involved with the community of Brasso Seco. And maybe I'll be able to add a few more insights to life on my life-long lessons list.