Finding God in the Bahamian Jungle

Since service trip applications are due this Tuesday, and I am thinking about applying to go on one, this week seemed like a good time to reflect back on my first service trip at Rockhurst.  Freshman year over winter break I got the opportunity to go on a service trip to the Bahamas with a group of students and faculty.  I knew that I wanted to go at the end of winter break, because the idea of not seeing my family at all from January until Easter still rattled my homebody-ness.  I also knew that I wanted to go to an international location, because this would probably be the only time I would get to do it so inexpensively, since the university subsidises a large portion of the cost.  Bahamas was the only international trip available over winter break, so to the Bahamas it was.

I know what you’re thinking.  Bahamas. Beaches. Vacation.  What kind of service would one do in the Bahamas?  I didn’t know either, but I figured it would be like the other trips: building houses, playing with children, things like that.  While there were houses and children involved, I was dead wrong about the purpose of our trip. 

            The first thing I noticed at the  meeting was the powerpoint slide with a picture of a jungle on it.  Sean Grube, the intimidating but loveable discipline man in residence life, announced that the bulk of our service would involve cutting paths through that jungle.  With machetes.  I had signed up to machete through the Bahamian jungle.  The purpose of these paths would be to allow the people on the island to get to the blue holes in the middle of the jungle.  Blue holes look like lakes, but they are really places where the ocean comes up under the island.  They are beautiful and deep, and National Geographic did a special on one that we actually got to swim in.

Turns out the trip had a bit of an environmental justice component to it.  In addition to cutting paths, we also picked up trash one day, as well as painted a community center on the small island of Andros (the most beautiful place in the world, in my opinion).  What was amazing about Andros was that companies were not allowed to build resorts there, so the Island had only small cottages, a lot of jungle, and beautiful, untouched beaches stretching unbroken in both directions.  Standing on the edge of that beach with ocean in front of you, jungle behind you, and stars above you, you got the sense that this was what the world was supposed to look like.  That places like that Atlantis are fun and beautiful in their own way, but the world radiates a natural beauty that you miss when you mess with it too much.