(The following is a personal account of freshman Cora Aitkenhead’s recent trip to Costa Rica as a member of the Builders Beyond Borders service organization.)

By Cora Aitkenhead – Staff Reporter

Builders Beyond Borders (B3) is a service organization that works with students from middle school and high school to perform small community service, as well as annual large service projects in South & Central American countries. This year the organization has been taking highschool students to Costa Rica where we built community center’s for two different communities. 

The organization consists of 5 teams: Odyssey, Amanecer, Equipo Esperanza, Rock-It, and B3 Local (no traveling middle school team). I am a part of the Odyssey team. 

In Tarise, Costa Rica – a community so small the airport had never heard of it – the Odyssey team of 19 students began building a community center that would be used for adult education services. The trip was 8 days long and most importantly, cell phones are prohibited. Out of 19 students, I was the only one from Jonathan Law and the other 18 attend Weston High School and Staples High School. I was nervous that I wouldn’t get to know the team, but the lack of phones made me closer with these kids in one day than I am with most people I’ve known for years. 

Our typical day consisted of a 6:30 a.m. wake up, 7:00 a.m. breakfast, 8:00 a.m. worksite, 12:00 p.m. lunch, 4:30 p.m. leave worksite, followed by some type of community play/downtime/excursion, 7:00 p.m. dinner, and three hours of downtime. The work we did included: moving gravel and hand mixing cement; digging trenches to run electrical wire through; building rebar as the building support structures; carrying/laying cinder blocks; filling cement cracks between blocks; etc. 

Doing labor work and mixing cement for eight hours a day, in the blazing heat, while getting your limbs destroyed by bug bites, isn’t something that is supposed to be fun. But that is why this trip altered my perception of what it truly means to be happy. My happiness had always been derived from having things whether it be security, authority, or receiving items I had no need for. On this trip I had nothing but a team and some shovels, and I can’t think of a time I did have a smile on my face. Parts of me felt guilty that I hadn’t missed anything back at home. But when you are in a beautiful country having the time of your life with your new best friends, how could you possibly miss back home. 

Aside from our eight hour work days, we got to play soccer games with the local kids, we got to go to a beautiful beach where we fed oranges to wild capuchin monkeys, we got to visit a natural pool/waterfall, and even got to see coffee plantations and pineapple farms. Every insecurity or worry I ever had about doing something out of my comfort zone vanished at the thought of, “When will I ever have the chance to do this in Costa Rica again?”

While the experience of building this community center and being immersed in Costa Rican culture was unforgettable, the connections I made beyond language barriers and even just with my team are worth more than anything. There’s a famous quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that reads, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” But if I’ve learned anything from this trip, it’s that it’s not the destination, it’s not the journey, it’s the company. 

Like I said, when it’s written on paper this trip sounds more like a task than a fun time. But I’ve learned that you’ll learn more in one day of poverty and discomfort than you will in a lifetime of riches and power. This trip evokes one of those feelings you can’t understand until you have it, and then even when you have it you can’t quite understand it.