Here is a fast-paced glimpse into what it was like setting up the basic structure of our PSD!
Music: https://www.bensound.com
Final Reflections
Archik Raje
I’m writing this as I sit back at my home, where I obviously have a high level of comfort, and it helps me to reflect on how unique of an experience the entire thing was. Suchilquitongo is a special place driven by the hardworking, friendly people we met. At the top of this list of people is our Xuchil family of Mine, Petry, Antonio, and Zoraida. Their work on the mesquite project has been admirable, and we are very lucky to have a group that welcomed a group of students from a different country with open arms while also making the project their own as well. As soon as we got there we had no problem integrating and working with them, and I am sure if anybody walked by and watched everybody working together it was a really cool sight to see. But looking back, I really should not be surprised. On top of being some of the friendliest people I have ever met, you can see the dedication they have to keep improving their microbusiness, and they are constantly open to new ideas and innovation. Agriculture is very important to the community, and you can see that with how hard the Xuchil team works (the other innovators we met in the community also showed us this). I am excited to see how far they go, and I am happy that our fantastic team was able to be a part of it. Luckily, even though our trip has come to a close, because of the relationships that were built it comforts me knowing that this is not the end.
Gaby Kackley
Being a part of PUC and Team Mexico was in every way a dream. We’ve been back for a few days and it’s still hard to fully grasp that this project, which has been the center of my life the past 10 months, is over. I find comfort, however, in knowing that the friendships made and impact the project has is only beginning. If you had any part in this project, whether it was donating to our fundraiser or being an understanding friend when I had to bail for “PUC stuff,” then thank you. It’s going to take more than a few days to fully understand what this program meant to me, but within the past 3 weeks it has meant growth, confidence, and a full heart. If you ever have the opportunity to work with a community in a similar capacity, take it.
To Tejiendo Alianzas and the Xuchil team: Your devotion and passion for empowering your community through agriculture and innovation is changing lives. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of that. To the ladies of the team, your strength inspires me, and the girls of Suchil are lucky to have such amazing role models.
To team Mexico: Thank you for encouraging me to be a leader and for believing in me, especially when I didn’t. Not only did I gain 4 amazing & intelligent teammates, but lifelong friends.
Hannah Ilan
To wrap things up, I’ve decided to share my most recent journal entry with you all. Enjoy the inner workings of my brain:
“I’m writing today because I want to remember a feeling. I want to remember the happiness in my heart, the sense of pride and admiration for all that was accomplished, and the sense of determination and inspiration I feel. My trip to Mexico with PUC was inspiring because it taught me so much. It taught me strength, determination, self-sufficiency, and flexibility. It taught me about teamwork, agriculture, immigration, education, innovation, and rural community dynamics. It exposed me to people who don’t care for the way the world works right now because they care about the quality of life of every individual within a system. It taught me to look for the entrepreneurs and innovators wherever I go. It taught me that there’s always more to learn and that hands-on experiences are the most rewarding way to do so. It taught me how to collaborate and how to communicate with others, and it taught me what leaders look like. It taught me what strong, courageous women look like and it exposed me to a realm of work that I hope to be exposed to again and again. It taught me that there are good people in the world who want to do good work and that I want to surround myself with those people. But overall, what this trip taught me the most is that I can be myself and be a respected and accepted member of a team. It taught me that I need to communicate with others in order to receive help and that reflecting on experiences should be a more critical part of my life. I want to write down these feelings of satisfaction and inspiration because I know that times will get tough when school starts again, but I hope that looking back on experiences like these will encourage me to move forward and find my next moment of inspiration.”
Archik, Gaby, Hannah M., Ryan, David, Richard, Sarahi, Petry, Mine, Antonio, and Zoraida- Thank you for bringing new meaning to my life. I am forever grateful.
Hannah Myers
When coming into the community of Suchilquitongo I came in with the primary expectation that we would be constructing a “green-house” type structure (technically known as Polyhouse Solar Dryer, PSD) with local community members. However, my expectations were blown away when this trip and project deepened our preliminary communications with Mine, Petry, Antonio, and Zoraida over Skype to solidified friendships that were developed through motivation and hard work with the project. This kind of collaboration extended to a multitude of groups within the Suchil community-- from sharing engineering designs with MIT D-Lab teams hosted by Tejiando Alianzas, to visiting with Don Plutarco and the students of his school about mesquite pods, to brainstorming pulley ideas with the Xuchil members. Each of these moments have contributed to this being my favorite learning and social experience of college. Seeing the motivation to promote collaborative ideas from each team member and the desire to enhance the importance of local agriculture for individuals and the community was inspiring (as it provides a sustainable economy in rural communities). So yes, we built a PSD with drying racks to greatly increase the drying process of mesquite pods, but we were able to be apart of something greater and share it with the people of Suchil!
Ryan Kutnick
There were a lot of unknowns coming into this trip. How well would we be able to communicate with the Xuchil group? How long would all of the labor take? Will we actually like the mole? It can be a scary thought travelling to a country with little idea of how things will actually go, but when working with a group as dedicated, kind, and welcoming as Xuchil, there is no need to worry. Very quickly we integrated into the community and were working as a well-oiled machine. We learned first hand that while getting a beer and chatting with a stranger can work, actually engaging and participating with someone on a project is the best way to develop a strong relationship. Culture is exchanged and understood at an accelerated pace through creation, which was really amazing to encounter. It was truly an honor to work with the innovative people of Suchilquitongo, and my amazing PUC team that always found ways to surprise me with their intelligence, ethics, and compassion.
David Powell
These five beautiful souls received some, shall we say, fecal matter from other PUC teams about what was perceived to be a small scope of work. Perceptions…
But the reality is that every member of this team, alongside their new Oaxacan brothers and sisters, worked their tails off every day under the hot Oaxacan sun to build with their own hands a set of projects that will transform the mesquite bean drying operation of our lovely hosts.
They have more than quadrupled the bean drying capacity of this operation, and they have done it with great spirit and love that is well represented in the beauty and artwork of the end product. They leave behind a design for a Longhorn Mesquite Bean Elevator and a contractor that understands and loves the design. It will become a reality after they leave here, and it will resolve one more labor intensive burden that the local team has had to bear.
Most importantly, they leave behind a group of people that love them dearly and consider them as family. The students all made the effort in advance of the trip to learn enough Spanish to be able to communicate with the local members of their team, so I found myself as the odd man out that is now inspired to finally learn the language. They deserve to be exceptionally proud of the hard work that they have done with such great spirit and love… as proud as I am of each and every one of them.
Gaby, Archik, Hannah, Ryan, and Hannah… you each deserve to be exceptionally proud of what you have done, and you are each destined for success that cannot be measured in dollars and cents – or pesos. My family has grown by five, and my wife is jealous of me for having had the honor to be a part of this.
Go Team Mesquite! Go Longhorns! And please come back soon and often!
PUC Team Mexico 2019 in a Nutshell
To conclude our blog posts we would like to share with you all one second a day (sometimes more) starting from our first out-of-class team meeting in September and ending on our last day in Oaxaca in June. It may not include every day we worked together, but you get the gist- we've been together a lot <3
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