The
Berkeley Kumeyaay volunteers: (back row, from left) Aliah
Abdo, Angelina Gonzales, Ryan Rideau, Arrione Carter, Matt
Singer,
Lori Garrett, Nora Sandoval, (front row) Louise Hon, Nazish
Ekram, Sylvia Johnson, Lisa Garrett, Van Truong and Frieda
Kreth.
CAMPO
RESERVATION, CALIFORNIA — Over
the holidays, while most of their classmates relaxed with
friends and family, 13 UC Berkeley
students were playing a game called peon and dancing to bird
songs with the Kumeyaay Native American community.
The
Berkeley group traveled to the Campo Indian Reservation in
San Diego County, where they volunteered their time and
experience for a week as part of Alternative
Breaks,
a service/learning program operated through the Cal Corps
Public Service Center at UC Berkeley. With Alternative Breaks,
teams
of students spend their holidays — even some weekends — in
a different community, performing services focused on a
particular social issue and learning about the challenges
faced by the
community. For winter break 2002/2003, in addition to the "Higher
Education, Health and Culture in the Kumeyaay Reservation" project,
two other student teams built houses for the migrant farm
worker community in California's Stanislaus County and
assisted San
Francisco sex workers with health issues.
Several of the Kumeyaay Alternative Breaks volunteers agreed
to write about their experiences on the Campo reservation
for Berkeley's
NewsCenter. The writers are Van Truong, the Winter Alternate
Breaks Program's leader and a sophomore double-majoring
in business and
sociology; Sylvia Johnson, a former Campo resident and
a sophomore focusing on Native American Studies; Matt
Singer,
Alternative Breaks'
student director and a fourth-year pre-med student; Louise
Hon, a senior majoring in sociology; and Frieda Kreth,
a junior history
major.
Read
their first dispatch: Going
home to the Rez, piling into two bedrooms, Sitting Bull
vs. Custer, and learning the Bird Songs |
