Jasper woman returns from 'hero holiday'

What did you do with your summer holiday? You probably didn’t do something as taxing as building a house in a slum in Mexico, but that’s exactly what one young Jasper woman has just done. Eighteen-year-old Eman Ismael has recently returned from Vincente Guerrero, Mexico where she spent over a week this August helping a Mexican family move from a dilapidated shack into a basic but sound house.

“It was amazing. I was just so excited to go and it absolutely lived up to what I wanted. So great,” said Ismael, in an interview.

Ismael said the trip, organized through the Absolute Leadership Development’s Hero Holiday program was wonderful but not as transitory as these trips can be made out to be. She’s not talking with a Mexican accent. She isn’t craving Mexican food all of the time and she doesn’t hate western culture or Jasper or the way that we live here now. Instead, she learned some very basic lessons that she really already knew: helping people is important and so are friends and so is having a good time.

The house the Hero Holiday group (about 25 people) built was a one story structure sized about 20 x 22 feet with several rooms and six beds, along with some fairly basic furniture. The kitchen has a stove, but there’s no running water on the property, but Ismael and the rest of the group did help dig a large hole in the house’s backyard for an outhouse. Although there were no formal plans in the beginning to build a fence, the group decided that the house needed one, so they built it. All in all, the house is fairly simple, but a step up from the dirt and corrugated metal shack that housed the many members of the family Ismael was helping.

“When it was all done, everyone was just crying. The mother, she came up to us and said ‘God bless you.’ She just couldn’t believe it,” said Ismael.

The family that received the help is made up of a single mother with six children, although Ismael expects that numerous aunts and cousins will also be staying at the home. A lot of the extended members of the family didn’t seem to have actual homes either, so it’s likely they’ll be staying in the house now too.

“Family is just so important to them, I don’t think they could turn them away,” said Ismael.

At night, the Hero Holiday group slept in a village adjacent to the one where they were building, inside a larger building with running water and hot showers. While Ismael got experience helping others during her trip, she was also able to do touristy things like hitting the beach, sight seeing and just generally exploring the countryside.

“It was sorta the best of both worlds,” said Ismael. “We didn’t really have to experience the poverty ourselves, but we were able to help people in it. It made it less of a culture shock for a lot of people.”

Ismael said the main thing that really stuck with her about the kids she was helping in Mexico (and one of the most striking things about Mexico full-stop) has how happy they were. They milled about the construction site constantly, curious about what was going on. They wanted piggy-backs and hugs all of the time. They always wanted to help with the hammering and the cutting of wood. Smiles seemed to be permanently plastered onto their faces.

“The commercials you see, sometimes I think they’re playing on your guilt,” said Ismael of those television ads that try to convince people to send money to sick and starving families overseas. “The people huddled in the corner, looking all sad, we didn’t see that.”

Ismael said the impact of the trip is still sinking in. The first night she got back, she didn’t really know what to do. She stayed in, monkeyed around on her computer, did the Facebook thing and generally felt a little out of sorts. It’s not that she’d become completely acclimatized to Mexico and lost touch with Jasper. 

“I just wanted to go back. I really missed it. I wanted to stay,” said Ismael.

In an interview, she mentions the smiles on the children’s faces numerous times. You get the feeling that she sincerely just wants to help people. The trip wasn’t really about anything more than helping a family down in Mexico.

Still, Ismael said she did get some valuable life lessons for herself out of the trip.

“You think ‘I just changed someone’s life’ and that just feels really good,” said Ismael. “It’s sorta unexplainable. It’s not something to get cocky about, or big-headed, but it still feels really good.”

Ismael said seeing the poverty around Vincente Guerrero was a shock compared to life in Jasper and Edmonton, but it did not affect her as much as others. Ismael has been to Kenya and Egypt several times in her life. It was the other people in the group who seemed more blown away by it.

Some of those people came from harder backgrounds than Ismael. She wouldn’t provide details, but she’d heard rumours of substance abuse and a lack of proper priorities in life. The trip helped them to see what was really worthwhile and where they could better put their efforts.

“Those people got a lot out if it, I think,” said Ismael.

That the friends that she made on the trip to Mexico are ones that she expects she’ll keep for her entire life, Ismael said.

“You just get there, and you know right off the bat that everyone there has a good heart,” she said. “So you sorta skip a step and go right to being really good friends.”

Ismael said she’d love to do a trip like this again in the future. She wants to keep helping people and to keep traveling to new places. For now though, it’s back to the University of Alberta for her phys. ed. courses. Ismael said she’ll keep searching, though, for more opportunities to touch people’s lives.