St. Gerard’s makes connections on return to Cuba

The St. Gerard’s outreach group poses for a photo with two women who prepared their meals during the trip to Cuba.

Thomas Cahill, 18, visited Cuba for the first time last month as part of a St. Gerard Majella outreach group. Micaela Duffy, 19, was also with the group, going on the service trip for the second time; she was a member of the group that traveled to the island last year. Both Cahill and Duffy said that the most significant moment of this year’s trip was one that occurred near the end of their week-long stay.

The group led a large number of children in Kids Camp-like activities in Manzanillo, Cuba, on the same day that the community was holding a family festival for local people of all ages. The young people from St. Gerard’s played games and sports with the children.

“We were doing this alongside a Cuban youth group,” Duffy said.

Someone put some music on and a dance competition began. “We had never even thought to do that,” she said. “Everyone was dancing for an hour to an hour and a half. That was my favorite moment of the entire trip. It was electric. Everyone had a smiling face. They were teaching us these dances. It was just crazy. It was so much fun.”

“Our entire group was able to connect with them,” Cahill said. “We were just talking to these kids. Everyone was fully engaged. It was just really amazing what was happening that day.”

Adult advisors Paul Driscoll, Rob Hawley, Sigourney Considine, and Kelsie Aufiero along with 16 high school and college students flew to Miami and later to Holguin Airport in eastern Cuba on July 21. Father Emilio, a priest with whom they worked last year and who traveled to Canton this year, met the group again. All of the Canton students have studied Spanish. “They struggle for a couple of days and then they pick it up,” Driscoll said.

None of the students are allowed to take their phone with them. “We’re on as a group,” Driscoll said.

They spent some of the days with the whole group and broke into groups of two or three on other days. They held Kids Camp in three locations — Manzanillo, Limones, and Cayo Espino — and also visited with elderly citizens, most of whom spend their days inside.

“The heat to me was much more difficult this year,” Driscoll said. “The conditions are just challenging, particularly for the elderly. They don’t leave their homes.”

In spite of the heat, and the simple housing situation, which included bucket showers for the Americans, the group hiked miles on foot and rode in trucks to reach the same areas where Kids Camp was established last year.

Duffy studies psychology and English at Boston College. “I definitely wanted to go back,” she said, “because of the relationships and connections we made last year.”

She and the others who were returning answered the questions that the first-time volunteers had about Cuba, but did not go into too much detail about what they could expect. “We kind of wanted to take a step back,” Duffy said. “We wanted it to be a learning and discovery experience for them.”

Duffy found that since relationships had already been established, some of the group’s focus changed to their work. “Everything was done to our best ability,” she said.

Cahill, a recent Canton High School graduate who plans to study mechanical engineering and physics at Northeastern University in the fall, said that the experience he and others had through their work at Kids Camp in Canton was very helpful. “It was an amazing experience,” he said. “We were able to bring all the skills and toys to Cuba. Most of the kids had never seen a balloon, thrown a frisbee, or played jump rope.”

He went on to say that a number of St. Gerard’s outreach programs center around disaster relief, but not the trip to Cuba. “We didn’t go to fix anything,” he said. “We went to morally connect with them. We’re here for them and with them. We’re all part of the same community.”

Duffy explained that the local Cuban children had no experience with the idea of attending a camp, so the group did not use the name Kids Camp. Instead, they told the children that they were going to play sports, like fútbol, the Spanish word for soccer. The youth group took 225 Kids Camp t-shirts to Cuba and distributed them to children at the three areas where they held the camps.

They also took 600 balloons, 10 basketballs, 25 whiffle bats and 50 whiffle balls, 110 frisbees, 25 footballs, 25 soccer balls, and 13 bags of donated equipment for games of street hockey. They played UNO with specially coated cards that wouldn’t melt in the heat. “The amount of donations we got this year was overwhelming,” Duffy said.

Driscoll was proud of the way that the youth from St. Gerard’s worked to break down barriers with the young people of eastern Cuba. “It was just awesome,” he said. “Kids Camp in Cuba is the goal. Mending fences and giving hope. That’s the theme.”

The other students who traveled to Cuba from July 21-28 are Jen Dever, Kelly Dever, Michael Yong, Tommy Delello, Nikki Gefteas, Genna Floyd, Matt Floyd, Kate Devine, Andrea McNeil, Molly Colburn, Devyn McGrann, Lexy Johnson, Hannah Lewis, and Trevor Martin.

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on Aug 24 2018. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.