I viewed this as a bunch of college kids coming down on spring break
Hey let's go to Guatemala, drink beer and lay in the pool and we
kept telling them this is not a garden spot down here. Then when they came up and said ok the team
leader is Muslim.
Both my wife and I went wow.
How's that going to go off and Catholic community and with CALMS partnering with a Lutheran Church.
Nothing ever turns out the way you expected to.
Initially I was a little apprehensive partly because I'd never never really
worked with a religious organization before and especially since University of Michigan
is the secular you know secular university I wasn't exactly sure how
that would mesh and also because I'm a Muslim and you know it's it's a Lutheran
Missionary Society I wasn't exactly sure how that would work.
We have two objectives, the first is to find the source of contamination in the water and also to assess viability for inputting some kind of filtration system.
We want to see if the water up here is contaminated or if there's something down the line that's contaminating the water.
Part of the reason I went into chemical engineering was because I'm really passionate about energy and environment and things along those lines.
I was 7 years old when 9/11 happened.
And that whole event shaped my whole adolescence and growing up.
So I grew up in a culture of fear surrounding Islam.
But when I went down there it was very cute actually because one of the kids,
We were hiking up to the water source, and one of the kids asked me if I was a nun.
He has never seen a Muslim before. There were a lot of questions about what I was wearing and why I was wearing a scarf.
Just different questions about my religion but what was interesting and what I
really liked was that none of the questions were at all hostile, ever.
It was just curiosity, something you know something that they never encountered.
It was, it was a nice difference, it was a nice difference.
We explained it to Samantha, we talked to her on the phone
emails back and forth and we said, in the morning we do our prayers at
breakfast, we do a devotion in the morning we have a wind down at night
sometimes involves devotion and she said no problem.
Everyone has a different story.
Everyone everyone has their own desires and their own beliefs and understanding
and a lot of times those clashes we don't agree on everything but learning
to work with the people that are very different from you in some ways and very alike in other
ways, I think it makes you a stronger person.
The village fell in love with them. They had a list of questions,
everything was written out. They were speaking Spanish
First day we come up here and go to church. One of the boys took communion in church. The congregation, you could see their jaws drop because gringos were doing something like that.
The kids are amazing, they're focused but they're real and they communicate. I think they do genuinely care
about these people and this village and what they are doing.
Working with Ed and Gayle has been an incredible learning experience.
They are wonderful people. They really want to help. They really want to give some of what they have.
And contribute to the larger success of the communities they are in.
One of the things that I really didn't quite appreciate until later
Was that when you're working with alumni, there is this automatic shared connection.
When we are driving a truck to Chaguitan, we have an UM flag on it.
When they are telling all their stories, there are a lot of stories they tell about the U-M.
And there's the automatic connection that we have two things in common.
The first is that we both want to work and partner with the Chaguitan community and the
second is that were we're all proud Wolverines.
You're never going to be working with people that are exactly like you.
And I would never want to work with people that are exactly like me
The whole reason we travel abroad, the whole reason we work with people
who have different ages and races and religions as us is so we can have a greater understanding
of humans
What humans are and what humans want.
It's not something you can find in a textbook.
You know, every one has a different story.