Since I was nine I have been waiting for my sixteenth summer. I had been waiting to go to Israel my entire life, and I thought that it had been promised to me that I would go. However, as any human being knows, life loves to throw curve balls. A week before I was supposed to fly to Israel, the country turned into a war zone. Hundreds of rockets were landing in all parts of Israel every week. As the date of departure approached, the leader of my trip made the decision that it was not safe to travel there. I was heart-broken.
The trip had been organized through my Jewish overnight camp. The director of my camp decided to put together another trip in a matter of three days. At first he told us we would maybe go to Europe or Costa Rico. Not the enlightening trip I had had in mind, but I wasn’t about to complain about vacationing across the Atlantic Ocean. Finally, the director gave us the final verdict; community service with the Hopi Native Americans.
I didn’t know what to think. I knew absolutely nothing of modern-day Native Americans. The idea of Native Americans I had in my mind was feathered headbands and drum circles. I suddenly became anxious.
Approximately twelve hours after figuring out about the trip my group flew out to Colorado. The first half of the trip was camping and rafting. It was physically demanding and challenging, but nothing similar to what we were about to experience with the Native Americans.
The day we finished the river portion of the trip we drove eight hours to the Hopi Reservation. When we got there the family was waiting outside for us. They greeted us and introduced us to their family and showed us where to set up camp. My anxiety began to diminish as I played with the toddlers of our host family and set up for dinner.
The next day we began Community Service. We helped them recover a path that their Snake Dancers would travel during their cultural celebration in the upcoming week. It was an amazing experience helping them rebuild something that was so important to them, but the last night left me with the most vivid memory of the entire trip.
We sat around a bonfire and shared our story of Israel with them. We explained how it is the homeland of our people, and how it’s being attacked by neighboring enemies and by the media. The Native Americans related with us. They shared how their culture is poorly represented by the media, and how ignorance affects them. That’s when we made a pact. We both had learned something. We both realized that a situation doesn’t just have two sides to every story, it has a thousand. That trip was not what I had planned for my sixteenth summer, but the knowledge and experience I took away from it has made me grown and mature more than I ever knew possible.