Becca Hamilton’s writing featured in The Lincoln County News comes from a quill dipped in a palette of worldly experience.
The Whitefield native has traveled to Chile, Argentina and South Africa and spent two years living in the Bahamas. She has written extensively about her experiences for The Lincoln County News.
Next up, Hamilton plans to attend the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20 in Washington D.C. In March she plans to help her aunt raise sled dogs at a sledding camp in Newry before starting a journey down the Appalachian Trail in April.
In the fall, Hamilton, a home schooled student, plans to begin her studies at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.
She is currently planning to host a slide show in Damariscotta to illustrate her recent trip to Guatemala last fall. On the top of her list of experiences, Hamilton speaks highly of her time in the Central American country teaching English. She also partnered at the time with a group called Safe Passage in the Guatemalan village of San Pedro.
Hamilton, 18, said she felt most connected to the people in the rural villages where she worked as a volunteer. Having traveled to other countries with her family, she gained experience communicating and working with people whose backgrounds were very different from her own.
Hamilton traveled by cattle truck to remote mountain villages, where she honed her Spanish language skills and had the time to get to know the very poor and welcoming people who lived there. Her volunteer work in teaching and providing support in the Safe Passage extracurricular activity program for school children gave Hamilton an education on many levels.
Students in the Safe Passage program, not old enough to work in the dumps, were taking care of other younger children. Hamilton said the program, “let them have the time to be kids.”
She said the children of San Pedro were a little less reserved and disciplined than children in Maine, guessing that much of this had to do with the conditions in which they lived. Even still, the children Hamilton met were very affectionate.
She wrote of one of the children, named Melvin, “He had crawled into my heart and I knew that he would be there for a long time. I hugged him close and breathed in his rancid, unwashed smell. I felt his little warm arms wrapped around my neck. “Adios” I called as I climbed into the back of the truck. I stood peering out through the slats. Melvin stood on the embankment beside the road. He was waving furiously and his smile was huge. I waved back and smiled through my tears. Seeing him standing there waving his little dirty hand as I drove away broke my heart and a piece of it stayed there with him in the remote mountain village high on the volcano.”
Hamilton understood that compassion and empathy may end up in heartbreak, but the value of such an experience extends beyond country borders.
“At their core, they’re all still lovable little kids,” she said, adding that, in this respect, the children of San Pedro were like children everywhere.
She said in order for a person to effectively volunteer for such an experience it is important to have humility, respect and patience.
“Things could go not exactly the way you want, but all the little bad things can add up to one great experience in the end,” she said.
The people she met in Guatemala were kind and hospitable. People in the village waved and called out to her by name. She said people talked slowly in Spanish so that she could understand.
“People were very welcoming. They made me feel (as though I was) a part of their family,” she said, adding, “It’s so much fun to live in a different environment.”
