I am William Matherly, a fourth year at K-State, I have lived in the Midwest my entire life, and I have been a part of the HELM program for three years. During the last three years I visited San Francisco, California and Banning Mills, Georgia for the annual retreat. They were both beautiful and different from where I live in a number of ways. However, Puerto Rico blew them both out of the water. Overall our trip to Puerto Rico was an eye-opening and wonderful experience.
Puerto Rico had beaches, and mountains, and rainforest, and scrublands, and cities. The geographical and biological diversity was stunning. It surprised me that so many different environments coexisted seamlessly in such a small area. Most of the week, whether in transit or visiting a specific location, I felt enveloped by the landscape, urban or rural. It was also interesting to see the melding together of mainland and island influences. The result was a unique, but extremely cool, environment filled with both familiarity and foreignness.
One day our group visited El Yunque Rainforest for a guided hike. I did not think much of it at the time, but our guide, Felix, repeatedly referred to the group as familia or mi familia. I rarely if ever call friends, family, let alone strangers. So, to have a man I had never met before address us as familia was endearing and energizing.
As we worshiped at two churches on Sunday, I noticed both churches included a lot of music, and both had praise bands and small ensembles. Throughout the services I got goosebumps during the songs. I’ve always enjoyed the musical element of church services, and to take part in a service where the congregation sings with such gusto and fervor was a gift.
During our trip we also visited Vieques, a small island to the Southeast of Puerto Rico. Before the trip, I had not heard of Vieques. It was fun to see yet another place with its own unique atmosphere. It had elements of mainland U.S.A., as well as mainland Puerto Rico, and yet it managed to have a distinct cultural feel to it as well. On Vieques, I was shocked to learn about the forced migration of islanders, and not because this is a new practice, but because it happened quite recently. The further blatant disregard for the people of Vieques by bombing along the eastern half of the island was painful to hear about. When we toured the old Spanish fort on Vieques, our tour guide told us of her experience with the U.S. government and it drove home how contemporary the issue is, as she had lived with this reality for her whole life. I was both appalled by the reckless endangerment of U.S. citizens and shocked by the overall lack of awareness by myself and most mainlanders.