this is just a draft that i haven't completely finished yet. Just wanted to know what you thought and whether it was on topic or not...
Prompt: Choose an issue of importance to you-the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope-and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.
Encased in the mountains and volcanoes of Guatemala is world unlike our own. A culture that differs tremendously than the one we live in. Here, people live a life displaying there is more to life than money and fancy things and they do not take anything for granted. Neighbors help neighbors, no questions asked and no strings attached. Children happily join their parents at work in the field. People live by disparate rules down in Guatemala; you just have to look carefully to see it. Over the summer, I went to Guatemala with a group from Habitat for Humanity and witnessed this completely different world and lifestyle they live.
Once I stepped off the plane, I entered an alternate universe. I towered above the brightly dressed woman standing with her children. Driving to our hotel, I looked out the window to my left. A man, a woman with a baby on her back and a child in-between the two rode on a single motorcycle. On the other side of the car lay a magnificent landscape of mountains covered with fields of corn and other crops. Hidden in the acres of corn fields, a tin house roof peeks out. Inside the house, furniture and one bed sit upon dirt floors. The tin plank walls held together by wiring and a pole in the four corners help to make a foundation. Our habitat family lived in a house just like this one. A mother, a father and a little 3 year old girl living inside a one bedroom house along with family relatives. This family welcomed us with a grateful heart and thank you's that trump any material gift.
Awaiting us every day at our worksite, was the house owners wife smiling and already working. When something needed to be done, she appeared immediately to complete the task. Throughout the course of the day the neighbors would come help us move concrete bricks, make rebar and anything else that was required. Neighborhood children gathered around and helped us as well. Three year olds would move half a concrete brick and try to make rebar. If that was not strange enough older kids would help mix the cement and water and stones. During the entire time, the laughing and talking between the owner's wife and her neighbors created an atmosphere that made me wonder how they can be so carefree and yet live they way they do. Each day when I left the site, it made me think of how I hardly know my neighbors and how they almost certainly would not give up their day to help my family out. How would my world change if people acted on kindness rather than money?
The melting pot used to be filled with neighbors helping one another out and people paying it forward but something happened along the way that halted that. A family moves into a neighborhood or a building a never meets a neighbor. People have forgotten the golden rule, as did I. However, when I experienced Guatemala this summer, I was reminded of the simplest yet easiest thing to forget. I had forgotten how to be a neighbor and I do not mean just to the person living beside me, I mean to everyone. Encountering people who live on a penny's worth and can be so giving can remind a person of things we learned as a child. If people visited a third world country like Guatemala and actually spent time with the natives rather than being a tourist, they would be able to understand. A simple smile to someone can create the a chain of random acts of kindness.
Thank you!!
A culture that differs tremendously from the one we live in.
A family moves into a neighborhood or a building and never meets a neighbor.
I enjoyed reading this, and not only was it on topic, but you seem to have covered most of what was suggested. Good writing!
I worked on a house with Habitat for Humanity in the late 70s, and got to work with Jimmy Carter and his daughter Amy, that was a great experience!
Neva
Oh now I get it! Throughout the essay, I was thinking, Wow, this is a great story, but it does not seem to have much to do with "an issue of importance." However, at the end I learned that the issue is the lack of camaraderie, the lack of neighborliness. It is important for you to establish this as the issue near the beginning of the essay. Get rid of the phrase "Over the summer" in the last sentence of the first paragraph, and write something like:
I went to Guatemala with a group from Habitat for Humanity and, in this world that is completely different from the one in which we live, I learned about an issue of crucial significance to my generation: kindness.
Usually, an "issue" refers to a concern or controversy, such as the economy or global warming. You make a unique contribution by writing about kindness, which is also an important issue.
