Amanda Nichols's Blog
Dear United Way, ASB Detroit 2009, Team Magic, and all of the participants:
You have changed me.
I said this two years ago when I returned from a dismal flight back into Pittsburgh from ASB 07, and I will say it again: You have showed me once more what a small group of people can do, what beauty there lies in the ruin.
And you have left me forever changed.
But something this time feels different. Maybe I was too young then. Maybe the reality of graduating in less that two semesters, job hunting, and choosing the right graduate school was not as near as it is for me now; but regardless of what it is, it is with me full throttle tonight.
You have, United Way, made me question how I want to spend my life for the second time. You have me now looking into Americorps, internships in nonprofit, and volunteer opportunities in the Detroit area for this upcoming summer. I have always wanted to write. I wrote books when I was eight, poems when I was twelve. "Deciding" on a major was never an issue for me; I wanted to write, and that's what I would do. And then I embarked on my journey to Lake Charles, Louisiana in March of 2007 and it changed my outlook on life. I returned back to my university and became a social work major for about thirty six hours. But it didn't take me long to decide against it; I was too soft to perform in a field like that; volunteering was something I could do on the side like I always had.
And then I came to Detroit.
On my index card that first night I wrote my three impressions of Metro Detroit: cars, poverty, and wasteland. I was uneducated about the city and a first timer in the entire Michigan area, and though I was embarrassed of my three words on the card, they were the three honest impressions that I had. I knew for the purpose of the exercise my views would change somewhat by the end of day seven, but I had no idea I would be where I am tonight. To tell my story of my week in Detroit now is a feat I don't think I can climb. As I sat in my seat in the airplane departing from Michigan and as I sit here in my dorm room in Pennsylvania tonight, I feel a strange and surreal vertigo that makes me question if this is an ending or a beginning for me, or if that sense of time in our lives matters either way.
What is hitting me now is how crucial the Alternative Spring Break program is for the metro Detroit area. Although the ASB programs are lumped collectively together as a month long endeavor that brings college-aged students from across the country to create real change in a community, Detroit, I realized midweek, was very, very different.
This city has been struck by no hurricane, damaged by no winds or inundated by no flood waters in a humid season that threatens yearly. The city of Detroit is plagued every single day by the winds of unemployment, wounded by the effects of urban sprawl and illiteracy, soaked through to the bone with a cold feeling of tiredness and poverty. There are no seasons for this kind of disaster. There are no government-induced groups of volunteers flooding the city limits to provide shelter and food and clean clothes to those in need. The people of Detroit carry on quietly, tirelessly, working twelve hour days at jobs they may not have tomorrow. They hold some of the highest unemployment rates in the country and are plagued most with child illiteracy and appalling high school drop-out numbers, and they need our help.
The kind of disaster that is happening to them is the disaster of humankind, of the failing economy, of the automobile industry's closing doors. It collects and it pools, it lingers, lies stagnant in the streets and blows rancid through the neighborhoods. And while those groups in the Gulf Coast and Indiana are needed dearly, the city and the people of Detroit cannot be forgotten.
Together, ASB Detroit unveiled visible changes to a community. Because of us, Franklin and Wright Settlements now has an up-and-running computer lab and library for the neighborhood kids and for adults who need to create resumes and look for jobs. Lighthouse Path now has painted apartments ready for new women to move in and start new lives. Because of us, two men, Chris and Jason, will now be able to leave their homes on wooden ramps and smell spring. We worked tirelessly and enthusiastically and changed people's lives, and together, we can bring that city back.
And how scary it is to think that I almost didn't come.
All of my friends were embarking on a spring training trip to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to row and practice for upcoming regattas. I had the option to go and spend the week with my closest friends, boyfriend, and teammates. I was tempted and playfully teased every day by them, and I almost stayed. But there was something that nudged me to embark on another adventure of the unknown. And just as Lauren Hooghuis chose to stay with sixty strangers when a friend of hers passed away that first night in Detroit, I chose blindly, too, to spend the week with you.
It has been an experience like no other. I asked this in my last blog after ASB 07 and I will ask it again: How do you sum up the greatest experience of your life? How do I respond when professors, friends, and relatives ask how my trip to Detroit went? Sure, I can tell them I stayed at the University of Michigan at Dearborn, toured the city, visited museums, met new people, and created a library and literacy lab for the community. But how can I ever explain the middle school dance party we had, the late nights in the UC, the cartwheels and laps around the track I did with friends? How can I give Jeannette's love and passion for the city of Detroit justice, describe the beautiful buildings, the time I almost got trapped on the People Mover?
How can I explain that I didn't just meet new friends, I bonded with people from places I have never visited with different backgrounds and lifestyles that yet all seemed so similar to me? Someone tell me how I will ever explain Katherine Haddad? How can I do that? I am overwhelmed when asked that question: How was your time in Detroit, because they will never understand Katherine's humor or Ashim's dance moves or Amal's kindness. They will never understand Muhi and Jason, or Dave and Sineal, or those kids' faces at Franklin and Wright when we unveiled their new computer lab. And I have to ask myself this: How could I have felt so home with these people even though I was five hundred miles away from it?
And that is what amazes me the most about these trips - you guys - the people I met, the team I was blessed with. Seven days ago I thought I was coming down to southeastern Michigan because I didn't think there were enough people who cared about volunteering in the area, and as I leave seven days later I have to thank every one of you for disproving that completely distorted image I carried with me. It is a beautiful thing to have been changed like I have, to now see the city of Detroit in a completely new light, and I have you all to thank for that. Now, when I think of the city, when I think of Michigan, I'll see Jeanette pointing and explaining buildings or theaters along the city streets after they have already passed, speaking a mile a minute enthusiastically and passionately about the city she taught me to love. I'll see Dave and Sineal working with their whole hearts at Franklin and Wright to give the people of that poor community a place to come together. I'll see Jon and Ursuala and Kira, and I'll see you kids, united in a way I did not think was possible.
And as I sit here on my dorm room bed on a rainy Pennsylvania night, I cannot help but to be both grateful and utterly and terribly sad. When the plane lifted into the skies of Michigan yesterday afternoon, I realized how scared I was to go back to the life I lived just one week before. I didn't know how I was going to return to my best friends, my own family after a week like the one we just had. It is times like those when the quickness of flying is unfair. In only one hour, I had gone from a cold and rainy Michigan as an Alternative Spring Breaker with a Katherine Haddad always at my side, to a seventy-five degree Washington D.C., alone. I was dressed in pants, warm shoes, hoodie, carrying in my hand a winter coat. The transition was visible, short, and cruel, and I was vaulted all-too quickly into a world where I didn't have to wear a lanyard and a nametag, where I was not surrounded by sixty incredible, motivating young people I had grown to love.
"I wish we could go to the movies," Katherine had said Thursday night. "I wish you could stay. We could do normal stuff together." I thought of us then on my ride back to my car in a silent taxi, what additional jokes we would share, what we would do when we were bored on Saturday nights. It is both a beautiful and unsympathetic glimpse ASB gives its participants: a look into a life and friendships in another place they had before been unaware of.
And when the taxi dropped me off and I had paid my fare, I climbed into my car and spent my trip north mulling over the week, reflecting on all I had learned, missing all that I had left behind. And out there, right now, I knew that there were college students flying into airports or driving into cities that would carry them into another ASB. Maybe they are scared, maybe they are nervous. It is bittersweet to think to know that while our experience has ended, another is just beginning. In another state, in another world from Detroit, there are rows of Nalgene bottles aligned on tables, fresh sweatshirts in boxes that - in one week - will, too, be painted and dirty and loved. So here's to them, here's to us, for living united, for changing the world.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
When we reached the falls behind U of M Dearborn, we took our share of pictures and each claimed a spot on the rocks. The balmy sixty-five degree Michigan air was a pleasant gift after a week of bitter cold, and the chance to rest during that late afternoon on Friday was an incredible feeling. I settled on a spot near the water and soon drifted into sleep. During the greatest and most satisfying nap I think I have ever taken, I dreamt of a group of nameless, faceless people that somehow fulfilled me, made me happy, made me smile and feel like home. And when I awoke on the warm rocks beside the rushing creek, they were there, all of you, gathered on the rocks alone or in groups, dozing or sitting in a comfortable silence with one another. And it may have been the greatest feeling of the week - at least for me - to just see everyone together nearing the end of a phenomenal experience, united in more ways that we could even begin to understand.
And I will hold that moment always, just as I will hold you all and that week we shared in southeastern Michigan. But for right now, I have to let you go, Detroit. I have a life to get back into, friends and family that need me to be the person that they hugged goodbye eight days ago. I have Anthropology to read and a Climate midterm to study for and an internship to find for this summer, and so I will place you carefully aside and strive to avert my eyes from the Motor City. It is unfair and it will be difficult, but I know all too well there is nothing I can do. And let me remind you again that you have changed me. You have reminded me that lasting friendships can come from the most serendipitous occasions, that young people can evoke long-term change. You have shown me a clearer view of what I want this life of mine to be. I have primer on my arm and black paint in my hair, fruit leather wrappings scattered all over my bed and a black hoodie on I do not have the heart yet to remove. I am tired and feeling like I am missing something, homesick for a place I didn't know could feel like home, but it is time now to move on.
And so I will ask again what I asked two years ago: How do you sum up the greatest experience of your life? I don't think you can. How do you return to reality after a week like the one we just had? You just do. You take the free t-shirts and the fruit leathers, the stubborn paint stains and the sore limbs with you. You take the memories and the laughs, the inside jokes and the pinky promises to send packages and to call and to visit and you take them with you. It's all you can do. You continue to do the work we all came together to do in the first place last Saturday: live united. Thank you United Way, ASB Detroit 2009, Team Magic, and all the participants. You have changed me.
You have changed me.
I said this two years ago when I returned from a dismal flight back into Pittsburgh from ASB 07, and I will say it again: You have showed me once more what a small group of people can do, what beauty there lies in the ruin.
And you have left me forever changed.
But something this time feels different. Maybe I was too young then. Maybe the reality of graduating in less that two semesters, job hunting, and choosing the right graduate school was not as near as it is for me now; but regardless of what it is, it is with me full throttle tonight.
You have, United Way, made me question how I want to spend my life for the second time. You have me now looking into Americorps, internships in nonprofit, and volunteer opportunities in the Detroit area for this upcoming summer. I have always wanted to write. I wrote books when I was eight, poems when I was twelve. "Deciding" on a major was never an issue for me; I wanted to write, and that's what I would do. And then I embarked on my journey to Lake Charles, Louisiana in March of 2007 and it changed my outlook on life. I returned back to my university and became a social work major for about thirty six hours. But it didn't take me long to decide against it; I was too soft to perform in a field like that; volunteering was something I could do on the side like I always had.
And then I came to Detroit.
On my index card that first night I wrote my three impressions of Metro Detroit: cars, poverty, and wasteland. I was uneducated about the city and a first timer in the entire Michigan area, and though I was embarrassed of my three words on the card, they were the three honest impressions that I had. I knew for the purpose of the exercise my views would change somewhat by the end of day seven, but I had no idea I would be where I am tonight. To tell my story of my week in Detroit now is a feat I don't think I can climb. As I sat in my seat in the airplane departing from Michigan and as I sit here in my dorm room in Pennsylvania tonight, I feel a strange and surreal vertigo that makes me question if this is an ending or a beginning for me, or if that sense of time in our lives matters either way.
What is hitting me now is how crucial the Alternative Spring Break program is for the metro Detroit area. Although the ASB programs are lumped collectively together as a month long endeavor that brings college-aged students from across the country to create real change in a community, Detroit, I realized midweek, was very, very different.
This city has been struck by no hurricane, damaged by no winds or inundated by no flood waters in a humid season that threatens yearly. The city of Detroit is plagued every single day by the winds of unemployment, wounded by the effects of urban sprawl and illiteracy, soaked through to the bone with a cold feeling of tiredness and poverty. There are no seasons for this kind of disaster. There are no government-induced groups of volunteers flooding the city limits to provide shelter and food and clean clothes to those in need. The people of Detroit carry on quietly, tirelessly, working twelve hour days at jobs they may not have tomorrow. They hold some of the highest unemployment rates in the country and are plagued most with child illiteracy and appalling high school drop-out numbers, and they need our help.
The kind of disaster that is happening to them is the disaster of humankind, of the failing economy, of the automobile industry's closing doors. It collects and it pools, it lingers, lies stagnant in the streets and blows rancid through the neighborhoods. And while those groups in the Gulf Coast and Indiana are needed dearly, the city and the people of Detroit cannot be forgotten.
Together, ASB Detroit unveiled visible changes to a community. Because of us, Franklin and Wright Settlements now has an up-and-running computer lab and library for the neighborhood kids and for adults who need to create resumes and look for jobs. Lighthouse Path now has painted apartments ready for new women to move in and start new lives. Because of us, two men, Chris and Jason, will now be able to leave their homes on wooden ramps and smell spring. We worked tirelessly and enthusiastically and changed people's lives, and together, we can bring that city back.
And how scary it is to think that I almost didn't come.
All of my friends were embarking on a spring training trip to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to row and practice for upcoming regattas. I had the option to go and spend the week with my closest friends, boyfriend, and teammates. I was tempted and playfully teased every day by them, and I almost stayed. But there was something that nudged me to embark on another adventure of the unknown. And just as Lauren Hooghuis chose to stay with sixty strangers when a friend of hers passed away that first night in Detroit, I chose blindly, too, to spend the week with you.
It has been an experience like no other. I asked this in my last blog after ASB 07 and I will ask it again: How do you sum up the greatest experience of your life? How do I respond when professors, friends, and relatives ask how my trip to Detroit went? Sure, I can tell them I stayed at the University of Michigan at Dearborn, toured the city, visited museums, met new people, and created a library and literacy lab for the community. But how can I ever explain the middle school dance party we had, the late nights in the UC, the cartwheels and laps around the track I did with friends? How can I give Jeannette's love and passion for the city of Detroit justice, describe the beautiful buildings, the time I almost got trapped on the People Mover?
How can I explain that I didn't just meet new friends, I bonded with people from places I have never visited with different backgrounds and lifestyles that yet all seemed so similar to me? Someone tell me how I will ever explain Katherine Haddad? How can I do that? I am overwhelmed when asked that question: How was your time in Detroit, because they will never understand Katherine's humor or Ashim's dance moves or Amal's kindness. They will never understand Muhi and Jason, or Dave and Sineal, or those kids' faces at Franklin and Wright when we unveiled their new computer lab. And I have to ask myself this: How could I have felt so home with these people even though I was five hundred miles away from it?
And that is what amazes me the most about these trips - you guys - the people I met, the team I was blessed with. Seven days ago I thought I was coming down to southeastern Michigan because I didn't think there were enough people who cared about volunteering in the area, and as I leave seven days later I have to thank every one of you for disproving that completely distorted image I carried with me. It is a beautiful thing to have been changed like I have, to now see the city of Detroit in a completely new light, and I have you all to thank for that. Now, when I think of the city, when I think of Michigan, I'll see Jeanette pointing and explaining buildings or theaters along the city streets after they have already passed, speaking a mile a minute enthusiastically and passionately about the city she taught me to love. I'll see Dave and Sineal working with their whole hearts at Franklin and Wright to give the people of that poor community a place to come together. I'll see Jon and Ursuala and Kira, and I'll see you kids, united in a way I did not think was possible.
And as I sit here on my dorm room bed on a rainy Pennsylvania night, I cannot help but to be both grateful and utterly and terribly sad. When the plane lifted into the skies of Michigan yesterday afternoon, I realized how scared I was to go back to the life I lived just one week before. I didn't know how I was going to return to my best friends, my own family after a week like the one we just had. It is times like those when the quickness of flying is unfair. In only one hour, I had gone from a cold and rainy Michigan as an Alternative Spring Breaker with a Katherine Haddad always at my side, to a seventy-five degree Washington D.C., alone. I was dressed in pants, warm shoes, hoodie, carrying in my hand a winter coat. The transition was visible, short, and cruel, and I was vaulted all-too quickly into a world where I didn't have to wear a lanyard and a nametag, where I was not surrounded by sixty incredible, motivating young people I had grown to love.
"I wish we could go to the movies," Katherine had said Thursday night. "I wish you could stay. We could do normal stuff together." I thought of us then on my ride back to my car in a silent taxi, what additional jokes we would share, what we would do when we were bored on Saturday nights. It is both a beautiful and unsympathetic glimpse ASB gives its participants: a look into a life and friendships in another place they had before been unaware of.
And when the taxi dropped me off and I had paid my fare, I climbed into my car and spent my trip north mulling over the week, reflecting on all I had learned, missing all that I had left behind. And out there, right now, I knew that there were college students flying into airports or driving into cities that would carry them into another ASB. Maybe they are scared, maybe they are nervous. It is bittersweet to think to know that while our experience has ended, another is just beginning. In another state, in another world from Detroit, there are rows of Nalgene bottles aligned on tables, fresh sweatshirts in boxes that - in one week - will, too, be painted and dirty and loved. So here's to them, here's to us, for living united, for changing the world.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
When we reached the falls behind U of M Dearborn, we took our share of pictures and each claimed a spot on the rocks. The balmy sixty-five degree Michigan air was a pleasant gift after a week of bitter cold, and the chance to rest during that late afternoon on Friday was an incredible feeling. I settled on a spot near the water and soon drifted into sleep. During the greatest and most satisfying nap I think I have ever taken, I dreamt of a group of nameless, faceless people that somehow fulfilled me, made me happy, made me smile and feel like home. And when I awoke on the warm rocks beside the rushing creek, they were there, all of you, gathered on the rocks alone or in groups, dozing or sitting in a comfortable silence with one another. And it may have been the greatest feeling of the week - at least for me - to just see everyone together nearing the end of a phenomenal experience, united in more ways that we could even begin to understand.
And I will hold that moment always, just as I will hold you all and that week we shared in southeastern Michigan. But for right now, I have to let you go, Detroit. I have a life to get back into, friends and family that need me to be the person that they hugged goodbye eight days ago. I have Anthropology to read and a Climate midterm to study for and an internship to find for this summer, and so I will place you carefully aside and strive to avert my eyes from the Motor City. It is unfair and it will be difficult, but I know all too well there is nothing I can do. And let me remind you again that you have changed me. You have reminded me that lasting friendships can come from the most serendipitous occasions, that young people can evoke long-term change. You have shown me a clearer view of what I want this life of mine to be. I have primer on my arm and black paint in my hair, fruit leather wrappings scattered all over my bed and a black hoodie on I do not have the heart yet to remove. I am tired and feeling like I am missing something, homesick for a place I didn't know could feel like home, but it is time now to move on.
And so I will ask again what I asked two years ago: How do you sum up the greatest experience of your life? I don't think you can. How do you return to reality after a week like the one we just had? You just do. You take the free t-shirts and the fruit leathers, the stubborn paint stains and the sore limbs with you. You take the memories and the laughs, the inside jokes and the pinky promises to send packages and to call and to visit and you take them with you. It's all you can do. You continue to do the work we all came together to do in the first place last Saturday: live united. Thank you United Way, ASB Detroit 2009, Team Magic, and all the participants. You have changed me.
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