I have the travel bug. Traveling internationally for the first time this summer, I found myself in Kenya, completely absorbing a culture incomparable to my own.
I connected with Ginny Schwindt, social work professor and director of field education at Union, as she led my mission trip to Kenya this summer.
A well-seasoned traveler, Schwindt has led social work trips to South Africa, Kenya, Nicaragua, Panama City, Panama and Ecuador. This was her third time in Ecuador.
Schwindt sighed as she reminisced on the trip. Partnering with faith-based organizations in Quito, the capitol of Ecuador and the Amazon jungle, the social work team found opportunities to re-educate Ecuadorians on views of poverty, prostitution and family dynamics.
The team spent quality time with girls who had been rescued from the sex trafficking industry, and Schwindt emphasized the heaviness of these girls’ realities.
“It’s really sad when you think about why are they in this situation,” Schwindt said. “A lot of them are in this situation because their parents basically put them in that situation for money.”
I can’t even begin to imagine a cultural reality like this.
Their reach extended mostly to girls under the age of eighteen, the age range before prostitution becomes legal.
“A lot of these girls that the organization has pulled out, they’re having to find a place for them to go because they can’t necessarily go back to their families because it’s just gonna happen all over again,” Schwindt said.
Jake Hare, senior social work major, talked about connecting with those living in different realities than we do.
“One group that we met up with was this local transgender community there, and the transgender community in Ecuador is extremely persecuted,” Hare said. “They’re a vast minority. Culturally, they’re just not respected as humans. Even in the medical professions doctors won’t even touch them. We met with those people; we conversed with those people; we cried with those people.”
As I listened to their experiences, I thought about how it’s all too easy to fall into traps when stepping into another country and meeting people whose lives center around different sets of values. How do we authentically approach people, loving them as they are, especially cross-culturally?
The team educated families and church communities in the jungle on healthy parenting, lifestyles and family dynamics while also addressing morality and God’s design.
Schwindt leaned back in her chair and sighed, telling me honestly about what it’s like to lead the same trips over and over again. She explained how it’s difficult to enter these trips with the same original excitement.
But mindset changes everything.
“I like seeing the lightbulbs go off where they take the class work and make connection in the community,” Schwindt said. “Study tours are the same way: it’s like they have their perceptions of what it’s gonna be like in another culture, but it’s not ’til we get there that it all starts to come together.”
By viewing each experience through the eyes of her students, Schwindt keeps the excitement alive. Cultural experiences are not only reminders but also connection points for her and her students.
“It enlightens me to understand some of the different things that go on in different cultures,” Schwindt said. “Then I can talk to students, whether they’re social work students or other students that just have questions about cultures.”
Near the end of our chat, I prodded her about culture shock, asking if it becomes less of an obstacle over time.
“I think it’s more of a reminder for me,” Schwindt said. “It’s kind of like once or twice a year I get this reminder of, like, life outside of the United States and how different it is…and not taking things for granted as much.”
Interning at a public therapy center in Trenton, Hare visits the homes of clients, helping them deal with different obstacles in their daily lives.
I asked him how his experience in Ecuador translates over into his current role as an intern.
“I truly think that being in Ecuador helped me to gain my footing for the internship in terms of that having a view that is purely love,” Hare said. “It also made me realize how working in this current community in Trenton where there are so many people who may make choices that I do not agree with, I am still called to love on them, you know, and do what I can to help them just as Jesus says to do.”
Our conversation circled around how the beauty of Christ’s love breaks down barriers, enabling us to touch the untouched, love the unloved and see the unseen.
“Meeting with the transgender community… praying over them, meeting with the girls and playing games with them and helping them to laugh in light of their circumstances–that’s more than anything that anyone can lecture to me.”
