When I walked into my families home last night, I first had to deal with introducing Griffin (my dog) to Leah (our family dog), something that I was nervous for because Griffin is new and we’ve had Leah for years. After things calmed down a bit I wandered into the dining room where, when we aren’t having guests over, mail is piled up in stacks that were once organized by delivery date or recipient but now slump over, spilling their contents into each other creating a patchwork of coupon  circulars, Patagonia catalogs, and Victoria’s Secret promotions advertising a “Free Panty with any Purchase *while supplies last.” I grabbed a few magazines, Bedford Magazine and Town & Country’s Bridal issue to be specific, when I noticed something that was decidedly not mail. Hidden under an envelope that I think it was mailed in was a portrait of a boy. Attached to the top left corner of the portrait were two bracelets, constructed out of green and black thread wrapped around recycled plastic, that read “Joel” and “Joel y Pippa.”

I was 16 when I first went to the Dominican Republic to work at Clinica de Familia’s Summer Camp – Campamento Esperanza y Alegria, a summer camp for HIV-positive children. Now, 5 years later, I have been three times, raised tens of thousands of dollars, spoken on many stages, and promoted camp, an institution that holds a special place in my heart. Just this past week my dad connected me over email with a man who will be running the J.P. Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge Charity Race in Australia to raise money for camp. We have won the Chicago and New York Corporate Challenge Charity Race’s so many times, my dad spending months scouring race results to build the perfect team, that I wouldn’t be surprised if Chase has red-flagged us on the suspicion of rigging the system. Just to be clear, we win fair and square 🙂

Many people my age spend a week in Uganda or three weeks in South America doing service work and, for the next 3 years, their Facebook profile picture is of them hugging a small child whose name they forgot before they boarded the plane back home, or never knew in the first place. They profess that they left a piece of their heart in Tanzania or rural China and talk of moving back there to make the world a better place. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but I want to differentiate my experience over the past 5+ years because it truly is different then the one-off service trips that have become so popular.

First, I love the children not because they came screaming, arms open, wanting their picture taken or because they played with my hair and made me feel needed. I love them because they made me work for it. Some of the kids at camp I have know since they were six years old, you could say we’ve grown up together.  While I went to camp thinking I was prepared, it took two years for them to take anything I said from a place of authority seriously. I knew I had started to break through when, after a camper refused to help clean up an activity and I reprimanded her in slang-filled spanish, she not only cleaned up but asked if I needed help with anything else.

Second, I do not love the Dominican Republic. I love camp, and I love the clinic, and I love the people I know in the DR but no matter how hard I try, I get food poisoning every time I visit and the heat makes me want to live in a refrigerator which isn’t possible due to a lack of reliable electricity. I don’t fantasize about moving the the DR or retiring there. I don’t think of it as my home away from home. I think that is an interesting nation with a complex culture and society steeped in generations of governmental neglect and social instability. I do love the work that I have been able to do in the Dominican Republic, I love the people I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with, and I love plantains sautéed in butter.

And so, when I saw Joel Jose’s portrait, done by a student volunteer, I couldn’t help but start crying. My work isn’t a little blip in my life that will live on solely in a travel journal, Facebook album, or college essay. No matter my  method of involvement, whether as a volunteer at camp or fundraiser in NYC, I like to think that camp will always have a piece of me in it, and I will always have a piece of camp in me.