By Mary Fan
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 23, 1998

Students use break to pitch in on reservation

It was UA biochemistry senior Parmi Suchdev's spring break, but he wasn't boozing on the beach.

Drifting toward sleep after a day of digging ditches and burning brush with 27 other University of Arizona students, he huddled to hear a beautiful young Navajo girl tell about her grandfather's encounter with a skinwalker, the evil soul-stealing spirit of Navajo legend.

Students participating in Alternative Breaks chose labor and listening to at-risk youths as alternatives to partying raucously during break, Suchdev said.

Suchdev is the co-founder of Alternative Breaks, the university's two-year-old branch of a nationwide service organization called Breakaway, which places students at service learning sites across the nation during spring break.

"It encourages people to try something different rather than the typical experience of going to Mexico and partying," Suchdev said.

This year program applicants chose to spend seven days in either Imuris, Mexico, or the Navajo Reservation near Shiprock, N.M.

The 26 volunteers in Mexico worked in an orphanage and in nearby schools tutoring children and helping beautify the campuses.

"A lot of the time we spent playing with the kids and talking to them," said Katie Larson, an ecology and evolutionary biology sophomore.

She remembered one group creating two characters - Ooblek, made of cornstarch and water, and Glurch, made of sodium bicarbonate and bleach - to teach children about liquids and solids.

Another group brought a cow's heart to teach children about the circulatory system.

But the group received more than they gave, Larson said.

"It wasn't as much what we gave but what we brought back," she said. "The country was beautiful and the people were fantastic."

Larson said the volunteers were touched by the children they worked with and remembered a night of reflection where the students spoke about their spring break experience.

"Almost every person talked about a child that they had met and the impression the child had on them," she said.

The students on the wind-blown, rock-strewn reservation of the second site embarked on a project to build a farm school.

They cleared brush by starting controlled fires and dug holes for posts to build a new chain-link fence.

"It wasn't especially difficult work but it was a big project and it was satisfying to finish it," said undeclared sophomore Andrew Edmonds. "It gave the impression that we really made a difference."

Their work saved the reservation about $5,000 and paved the way for building the school, Suchdev said.

"They've been trying to do it for the past two years but they never had any labor," Suchdev said.

The students passed the evenings with group reflections, journal writing and talking to Navajo high school and college students, Suchdev said.

"It was more of an informal interaction," he said.

Twice, Navajo students made dinner for the UA students, Suchdev said.

"It was the neatest thing. They were so welcoming," he said. "It was one of the first times they ever allowed people from outside the reservation onto the campus."

The shared serving experience brought students from all walks together, Suchdev said.

"These people from all different majors and years would never have met had they not been on the trip," Suchdev said. "It was neat to see how they really bonded."

Larson said she was also struck by the connections made.

"You can get a group of people together and do so much," Larson said. "It was the best spring break I've ever had."