It was no surprise that Mrs. Krueger, a 91-year-old single grandmother, had lived in her house for 45 years. Upon our first arrival, we noticed dilapidated windowsills and peeling wallpaper in both of the bedrooms. And yet, there was also clearly a fresh coat of external paint and newly installed doors (courtesy of our host organization, Rebuilding Together). The non-profit had been working on Mrs. Krueger’s house for the past four months, slowly re-doing each of her rooms, re-painting the outside of her house, and helping her re-build the home in which she raised her three children. The inside of the house was filled with memorabilia of her children’s childhoods, and we were there to aid in the protection of those materials, artifacts, and memories.
While the days were long, our group cohered rather quickly in attempting to accomplish Rebuilding Together’s goal of finished Mrs. Krueger’s house by the end of the week. (A goal which we completed, I might add!) Here, it would be easy for me to ramble on and on about how tedious scraping wallpaper can be, how enjoyable it is to smear joint compound into artwork on the walls, or how amazing it feels when a window fits perfectly into its frame. But, I won’t do that. Instead, I’d like to give you an idea of what exactly was going through my head whilst doing all of those tasks, and while being on this trip to Oklahoma City.
For my age, I consider myself to have committed a decent amount of time to community service, both domestically and internationally. And yet, I like to think that I engage with a critical consciousness on what exactly it means for me to be in a position to do this service. Because the fact is, volunteering, as we have come to recognize it, is a privilege. We went on this trip to commit ourselves fully to other people because we have the time, capability, and because of the material distance we hold. Further, I do my best to realize that the work that we do emanates directly from a humanistic obligation—a public responsibility to which we must hold ourselves accountable. So, here we form a rather productive tension—between recognizing an unjust social order, attempting to aid its symptoms, and undergoing a process of self-reflection. I’m very proud to say that this trip further facilitated the kind of critical conversation that I so look for when enacting community service; it further shifted the dialogue around volunteerism from a standpoint of altruism to one of humanism.
This conversation was pushed even further by the fact that Mrs. Krueger’s house was unaffected by the tornadoes for which Oklahoma is so well known. It reminded us all that while disaster relief is imperative to the lives and homes of those in need, service and obligation is also due to those who struggle under the structural oppression of what can be every day life. It’s very clear that the fight for social, political, and economic justice is not over and arguably just barely begun. As students, learning how to perhaps one day enact tangible change in domestic and global affairs, what we may do now is commit ourselves to projects such as these—to commit the time and privilege that we hold to realizing our responsibility to one another.
And though I mentioned before that I’ve committed time to community service, after another trip I walk away a little bit differently. I suppose that’s the beauty of committing ourselves to one another—to other people. Whether we walk away with a finished house, physically stronger, or emotionally touched, we all go on just a little bit differently, and I would claim that it is much for the better.
-Kristi Carey, ’15