Editor’s Note: Following robbery at gunpoint in Guatemala, regular contributor Julia Lang bravely shares and reflects upon her learning experience below. The Building a Better World Forum strongly encourages all readers to recognize the vital importance of following best practices in health and safety abroad (see p. 22 – 25 in the Forum on Education Abroad’s Standards of Good Practice). To support your, your organization’s, or your office’s capacities to manage risk, maximize safe conditions, and respond to crises with competence, the Forum on Education Abroad regularly offers workshops on Crafting Emergency Action Plans and Health, Safety, Security, and Risk Management. Additionally, the University Risk Management and Insurance Association is offering Developing Your International Risk Management Plan on the Monday and Tuesday before this year’s NAFSA Conference in San Diego. Travel safely. 

Privilege, Robbery, and Trauma

By Julia Lang 

I recently led a semester-long service-learning trip through Central America. Our students stayed with host families in three cities in two countries, took one-on-one Spanish classes from Guatemalan war survivors, participated in turtle research via overnight shifts on a remote Costa Rican beach, trekked more than 50 km around Lago Atitlan, and laboriously worked (rising at 6 a.m.) on a permaculture farm in Nicaragua.

While these experiences expanded students’ views of hard work, inequality, oppression, conservation, and community, a highway robbery under gunfire catapulted our ideas of privilege from an abstract lesson to a deeply personal and raw examination of the intersections between privilege and poverty, resulting in painful insights into those who have, those who do not, those who take, and those who experience the grief in between.

Unfortunately, as more privileged students travel internationally, incidents such as the one I speak to here are likely to become more common, and I think it is crucial that international service-learning practitioners recognize this and be better prepared to cope with this inconvenient truth.

This post addresses the trauma our group experienced and the practical measures a practitioner can take to support students in the wake of such a nightmare abroad. It also grapples with how our privilege on international service trips arms and disarms us – protects us but also makes us an obvious and prime target.

After 10 weeks of interacting with hosts of hard-working Central Americans, we entered a resort town the week before Thanksgiving. Instead of living with and among the local people, the only locals we saw were those who were working behind counters, carrying trays, serving drinks, or selling baked goods out of baskets along the main road. White women in long flowing skirts and diamond dots on their foreheads practiced yoga in the mornings and attended Mayan heart opening ceremonies in the afternoons, led by other older white faces stretched in tan skin.

Our students were clearly uncomfortable. We had spent enough time in Central America with locals that this little tourist bubble seemed artificial, where wealthy tourists from around the world came for “spiritual, emotional and physical cleansing,” feeding their bodies with green smoothies and handmade pastas while feasting on a variety of classes from meditation to tarot readings, crystal healing, aromatherapy and chakra opening. Students began questioning where we were, what we were doing there, and why the visitors seemed to be so removed from the locals.

We began talking about privilege. Students all read Peggy McIntosh’s article, “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” and we gathered as a group to do a privilege walk, a difficult and uncomfortable activity, but one that opens many eyes about their own privilege and oppression based on class, race, gender, gender identity, mental health, religion, nationality, and physical abilities.

In the activity, statements hear statements (e.g.: “If your ancestors were forced to come to the USA, not by choice, step back,” or, “If you can always approach a group of people of the opposite sex without fearing for your safety, step forward.”) and students take a step forward or back as it relates to them By the end, students were staggered across the entire room. To reflect on the experience, we asked: Is this accurate or representative of privileges? Is this useful? In light of the article and the walk, what is privilege and how is it used in society for the benefit of some and the oppression of others? Are you aware of your privileges as much as you are aware of your more marginalized identities?

A good activity, yet one entirely hypothetical, where one’s privilege and oppression are reduced to a small step forward or back in a safe, enclosed room. Nobody could have known the true lesson waited for us silently with loaded guns, masked faces and swift, planned movements of attack just one day away.

Loading our packs on the top of a private minibus the next morning, we began what was supposed to be a four-hour drive to our next destination. Some students had begun to nap, others were journaling, some looked out the window, ear-buds drifting them through lush jungle and gorgeous, drastic views of the shimmering lake below. I was in the front seat, legs perched on the dashboard, smiling inwardly at the calm that the mandatory rest time of the drive would provide, away from endless logistics and managing group dynamics of twelve 18-20 year-olds.

As we rounded a corner, we started hearing what sounded like fireworks and then there they were, three masked men in the middle of the road firing guns straight at us.  With the bullets pummeling the bus, the men approached the van yelling for money, cameras, and back packs. Five other men came around the back and tore open the van door as they demanded anything of value. The three girls closest to the door were immediately manhandled as the men searched for money belts, wallets and cash, half tearing a female student’s shirts off her body. Another girl went limp. Students watched helplessly as the men dragged her out by her hair, her body thumping down the steps. We were all pulled out of the van, guns to some of the students’ skulls, thrown down on the ground and laid in a line like dead fish, belly down on the pavement. After being roughly frisked, they grabbed whatever they wanted from the van and tore off into the woods.

Bewildered, many students started sobbing. Others stared vacantly ahead, eyes glassed over. One girl couldn’t stop shaking, her entire body vibrating in a dull hum, unaware of our voices trying to call her back. Somehow, nobody was shot; nobody was seriously injured, despite the fact that the white skeleton of our van was riddled with bullet holes—one bullet missed me by about three inches, the driver by less than an inch. In addition to the emotional trauma, our backpacks were gone. Passports were gone. Cameras, journals in which students were writing every night for college credit. It was all. Gone.

While my co-leader and I started to try to pull us physically and emotionally back together, we had to deal with the police, the bus driver, the secret police, our organization’s headquarters (HQ), and gather information. Nothing like this had ever happened before and nobody knew what to do. Should the students go home? Should they stay? Are we in a space to help students process when we have just experienced the same trauma? How do you support students in the aftermath of the most traumatic event any of them had ever experienced?

While a parent’s first instinct might be to have their child back in their arms safe at home in time for Thanksgiving, I now see how crucial it was for the students to process the experience collectively and rebuild our cohesive community.  While students contacted their parents, I was trained via Skype by a trauma psychotherapist on how to lead a debriefing.

The debriefing process that I learned and led was incredibly effective and rather straightforward, and I think could be useful in the aftermath of many different types of traumatic incidents that could occur during an international experience far from professional and personal support back at home. This format can help students process and begin to gain a sense of mastery over what happened to them and to the group.

• First, the students must feel safe and parents must be informed and supported. After a long afternoon at the police station, we silently made our way back to the town we had just come from and pulled the group into a big cabin where some students slept on mattresses on the floor, others happily shared beds. That evening, HQ emailed and made a personal phone call to each parent, informing them of the incident, ensuring them their child was safe and that they would hear from their child the next day.
• The next day, my co leader and I ran around collecting money, medications and calling the embassy while students spoke with their parents. That evening, HQ called each parent again, fielding more questions and concerns. That night, we gathered the students together in a nest of blankets and pillows in an attempt to verbalize and develop a rational understanding of what happened – to create a narrative that we could tell our friends, our family, and most importantly, ourselves.
• Through process comes release. Contrary to what I might have thought before, the main point of the group debriefing was not to gather the hard facts but to simply release students’ memories and experiences so no terror could become trapped and locked inside, where it could continue to burn and haunt them for years to come. We had already told the police what we saw and what we lost. We stressed how the point was NOT to get the facts, that there was no right or wrong answer or story. The point of the debrief was to release the memories—to express what they saw, heard, felt, smelled, etc. and then articulate their emotional reality, their greatest fears. Using this approach, you can help students process their experience and voice their innermost fears, releasing traumatic emotions and memories from the protected density of our shaken bones so they cannot drown us and resurface in waves of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the future.
• Ground rules were set, beginning with complete confidentiality and no judgments on anything that would be said. We explained how each student would be invited to speak one at a time, with no interjections or questions until the end so each person really had the space to speak. If a student did not want to speak, that was fine and we would return to them at the end of each round if they wished to add anything.  We explained how the telling, listening, and retelling of what happened would allow our group to express and release our fears while also helping us construct a linear story out of pure chaos. We encouraged students to be honest, straightforward, and not to soften, hide, or be embarrassed or ashamed about anything.
• From here, it was straightforward: two rounds, one of facts, one of emotions.

In the first round, we invited students to share the pure facts of what they remembered, what happened to them. One by one, each student had the floor and told their story without any interruption. We would wait for a long silence to signify completion, gently thank them by name, and then move on to the next person.

Everyone chose to speak and as more and more students shared, everyone gained a clearer and clearer picture of the attack and details that some of us had missed. We learned what each student saw, but also how some students held hands, how certain students comforted others. The brutal facts were shared, as were the tender moments of grace and love in our own community. At the end of this first round, we invited any questions or memories anyone wanted to add.

The second round was harder, as it involved our thoughts and feelings, the emotional reality. We asked students to comment on how they felt: What was going through their mind? Their heart? What was the worst part they could remember? What were they most afraid of?

With downcast eyes, students began to speak of the fear of being shot, of seeing one of their friends raped, of not giving enough of their belongings and of revenge being taken out on another student. Multiple students spoke of seeing the girls dragged out, of how deeply they feared for them, how helpless they felt, how they looked to my co-leader and me and soon realized we could do nothing. The energy of the group was magnetic, palpable.

This round was difficult, but extraordinarily helpful. By releasing innermost fears, the weight of the memory, the isolation, the anxiety, was lifted off of individual chests and shared in the group space.

• After this round, we thanked the students again, honoring their emotions and deepest fears. We then moved on to explain all of the normal reactions after trauma, such as numbing, detachment or absence of emotional responsiveness, a lapse in memory, continually re-creating and reliving the event in your mind, feeling like it was not real or like a movie, avoiding people or other stimuli that remind you of the event, feeling absentminded and suffering from heightened anxiety, such as irritability, being hyper vigilant or unable to sleep.
• We normalized and validated the widely eclectic responses to trauma and explained how this event would likely stay with us for many years, but might morph in nature and levels of understanding. As more memories surface and emotions shift, we encouraged students to continue to speak and share over time and to be patient with themselves and others. We all experienced the event together, and we were going to not only get through it together, but also rebound and make more positive memories together, too.

If students had left immediately after the incident, they would have returned home to their families as isolated victims, cut off from others who knew what they went through, and they would have been robbed of the support network that would help them rebuild through shared tears, joint anxiety, and supportive, healing physical touch. Their memory of their semester abroad would have been funneled into this one negative occurrence. Instead, we grew back together and finished the program as a unit. We began laughing and dancing and bickering together again, just as before. We finished the trip learning how to scuba dive in Honduras, sharing our myriad of stories from the trip on our last evening on the beach at a communal dinner under a full moon and for those who wished, releasing through wild, unencumbered dance, the tension and stress flicking from our fingers into the black night as we grinned at each other across the throbbing crowd.

The nature of our work involves continually exposing students to oppression and marginalization in an effort for them to understand their own privilege and gain an awareness of how others live. We were traveling in a private van arranged by a trusted local contact and were attacked at 2 pm, in the middle of the day. There is no way to completely protect students or ourselves and such an incident could have occurred in inner city Chicago, the suburbs of Oregon, Spain, Morocco, Cambodia, or Guatemala.

People are poor and desperate everywhere, and our privilege makes us more vulnerable when we enter poor and oppressed areas. Be sure to regularly check travel advisories, read OSAC (US Department of State) updates diligently before traveling to locations not recently visited, register with the STEP (Smart Traveler Enrollment Program), and continuously check with local contacts about any incidents that occurred since your last visit.

Precautions can help mitigate potential risk, but of course, nothing shields us completely. Though an attack may be an extreme example, trauma can happen at any time, anywhere. Students might suffer head injuries, leaders can be launched out of boats and lost in rapids or car accidents, and local unrest can erupt at any time in any place, threatening the safety of both students and leaders.

These trips are meant to prepare students to enter into a more conscious space where they become aware of the realities of the world and step outside of the secure, privileged, blind bubble of their enclosed home communities.  Throughout the final two weeks of the trip, our discussion moved beyond the actual events of the attack and students began to grapple with a much larger questioning and understanding of the dark side of our privileges.

We can enter and leave countries at our desire, take private transportation, stay in fancy hotels or hostels with armed guards and high fences. But our obvious privilege also makes us a target. Teaching students about privilege in the safety of a classroom is far different from having privilege slapped in your face, disarming you completely, as you helplessly watch students dragged onto the street with guns in their faces by men who will attack and risk everything for a little money, a couple of cameras and fancy backpacks.

In the aftermath, we learned that the world is not our playground to explore and inhabit as we desire.  Just as we become aware of and learn about the brutal realities and oppression many face, so too must we face the consequence of our own privilege and power in an unequal world. Our wealth, nationality, native tongue and shiny travel gear grant us nearly endless freedom to explore and witness how others live, but these privileges have a dark underbelly, a shadow side, and is a double edged sword, for it can slice right through us and leave us raw and exposed, gutted in our ignorance of hardship and gasping in our naiveté.  We learn about “other bad things that happen to other good, unlucky, unfortunate people,” but rarely see bad things happen to ourselves, as padded as we are in our comfortable lives, hovering parents, and endless risk management procedures. But still, they do, a sobering lesson for students who are at the age where it is exceptionally common to feel invincible. In a split second, we were all hit with the harsh reality that life is fragile, and that we are all, indeed, extraordinary vulnerable.

The world in which we send students and ourselves is not predictable, where you know what you will teach and what the lesson will be. The more I do this work, the more I realize how students and I often walk away with a powerful lesson about our world that is far afield from the one I had intended and planned.

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Julia Lang completed her B.S. at Cornell University, where she spent a semester working full-time at a foundation for street children in Ecuador and led service trips throughout Nicaragua over winter breaks, experiences which inspired Julia to work as a study abroad advisor for AFS, the largest non-profit international exchange organization for high school students, intern for Habitat for Humanity in Sri Lanka, and lead multiple service learning trips throughout Latin America and the United States. While earning her Masters of Science in Education in College Student Services Administration, Julia was the Graduate Assistant in the Center for Civic Engagement at Oregon State University and the live-in Resident Director of iHouse, an off campus international cooperative with 60 students from over 25 different countries. Due to the transformative experiences Julia has personally experienced completing service abroad, her Master’s thesis focused on the impact of international service-learning experiences on students’ levels of global citizenship. Since completing her Master’s, Julia worked for National Geographic Student Expeditions, leading a community service trip in Costa Rica, and worked at the University of California, Berkeley, for the Civic Leadership Institute, leading service trips throughout San Francisco, teaching in the classroom, and living in the dorms with high school women as their Resident Advisor. In Fall 2013, Julia led a semester long experiential service-learning semester in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, and will lead another semester in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand in Spring 2014.