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Field of Dreams; Fields of Reality
in the midst of a sea of opponents, neighbors, paramilitaries, soldiers,
hostile officials, and an enemy government. Our hosts define service-
based learning as the visit itself. We lose sight of the fact that they
know our culture only by reputation. Our service is to bring students,
who show by their own behaviors that there is hope across the border.
In turn, the students provide the service of internalizing what they are
doing, socializing within the community, playing with the children and
the elderly, eating their foods with them, participating in their expres-
sive activities, and generally giving their isolated lives the temporary
feel of an international festival. In a note sent to our students in Au-
gust 2003 , Ramón, a young Zapatista, reminded us of this:
We wish to give you a thousand thanks for the school supplies
you donated, which will help us a lot and are serving to help us
move forward with autonomous education. All the children are
very grateful for the help you gave us, but also they really miss
your games and jokes...for us this is a gift, because the children
need to enjoy themselves, because for them, the work, the prob-
lems, the obstructions that their parents suffer, they feel, and they
become desperate, up to becoming sick. For this, your presence is
very important, and at the same time, very festive.
The sight of nine American women limply swinging machetes and
wielding pickaxes was a source of amusement to the fifteen Lacan-
dón men who worked beside us in 1999 , just as teaching Americans
to plant a milpa amused the Zapatistas in 2001. But humor allows
us to tell our stories with a gentle voice, while making serious con-
nections that can affect the lives of more than just those involved. As
Rachel continues:
Part of the point of our education is to enable us to beat the ste-
reotypes and to understand that each environment we enter is a
separate but equal entity from the next. This is important if we
remain anthropologists, but it is even more important if we go on
into law, social service, and education. In fact, maybe that’s what
many of us ought to do! In fieldwork, it is a privilege to have a
chance to give back in exchange for a look at the lives of others,
to render service where help is needed. This not only gives one
