Rebuild TJ : Teen-Agers Spend Spring Break Fixing Damaged Barrio Dwellings

A group of Camarillo teen-agers spent their spring break in Mexico this week, but there was no frolicking on the beach.

Instead, the 46 junior high and high school students, all members of Trinity Presbyterian Church of Camarillo, spent their vacation pounding nails, pouring cement, repairing rooftops and building new friendships.

Accompanied by 25 adults, the teen-age entourage continued the church’s annual goodwill pilgrimage to Tijuana. Their mission this year: help impoverished families rebuild their storm-damaged and otherwise dilapidated shanties.

After a six-hour trip home, the group began unloading their vehicles and sorting out personal belongings Thursday.

With camping equipment strewn across the church parking lot, tired students flopped on top of sleeping bags and shared hugs and stories of their excursion.

“You cannot believe the poverty I saw,” said 15-year-old Scott Sackmann, a Camarillo High School student. “It was a culture shock.”

Dirty behind the ears and worn out from a week of hard work, Scott said it was his first time on the Tijuana trek.

For 12 years, church members have made similar trips to barrios near the California-Mexico border. Some of the students, like 15-year-old Julia Coon, have become veterans of the Easter break missions.

“We worked real, real hard,” said Julia, who was completing her third trip. “But you always get so much more than you give.”

Hauling a week’s worth of food, clothing, sleeping gear and tools--including two small cement mixers--in assorted pickups, vans, trailers and a motor home, the group arrived a day before Easter in the dusty, squalid surroundings of a neighborhood known as Colonia Lazaro Cardenas.

The Camarillo contingent made camp at a community center known as Futuro del Oro, or Golden Future.

There, members of the group cooked all of their meals, bathed under one of the 12 low-pressure shower nozzles and had their choice of sleeping under the stars or inside a plain cement dwelling.

But sleep was a luxury.

“There are dogs everywhere, and they bark all night,” said 17-year-old Camarillo High junior Jason Barresi.

In past years, members of Trinity Presbyterian and some other Southern California churches have built numerous 100-square-foot, single-room plywood dwellings for impoverished families in the area.

This year the emphasis was on fixing up existing housing, said the Rev. Chris Logan, Trinity youth minister.

“By just building houses, we never had much contact with the people,” said Logan, participating in his third trip. “This time the people were working with us. There was an incredible bond of relationships, which was very different from any past experience.”

Each day, after waking at 6 a.m. for breakfast and morning prayer, the group took a bumpy, unpaved drive to the barren neighborhood called Vista Encantada, or Enchanted View.

Though panoramic ocean vistas were available nearby, students spent little time gazing at the waves.

Instead, most daylight hours were spent working on homes. The crew broke into seven-member groups, each working until about 4 p.m. In all, they rehabilitated 12 tiny dwellings--most of which had no electricity and none had running water. The families that received help were chosen based on need by a local minister who coordinates the project each year with Trinity Presbyterian.

“We were just kind of winging it,” Jason said. “One day you’d be out pouring a cement foundation inside a home--where before it was just a dirt floor--and the next day working on a roof job.” Others painted and reinforced shoddy huts made of wood scraps and other materials recovered from the area’s ubiquitous trash heaps.

“These people had absolutely nothing,” said Trinity member Scott Swaner, 50, who made his second trip. “Yet they would find the means to make a lunch for the site group working in their home.”

The day before they returned home, the entire 71-member crew lunched on chicken in mole sauce with rice and beans, prepared and served by residents of Vista Encantada.

Afterward, all gathered to exchange farewell hugs and kisses at the site of a future church sanctuary. A hat was passed among the Camarillo group to collect money to help the local congregation build the church.

Noticing the donations, a small Mexican boy in a tattered ski jacket confronted the group and plunged his hand deep into his jeans.

“He took all the change in his pocket and gave it to their new church,” Julia said.

Julie Parmenter, 17, a junior at Camarillo High, said she will return next year for the fourth time.

“We have all the material things here, but they too have so much to give,” Julie said. “I came back with a sense about what love really is.”