Of Rainforests & Airports

Last July, I traveled with a team of adults & high school students to Belize. In a developing country home to many rural communities, resources run low for children & adults with special needs. The church I served in helped start a week-long camp for people with special needs & physical disabilities in the Cayo district of Belize. I was humbled at the opportunity to teach & serve in a different country, so how could I say anything but "yes" to Camp Joy Belize? I would love to share every detail of our journey, however, I will stick to two key moments, both of which occurred in a rainforest (of sorts).

Every team faces a liminal spaces before & after their work. The first is how available they will be to one another at the start. The second obstacle is the expectations for their relationships after the work is done. Being tasked to build team cohesion & unity, I set about two goals for each of these key liminal spaces: (1) set the tone for the American & Belizan staff to be available to one another, & (2) create a space to re-cast their expectations on their return home.

For the first task, I began with my favorite off-putting question: "What is your favorite smell?" My good dear friend & mentor Micah Norman-Pace taught me how wonderful this quirky question is. And in the luscious rainforest of Belize, I asked our American & Belizan staff what their favorite smells were. Now, I've written before how every question operates as a kind of crisis with three outcomes: tell the truth, say nothing, or lie. A disorienting question like, "What is your favorite smell?" presented the staff with a small (silly) opportunity to be available to one another. Telling the truth is a particular kind of availability. You might learn what most worries or excites a person. You might learn a six-foot-three former Army counter-terrorism intelligence soldier's favorite smell is lavender. But no matter what you learn, if you ask someone a question and they respond honestly, then you are beginning to be available to one another.

If a team will not only survive but thrive in a cross-cultural setting with the (often arduous) task to care for those with special needs, they would need to be truly available to one another. To my great joy, the team took great care to be honest & care for one another. From climbing the Mayan ruins of Cahal Pech to dancing with our special campers, I saw a team of Americans & Belizans see beyond the tasks of camp into the gift of community that may only come through being available. I'd like to think that quirky question helped set the tone for what happened in the rainforest of Belize.

Fortunately, my friend John led the trip and created a wonderful space for the team to process the week & re-cast their expectations for returning home. You see, the natural dilemma for any formative event comes after. What do you do when you return home changed, but everything else stayed the same? All-in-all, the American team left Belize with realistic & helpful expectations for what changes after Camp Joy. But I knew a danger lurking on the horizon of the journey home: the Atlanta Airport.

If you've ever seen an amazing movie with a friend, you know how wonderful it is to talk about the movie on the drive home, recapping the moments of suspense & resolution that impacted you the most. Now imagine on this drive home you get a flat tire. In traffic. And it's raining. I was worried about a similar situation playing out on our trip home from Belize. Airports magnify any stress, tiredness, & crankiness of the travelers. A five hour layover awaited our team in Atlanta. My task became protecting the momentum that an experience like Camp Joy has on a team. I wanted to give the team everything they needed to carry their formative experiences home, and I wasn't going to let the busiest airport in the world stop me.

Fortunately, I concocted a fool-proof plan. Between terminals 'A' & 'B', an artist named Steve Waldeck designed an indoor rainforest in the underground walkways. Green, blue, & pink lights illuminate a canopy of branches above your head with an opening in the very center, revealing a silhouette of birds flapping by. Animals beckon to one another over the speakers, and when the sound of rain comes, droplets form on the walkways from projectors above. The walk is truly surreal when you consider you stand 100 feet underground & 1,000 miles from the closest rainforest. During the entire trip, I built hype for the Atlanta airport rainforest.

At last, we returned to the U.S., and after a brief visit to some Customs officials, we dropped our bags at the gate to go see the rainforest. Thankfully, our gate sat three terminals away so the suspense only continued to build. That group of tired teenagers were stoked to finally walk through the Atlanta airport rainforest. It did not occupy our time for five full hours, but it gave us something to look forward to. Even though we left a literal country of rainforests only hours before, the Atlanta airport rainforest sustained the momentum. In the end, I suppose an artificial rainforest kept our Belize rainforest memories alive. Sometimes you have to get clever & make do with what you have to protect what you love.