By:Anthony Rifilato
In addition to facing the biting cold and snowy weather, Tom Herman, a 24-year-old Baldwin resident, is experiencing quite a bit of culture shock.
Everything that most Americans have at their disposal, such as nice cars and hot water, laptop computers and supermarkets, big homes and cell phones, Herman sees differently ever since he returned to Baldwin in December after a two-year stay in Santiago, Chile, where he worked with orphaned and mostly impoverished children.
"You start to realize how much less you need in order to be content," Herman said. "I can't complain about all the amenities I have here."
Herman, a 2001 Notre Dame graduate, joined the Holy Cross Associates, a volunteer service sponsored by Notre Dame, shortly after graduation. The Catholic organization sends 30 to 40 graduates to serve as lay missionaries and assist the poor throughout the U.S. and other countries. The program in Chile was the subject of a documentary that aired on ABC in 2001.
"They're very established in Chile," said Herman, noting that for the most part, Catholicism is the main religion there. "The congregation is very prominent."
It turned out to be perhaps the most pivotal and challenging two years of his life, during which he dealt with the loss of two of his grandparents and developed an emotional attachment to the people in the town where he was living.
Herman's excursion has its roots in his family's strong Catholic roots. His parents were very active in social-justice causes, and when he was a kid, Herman and his siblings went on hunger walks at Hofstra. "It was sort of like Catholics for peace," he recalled. "I grew up surrounded by that. My growing up in a home like that gave me the roots for what I did later."
A 1997 graduate of Chaminade High School in Mineola, Herman participated in Notre Dame's Appalachian Seminar during his sophomore year, working with the rural poor for a week. A year later he spent 48 hours living and working at St. Anthony's Church in the Bronx, where he and other students visited HIV/AIDS patients by day.
At night, gunshots in the streets, a sound the suburbanite was unaccustomed to, would wake him. Those were two eye-opening nights in the Bronx, he said. "It was an incredible 48 hours," Herman said. "It's seeing a reality that can easily be hidden behind the dividing lines of the suburbs."
It was these first-hand experiences, he said, experiences that couldn't be gained from books, that influenced his decision to go to Chile.
Not that Herman's two-year commitment to help the less fortunate was done out of some rebellious need to rally against materialism. An amiable young man who was enrolled in Notre Dame's "Great Books" program and earned a liberal arts degree, Herman was unsure of what to do with his life after college.
"During senior year, there was the threat of what to do next," he said.
Herman's brother, Vinny, had joined the Holy Cross Associates program in California, and it had made a huge impression. So instead of idling around, Herman decided to "take the plunge." He had to write an essay and meet with a school psychologist in order to determine whether he was ready for such a commitment. Ultimately, he was accepted in 2001.
There was some apprehension on the part of his family at first, mainly due to the time and distance that would come between them. "Distance was a huge part of it," he said. "But they gave me their blessing."
And because he didn't speak a word of Spanish, Herman first had to spend 11 weeks studying in Mexico with others in the program. Still, when they arrived in Santiago, the language barrier was a bit daunting. "It was tough at first," Herman said. "Our Spanish was remedial at best."
Herman's first job there was working at an orphanage of 30 children run by the Holy Cross congregation, called a "Hogar." Not only was communicating a challenge, but Herman, an American standing 6 feet 2, definitely had a presence, something that took some getting used to for the kids in the orphanage, who ranged in age from 3 to 18. They were the children of drug addicts and abusive parents, who had at first expressed some wariness about the new American "gringo" in their lives.
"You're sort of marked," said Herman. "Just being a gringo isn't going to get me in the door."
But eventually, the children warmed up to him. He showed them how to play baseball, taught them computer programs and English. Though most of the kids came and went, either going to live with relatives or back with their parents, Herman said he grew close to seven of the original 30 kids, and tried to be a positive figure in their lives.
"There was definitely a tangible bond there," Herman said. "We had the good fortune of sending one girl to the United States to study English."
An important part of his trip was experiencing the people and their culture, in which the church was a big part of their lives. Herman got involved in the choir, where he played guitar and met new people.
"All my friends lived nearby," he said. "My typical Sunday would be to go to mass, play guitar, and we would go to one of the family's homes for lunch. It was a very communal atmosphere."
Life seemed much simpler in Santiago, he said. In the mornings, he would awaken to the metal clanging of a vendor's bustling vegetable stand outside his home, where he lived with four other volunteers and his three-legged dog, Jack, who was known by everybody in town.
"You really felt like it was a concentration on being with people," Herman said. "Part of the idea of living down there was living simply. That was humbling."
He also became an administrator at the Hogar, doing fund-raisers and handling grant money that enabled him to see how much people benefited from this type of assistance. "It gave me a nice overview of the whole functioning of the Hogar," Herman said.
But the trip did have its complexities, especially when family priorities came to the forefront. In a span of three months during his second year there, two of his grandparents passed away, and Herman returned to the U.S. briefly for both funerals.
He also came home for his older brother's wedding last June. Though his visits were emotional and he had the chance to spend time with his family, Herman said life back home felt drastically different, especially since he had become so settled in Chile.
"It gave me a taste of what I was coming back to," he said. "The first thing I noticed when I came home was how nice the cars are here."
Herman said that although Chile isn't as mired in poverty as some other developing countries he had been to, he was struck by the people's daily struggles, such as earning livable wages and buying clothing, things that most Americans take for granted.
But there were those back home, Herman said, who made efforts to help the people in that small Chilean town. Last winter, Herman said, there was a desperate need for clothing and other items, and volunteers organized a clothing drive.
A friend of Herman's mother is married to a Chilean native, a businessman who had visited Herman while on a trip to Chile. "He heard about our need and sent four refrigerator boxes full of clothes," Herman said, and added that family and friends in Baldwin had contributed to the drive. "Everybody really stepped up to help."
At the end of his stay, Herman had gone from a young man who, in his first six months, felt like he had no purpose, to growing close to the people he helped, worked and lived with. "It was really tough to leave," he said. "A huge part of the experience was entering into their lives and daily conversations."
Now that he is back home, Herman is coming to terms with his time spent in Chile and adjusting to life back in the U.S. Not only did he make friends and help make a difference in children's lives, but he wants to duplicate his experience in this country, perhaps by working for a non-profit organization assisting immigrants and refugees.
This month, Herman is traveling to South Bend, Ind., the home of Notre Dame, for a reorientation program that Holy Cross provides its volunteers, which helps them with their re-entry into the U.S. There he'll reunite with some of the friends he worked with in Chile.
"I'll have a chance to flesh out what we're all going to do," Herman said.
