story by Cecilia Butler, photos by Menley Brennan

In the October 11, 2012 issue of the Dart, under the headline “Lessons from the Ashes”, the article suggested Wonder had a romantic relationship with the Nicaraguan boy. This is not the case. The article said that the girls were installing “traffic lights”; Wonder worked on installing “street lights”. The article mentioned a Teresian dress that was destroyed by the fire, but it was Wonder’s Valentine’s Day dress from freshman year. The article said Nicaragua was in South America, but it is in Nicaragua is in Central America. The article states Wonder checked her phone every night, but this was not the case. She checked it more weekly. The Dart regrets the error.

The door knob won’t turn.

She starts screaming. Her fists hit the door as tears run down her face.

But nobody can hear. She becomes desperate for an escape. Help. Anyone.

Black smoke floods the room. Her throat burns. There’s no way out. This is it.

Then she is thrown back into reality.

Junior Katy Wonder throws herself up into a sitting position on her cot in her host family’s spare bedroom in Nicaragua, sighing softly in attempt to comfort herself.

She tries to control her heavy breathing. It was just another nightmare. It isn’t real. She looks around the cold, concrete room. The bare floors are covered in dust, and the ceiling is detached from the roof, creating air flow throughout the whole room. Wonder slides back her red sleeping bag and lets her toes touch the cool ground.

She looks over to her right and sees Annie Mara, her service partner, a senior from California, who is sound asleep in her own cot.

Prior to entering the world of South America, her home of eight years burnt to the ground before her eyes as she stood in her front yard. This was just seven months before she was scheduled to leave for the service trip in Nicaragua. Wonder and her family figured this was long enough for her to mentally recover from the trauma of the the destruction of almost every material thing she owned

But it wasn’t.

“I was basically obsessed with my house [after it burnt down],” Wonder said.

Throughout her two-month stay in Nicaragua, Wonder could not get her mind off the fire and the construction, which distracted her from the volunteer work in Nicaragua.

“I felt detached from the service,” Wonder said.

Back in America, her new home was being built from the ashes up.

The fire

On Jan. 15, around 4:50 p.m., the engine of Wonder’s vintage car exploded in the garage connected to their home. Katy, her brother and her dad were in the house as her uncle ran inside to alert the family of the fire. It took the fire trucks around five minutes to arrive at the Wonder’s home at 9900 Mercier Street, Kansas City MO, while the family stood outside and watched their home burn to the ground. Nobody was hurt, but her home became ash and smoke-damaged wood.

Her tartan plaid uniform: destroyed. Her dress from sophomore Teresian: destroyed. Her journals from grade school: destroyed. It was all gone.

“I’m not sure what the long term affect is going to be for any of us,” Katy’s mom, Mrs. Michele Wonder said.

But even though Wonder’s life was dramatically altered, she still planned on going on the service trip.

The mission

Seven months before the fire, in October 2011, Wonder enrolled in the $5,000 service trip to Nicaragua with the international, non-profit volunteer organization, Amigos de las Américans (AMIGOS), in October 2011. Their mission: “to build young leaders through collaborative community development and immersion on cross-cultural experiences.”

This July, Wonder traveled the seven-hour plane ride with Mara. They were headed to the small community of Cerro de Piedra, home to 400 citizens who desired to have a traffic light system set up in their community. The citizens mostly used motorcycles for transportation, but had no systematic way of trafficking them.

The girls were expected to set up meetings and fundraisers to reach the goal of installing eight traffic lights. Wonder and Mara were also to provide the community with two hours of child daycare each day to teach the Nicaraguan children basic education, along with carrying out basic household chores.

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The Reality

The goal of AMIGOS is to have their volunteers positively impact the lives of impoverished Latin American peoples through acts of service. This was Wonder’s intention to begin with, but the anxiety from the construction of her house made it hard to concentrate and made it difficult to fully engage in the service.

“We were too lazy to do anything,” Wonder laughed.

The girls were supposed to complete 100 hours of daycare, but completed around 8. They spent more effort getting around the service than actually carrying it out.

“Every time before [the project supervisor] came, we would have to gather around [with the community] and get our story straight,” Wonder explained.

Every week the girls would run around to groups of citizens informing them of the new story to tell the project supervisor. Wonder describes this as being the “biggest thing of summer.” The girls would be sent home if caught. At first the Nicaraguans found amusement in this, but by the end of the trip, they were annoyed.

This is not to say Wonder and Mara ditched their service all together. The girls did chores like preparing meals, fetching water and cleaning families’ huts. They spent some of their time getting to know the Nicaraguans and their culture, hiking through the hillsides and reading and writing.

The “American Heritage Dictionary” defines the word trance as “detachment from one’s physical surroundings; a semiconscious state between sleeping and waking.

Wonder was in a trance.

“She was in Nicaragua but at the same time [she was] back home, like mentally,” Mara explains.

She craved sleep. To be unconscious of her worries concerning the construction or thoughts of the fire. But then the nightmares began and even sleep was corrupt with worries.

The Nicaraguans even noticed. They called her “The Sleeping Rock” because even when Wonder was awake, she was zoned out.

“When people were talking to me, I just wouldn’t respond a lot,” Wonder said.

Every chance she got to get updates from her mom about the construction, she took it. AMIGOS prefered their volunteers not bring phones on the trip, but Wonder packed hers. Each night Wonder checked the phone for some news of progress.

Wonder was not use to living without the comfort of material objects, without a permanent home. Every tangible object became smoke damaged or useless ash, and she had no image of home in her mind.

Although this often distracted her from the service, she also felt more emotionally connected to the Nicaraguans, living lives with so little.

“It was inspiring to see them so happy,” Wonder said. “I see that people are living with nothing, even less than I had after my fire.”

So here she stands on the mountain side of a third world country, looking up at a teenage Nicaraguan boy.

They were from different worlds. But yet, she feels emotionally connected to him.

He reaches his hand out. In it, a small ring.

This ring was one of the few possessions the boy owned, which made its significance that much stronger.

Wonder did not need a closet full of clothes or tons of makeup. The objects that counted most were the ones that symbolized feeling.

Knowing that accepting the ring will break yet another one of AMIGOS’ rules (no romantic interactions), she looks up at him and grins.

She takes the metal ring from his fingers.