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Turin Hill's new perspective (Campo Amigo, Ecuador '07) 

Turin Hill of Boise, ID joined the AYUDA team for the first time in 2007 after being inspired by her seven-year-old sister with type 1 diabetes, Mahalie. Turin studies biology and chemistry at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, where she does medical research on venomous spiders. She is also an avid traveler. Here, she writes to her friends and family in reaction to her experience:

"I've just returned home to the states from Ecuador where I served as a counselor at Campo Amigo Ecuador ‘07. It's been a difficult transition. After having looked into the eyes of desolate poverty, it has become so much more painful to see the all too common displays of profligate wealth in the United States. At Campo Amigo I watched 40lb girls polish off plates of food too large for me to stomach, cleaning their servings of meat down to the bone. In the States I watch leftovers get thrown away and excess food go to waste after sitting in the fridge for too long. Suddenly the things we take for granted stand out like red flags. My campers could be eating that food! Although I was not able to make the trek out to their home provinces to see their homes, I got to see a classless body of children all unified first as Ecuadorian kids at camp, and secondarily by a certain lifestyle we call diabetes. These are children who all enjoyed making costumes to show off at La Noche de Disfraces . The sense of community that these children provided for each other at camp was powerful and I feel blessed to have been a part of it. I was able to help provide a week of camp during which having diabetes was not a limitation but a source of strength, where children were not labeled as “diabetics,” but identified as soccer players, or actresses, or artists who just happen to have diabetes."