Los Gatos Weekly-Times Photograph by George Sakkestad Jess Kerlin spent some time last summer in the Land of the Midnight Sun, serving as a volunteer. LGHS sophomore recalls his cool summer By Shari Kaplan While the cooler temperatures this time of year remind some people of the fall and winter activities they enjoyed in past seasons, Los Gatan Jess Kerlin is more likely to remember his last summer vacation. That's because Jess, now a Los Gatos High School sophomore, spent part of the summer of 1998 in a remote part of Alaska as part of a cross-cultural community service program of World Horizons International. Based in Connecticut, WHI is a nonprofit program in which more than 1,000 American and Canadian high school and college students have participated since WHI's founding in 1987. Students act not as tourists but as working members of the small communities in which they live, either in dorm-style housing or with host families. Students hold internships, refurbish buildings, coordinate activities at community centers, act as tutors and carry out other projects in Alaska and Arizona as well as in countries such as Botswana, the eastern Caribbean Islands, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Samoa and Zimbabwe. From June 25 through July 23, Jess was a resident of Bethel, a small Alaskan town several hundred miles west of Anchorage. The population is nearly 70 percent Yupik Eskimo, and the mainstay of the rural economy is fishing. That wasn't all that was new to Jess. While at home, he was used to traveling to other nearby cities by car or bus, but in Bethel he found all the neighboring towns to be so remote that small airplanes are the method of commute. And at the end of the day, instead of retiring to his own bedroom, Jess shared a facility called the "Log Cabin" with about a dozen other students. The season itself also added an unusual twist to the sleeping arrangements--during the summer, Alaska becomes the land of the midnight sun. According to Jess, on clear nights it was never darker than twilight, so he and his cabinmates sometimes taped up the windows in order to catch some shut-eye. Jess' days consisted of interning at the local radio station; the same studio also doubled as the small town's TV station. Among other things, he made on-air announcements, worked the control board and played music as a DJ. Jess says people relied on the station: "The most important part was the fishing report. Fishing is a big way of life in Bethel; and for the Yupik Indians, the radio is their only source of the news. Fishing is basically the entire industry." When Jess and his friends were not busy with their volunteer jobs, they did other tasks, such as painting the Log Cabin and the playground at the Bethel Youth Center or assisting the personnel at the youth center and at a day camp. On the weekends, students got together to go sightseeing, exploring or camping. "It was more than just going to a new environment; it was cool being in a new environment with a group of people you've never met," Jess says of one of the things he enjoyed about his experience. "I would never be able to live there for my life, but I enjoyed it for two months. Bethel seems more down-to-earth [than many local cities]. It was like going to a new country--the nearest large town was like 300 miles away." For more information on World Horizons International, call (800) 262-5874 or visit its Web site at www.world-horizons.com. [ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, November 11, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.