Changing the World with a Plastic Cup
Living Consciously through the Eyes of Youth
When Lorin Whitaker brushes the blonde hair from where it covers his ocean-blue eyes, he does more than reveal an All-American teenage sense of energy and optimism. Upon first meeting, it is obvious that this boy exhibits permeating and almost curious sense of tenderness and wisdom.
He is everything he looks to be. His sun bleached hair and rosy red cheeks along with a favorite T-shirt give away his passion for extreme mountain biking. And you won’t last long in a conversation with him before learning that he also loves to play the drums and is excited to be working at the local coffee shop this summer.
Growing up in a small, southern Utah community with a population of 530, Lorin has benefitted from the kinship that comes from living in a small town. But this is a town with a unique twist. Located at the entrance to Zion National Park, the town of Springdale serves as a gateway community to nearly 3 million visitors who travel through to visit the Park each year from all parts of the world.
Perhaps it is this unique introduction to world culture that prepared Lorin for what he calls, “The experience of a lifetime and something I will never, ever forget.”
When Lorin’s parents Lyman Whitaker and Stacy Christensen approached him with the idea of taking a six-week hiatus from school to travel and explore the world, he could not have been happier. But while Lorin’s imagination went one direction, his parent’s ideas went the other. Southeast Asia was their suggestion for a destination, but for Lorin, the idea of traveling to the Amazon Jungle was worth all the effort an in-house lobbying campaign would require.
“I guess there was something in me that really wanted to satisfy the curiosity of my childhood imagination,” he says. “And somehow I knew the people there would be really amazing to meet.”
Well aware that every teenager does not get the opportunity to travel on an expedition of this magnitude, Lorin says he decided he wanted to make a difference in the lives of the people he would have the opportunity to meet.
“I don’t speak Spanish, but I do know music,” he says with a grin.
To the tune of, “Clap clap pitter pat, Pick up down, Clap up touch down, Change slap down,” Lorin began laying the groundwork building a service project that would allow him to engage with the children he would meet while traveling in South America.
“Every kindergarten kid in this canyon has learned the rhythm sequence from Mrs. [Becky] Barker at Springdale Elementary,” he says. “First she teaches a basic rhythm routine, and then shows you how to make music with whatever you have access to.”
Lorin decided to use plastic cups as his medium thinking they would be easy enough to pack in his suitcase.
With the help of Mrs. Barker and her students – she still teaches at Springdale Elementary — Lorin set in motion a cross-cultural performing arts service project to take with him. Choosing to teach a routine that requires exquisite coordination, memorization and collaboration, Lorin said he knew it was going to be a challenge.
With the GoPro video camera he uses to make mountain biking stunt videos, Lorin filmed Mrs. Barker’s class performing the rhythm sequence with plastic cups. And with the help of a semi-Spanish speaking first-grader, he was able to offer a few rudimentary verbal instructions.
“It made perfect sense to me to make a video,” Lorin says. “This would be the one way I could demonstrate what I was trying to teach, and with a few instructions and me there to teach them in person, I figured this would be a way that I could connect my culture with theirs.”
In October, with airline tickets in hand, a bag of plastic cups, and a few hotel and adventure arrangements made (others would have to be made after arriving the way) Stacy and Lyman set out to introduce their son to the world. And while they were all excited to trek into the Amazon Jungle and high into the Andes Mountains, Stacy recalls, “We were particularly excited to watch Lorin share something that was personal to him and to see how the children would respond.”
After weeks of adventure, meeting new people and traveling to new places, the time for Lorin’s service project was here. They had traveled deep into the Amazon for zip-lining and to see the jungle beaches, and hiked high into the Andes Mountains. And now, in a small, poor town in central Peru, Lyman and Stacy took Lorin to the village school they had arranged for him to visit.
“I remember walking into this little school and no one there spoke English,” Lorin recalls. “My mom opened up her laptop and let the video start to play and all the kids were silent.” It became immediately clear to Lorin that this classroom of 5th and 6th graders had never experienced anything like this. “I could tell that they had never seen laptop, or a video, and definitely not a kid like me.”
Lorin says he surprised even himself at how much teaching simple rhythm would mean to the children of a poor, third-world community whose families struggle each day to have food to eat. “The whole experience created a bond between me and those kids that I really don’t know how to explain,” he says. “To see the respect and gratitude and effort they put into learning what I was teaching was both amazing and humbling to me.”
He laughs when describing how the students would point and giggle and watch the video he had prepared in amazement. “Seeing me on the computer screen, and then seeing me there in person, in a third-world country as poor and as this, they hardly knew what to make of it,” he says.
After three days of practicing, Lorin and his plastic cup brigade gathered in the schools’ newly built lunchroom (a luxury in this part of the world) and performed an assembly for the entire school.
“We had about 80 kids gathered around us as we sat in the middle of the room and started clap-clapping with our plastic cups,” Lorin recalls. To the echoing sounds of clapping, swishing and plastic cup stamping, “To see the fun and magic and amazement in all of their eyes was something I will never forget.”
Of the students performing with him, Lorin says, “When I realized they saw me as a teacher and a leader and they were proud to perform what they had learned from me, and with all the kids around the room cheering them on, I knew this was it. This was the strongest connection I could have made without the ability to speak the same language — and possibly stronger than even words would have allowed.”
And that is what Lyman and Stacy say they cannot stop talking about since their return. “We saw our son in a whole new light,” Stacy says. “He became connected to those children by helping them use their creativity in a fun and exciting and lasting way. It was beautiful to see them embrace his desire to share something that was personal to him.”
As a 21st Century American teenager, Lorin says he realizes that taking pause from the business of school and friends and hobbies and technology was something he really had not learned the meaning of. But since returning home, he says he can barely walk outside each morning without finding something to genuinely stop, notice, and take in.
“There is so much beauty all around us, I just hadn’t really learn how to take a pause and notice it,” he says. Traveling for weeks without an iPod or Internet or a cell phone, Lorin says he learned something from this travel experience he will never forget, “To just to stop and notice my surroundings, take them in, and recognize that everything is so beautiful and so amazing.”
And not only that. Also, when giving service and travel with a sense of purpose, “You will definitely get something back.”
This summer, Lorin and his parents plan to stay put in their hometown of Springdale as the business of tourists, trekkers and travelers comes to them. With a summer job at Deep Creek Coffee Company, Lorin says he still plans to make time for biking and drumming and making action videos with his GoPro video camera. And as he interacts with tourists as they come through town, he says he looks forward to the opportunity to share with them what he learned while traveling in South America last fall.
“I think teenagers like me get so wrapped around technology that we miss something really amazing,” he says. “Now, just walking outside every day, I am so thankful for everything we have here — whether it’s a week-old peace of bread or something made fresh — just being able to stop, take a few breaths, look around and be thankful for what you have is so important.”
Watch related video produced by Lorin Whitaker, filmed in Peru > https://vimeo.com/63777006
This story originally appeared in Elan Woman Magazine.
