TRIP TO ISLANDS REVEALS OTHER SIDE OF PARADISE

Imagine that you are on a Caribbean island. Sunlight streams down your back. You smell the invigorating sea air, lounge on the beach and read a novel you saved for vacation.

For many, the Turks and Caicos Islands is a vacation destination -- it reportedly is Justin Timberlake's top choice for a break. But the group of 30 islands, belonging to the United Kingdom, has a tragic side: Many natives are quite poor; the average income is $930 a year. And the Haitian refugees living there are poorer still.

Teens from Westlake Church of Christ visited on a mission trip last summer. They went to Providenciales, the largest of the eight inhabited islands and a top tourist spot. Stephen Bush, 15, Merideth Bush, 14, Chelsea Eisenbarth, 15, Jon Gerber, 15, Josh Mayo, 15, Ty Ruff, 15, and Ben Stevens, 15, recently talked about their six days there providing a vacation Bible school for the local children, whose official language is English, though many speak Creole.

The Indianapolis teens, who spent six months planning their trip, were surprised by the poor conditions they found. While the islands had more than 165,000 tourists in 2001, the residents don't live in the resorts seen in the vacation brochures.

The teens found that out while handing out fliers at people's houses.

"They weren't really houses, some of them. Some people were just living in shacks," Chelsea said. "We found a couple of people playing in a pool of trash. Like it was literally a pool of trash, and they were sitting in a car seat in the middle of it, and they were trying to find food. They were digging through it."

Life is even worse for the illegal Haitian immigrants. Fleeing their country's poverty, many refugees pay a costly amount to people who secretly take them to the territory. Even though the refugees have taken many low-level jobs that local residents reject, the refugees have become such a burden on the territory's social services that the government has been deporting many back to Haiti.

"We actually saw the immigration control people taking flashlights at night and looking through the brush, trying to find people because they heard about a boat of about 100 immigrants from Haiti was coming in and dropping them off," Josh said.

Even the island pastor's wife, who initially supported deportation, changed her mind when she saw the conditions they left.

"She had tried to get them to go back to Haiti 'cause she thought it would be better for them," Merideth said. "And then one day, she went to visit Haiti to see the conditions that they were living in there. They would catch fish or something, and I don't think they would even cook it. They would just eat the fish raw because that was all they had to eat, and they were so hungry."

Employers cheat illegal employees and threaten to deport them.

"They'll work a week, and their employers know that they're refugees and they'll blackmail them so that they don't have to pay them," Ben said. "They'll say, 'Oh, we'll take out this much now, so that we don't tell the immigration officials that you're an illegal immigrant.' "

While income is low, the prices are high. The teens said gasoline was $3 a gallon, and a gallon of milk cost $5.79, because most consumer goods must be imported. Josh said one night's pizza order -- two slices each for 40 people -- cost about $140.

Besides limited resources, there are natural hazards. Stephen said he was playing Frisbee with a friend and accidentally threw it into the brush. A neighbor warned the teens to "look out for poisonwood."

"She said it creates these boils on your skin . . . and pus will ooze out of these boils, and wherever it touches, (it) will create another boil," Stephen said. "People live in this brush . . . and they don't have things like Neosporin."

Three-fourths of the 103 children at the vacation Bible school live in the brush, according to the group. But it wasn't always obvious.

"You couldn't tell because they all wore nice clothes. They were completely clean. But from what I hear, they rent out closets, and they put their clothes in there to keep their clothes clean, and then they live under the bushes," Chelsea said.

There are other risks for these barefooted children. Walking near the church proved hazardous. "We found like 63 nails that were all rusted. I mean, these kids are far from the nearest hospital," Stephen said.

For some children on the island, a trip to the medical center is not an option. "If they had a broken arm . . . they would just send them back to Haiti because it'd be cheaper to send them there than to have it fixed," Josh said.

Despite these hardships, the children the teens met were cheerful and loving. One brother and sister, ages 9 and 7, carried their baby brother two miles to and from the Bible school.

"I think the thing that touched me the most" occurred in the middle of the Bible school, Ben said.

"A girl that I hadn't even seen before walked up to me and gave me a pencil, just a pencil. She gave it to me and said, 'Here you can have this, I'm really glad you came, and this is a lot of fun.' And I mean that was about the closest I came to crying all that week. But I didn't."

Students shared not only what they had, but their feelings, too.

"They'd hug you. They'd look you straight in the eye. They would make sure that you're looking at them, and they wanted your full attention, and they wanted to hear what you said. And when they asked you questions, they really listened to the answers," Chelsea said.

"It was a life-changing experience," Jon said, and Merideth agreed.

"I have two American Girl dolls, and once I got back from (Providenciales), I was changing my dolls' clothes," she said. "I was changing their outfits, and I felt kind of guilty 'cause I thought that it's very possible that my dolls have more clothes than those refugees did."

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Justin Riley, 14.

REPORTERS: Zachary Bell, 12; Kristin Drouin, 12.