After finishing the 2003 competition year as the USAEq amateur-owner hunter, 18-35 year-end national champion on Rio Bronco, Amanda Starbuck didn’t take a typical vacation.

Instead of traveling to a tropical climate, or going skiing, she spent her Christmas holidays volunteering in Africa, teaching basic health and hygiene to underprivileged Ethiopians.

The experience affected her deeply. “There’s so much that we take for granted in our society, and it really shows you the reality of life. You come back, and you’re very content with life and you feel spoiled. It’s a culture shock, but it makes you feel grounded,” Starbuck said.

“The experience makes you feel thankful for everything you have. You’re thankful for the life you lead, you’re thankful for ice cubes, you’re thankful for your family. When you get back, you feel like you’ve been deprived of all these things, and you realize that that’s their life forever. It opens your eyes.”

Starbuck went to Ethiopia with the humanitarian organization Engage Now, spending two weeks in late December 2002 and 2003.

The Gay family, close friends of her family, introduced her to the program. Sisters Lara and Summer Gay ride with Starbuck’s mother, Janie Weber, at her Stepping Stone Farm in Ridgefield, Conn. Their mother, Lynnette Gay, is chairman of Engage Now, and Summer is on the Advisory Board.

The first year Starbuck went, in 2002, she went with the entire Gay family. In 2003, she and her sister, Juliana, accompanied the Gays to Ethiopia.

Volunteers for Engage Now, which also organizes trips to Mexico and Ecuador, work in rural villages. They not only provide much-needed medical care to villagers, but they also educate them about health and sanitation.

The goal of an Engage Now mission is to help villagers reduce poverty and improve their lives by giving them the skills and knowledge to find sustainable solutions, such as irrigating a garden and building wells and latrines.

Like Nothing You Can Imagine

When Amanda first volunteered, in 2002, in a small village a five-hour drive south of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, she made a startling discovery that put things in perspective for her. She saw children, all with the same pattern of hair.

“I thought their hair was so intriguing. They grow hair only above their ears on each side, and in a circle just above their forehead.

I first thought, ‘Wow, those are their tribal haircuts.’ But that’s how their hair grows when they don’t have any nutritional substance in their food. It was awful,” she recalled.

“It’s crazy–the life they live is like nothing you can imagine. And it makes you realize that almost half the world’s population lives like that.

“My second year, I was in charge of teaching them about cleanliness and sanitation, how to protect themselves from bacteria and what they could do to take care of themselves to prevent getting sick. Obviously, they have to drink and wash in water from the streams, which is usually contaminated. I tried to teach them to boil the water,” said Amanda. “It was both rewarding and frustrating because you can only help so many people.”

In addition to helping to educate the villagers, Amanda and other volunteers showed them how to build a latrine and built them an adobe stove so that they could boil and purify water. They also helped them plant a garden, complete with in irrigation system.

“I was so shocked by the environment, that I felt like I was just a drop in the ocean of all the need. The second year, especially through teaching, I felt like I made a difference, but I still felt like it wasn’t enough,” she said.

Amanda was as struck by the openness of the villagers she helped as she was by their poverty. “They want to learn as much as they can. It’s amazing to come from our culture, where so many kids just don’t care. All they want to do is absorb it all,” she said.

And she found herself to be an object of curiosity as well. “The first few days, your fingernails are all white, and they stare at your fingernails because they’re amazed at how clean they are.

“At night, we would sit with all the translators, and they’re all very well educated and have gone to graduate school programs. They would tell us all about Ethiopian culture, and they would be shocked to hear about our lives. They tried to learn as much as they could about us. They were some of the most educated people in Ethiopia, and they were still shocked to hear about our lifestyles as Americans.”

At the end of the mission, the villagers showed their appreciation for the work of the volunteers by putting on a show for them, singing tribal songs. And the volunteers responded in kind, singing back to them. Amanda took away many such memories from Ethiopia, but Juliana carried a much more sinister companion when she left in January. Three months after leaving Africa, Juliana was hospitalized with a life-threatening case of malaria. It was the first case of malaria contracted by an Engage Now worker in Ethiopia. Malaria isn’t very common in that area, since the high elevation doesn’t allow many insects that carry the disease.

Julianna fought for her life in intensive care for a week, but eventually recovered fully. She also returned to the show ring this summer.

The episode was terrifying for Amanda, but it also made yet another impact. “She had one of the worst cases of malaria that they’d seen, and in Africa, they deal with it everyday. If she’d been one of them, she wouldn’t have made it. It was another reality check. There’s always something that makes me think of Ethiopia,” she said.

What Is Important?

The culture shock the Starbucks experienced wasn’t just that of a typical American; it was of an American who has dedicated her life to riding and horses.

Amanda grew up on the family farm, riding with her mother and showing on the A-rated circuit. She now works as the farm’s business manager, balancing the books, working on public relations, and running the large lesson program.

Her time in Africa made Amanda reflect on that life. “It definitely made an impact on anyone who has lived a typical American life, but to have lived in the horse show industry, it was unimaginable.

“When I was in Africa, I saw horses who were all skin and bones,” she continued. “There was one trotting down the street, pulling a cart, and dead lame. It makes you realize that our horses live like kings.

“The quality of our lives that we lead is amazing, compared to the rest of the world. I would find myself thinking ‘Why do I need 14 saddle pads? They could be blankets for the babies.’ You start to think these kinds of thoughts after coming back,” she said. “But, it’s something we love and have a passion for, and we’re lucky enough to be able to make our lives around horses.”

And Amanda has found herself re-evaluating her values. “I’ve realized that you don’t need so many things in life to make you happy, and that the most important things in my life are my family and my happiness in what I have around me. It makes me constantly question, ‘What is important in life?’

“Of course, I love my horses, and I couldn’t imagine not having them, but my family is really the important thing. And maybe you don’t really need that cute outfit, or the nice bag. I’m not a shopper now.

“The practicality of life has really hit home,” Amanda further reflected. “When you go to Ethiopia, you give your clothes to the people, and each year as I was packing, I would look down in my bag and realize that all those clothes could be given to them, and my closet was still completely full. I thought, ‘This is crazy, why do I have all this stuff?’ It puts you into reality, and you feel lucky for everything you have.”

While Amanda has shared her experiences with a few people, she finds it hard to put her memories and thoughts into words.

“You mentally prepare yourself, but nothing prepares you for seeing what it’s really like. I had no idea what it was really going to be like, and I didn’t until got there, and even then you can’t really explain it to someone so that they understand it fully.

“No matter where you think you are in your scale of ‘Oh, I can do this,’ it hits you. People do ask, but they don’t have any real understanding of it, and it’s hard to explain. It’s usually the very general questions,” she said.

After Juliana’s illness, Amanda won’t be returning to Ethiopia. She didn’t show much this year, but she plans to campaign Rio Bronco again next year.

Juliana is back in the ring as a professional rider. Lara and Summer Gay are both taking time off from showing; Lara is in college at Brigham Young University (Utah) and Summer is starting a family. The Gay parents are taking their volunteering to new levels; they just moved to Ghana for three years to carry on their work.

Shocked By The Reality

Amanda Starbuck admits she wasn’t fully prepared for just how desperate the situation was in Ethiopia.

“I knew that it was going to be overwhelming, but I was still shocked. The reality of it all was just so drastic,” she said.

“You’d think to yourself, ‘Well, why can’t they not get sick?’ But there’s no way for them to not get sick; they drink the water, and there’s no way for them to purify it. They don’t have a faucet. The reality of it all really hit home,” she added.

Starbuck was put in charge of keeping the villagers in line her first year there.

“There would be hundreds of people trying to push through to get into the medical tent for the needs they had. We tried to keep them all in a row, if we could, with the help of a translator,” she said. “If we were known to be coming to a village, the crowds would just swarm all over from the whole area. They don’t have medical doctors at all. They go months and months being sick and have no idea what’s wrong with them and without treatment.

“You look at these children with open wounds and are just horrified. One child had a bulge on his cheek, and when they cut it open, a worm crawled out,” she recalled.

“It was pretty overwhelming, my first year working on the lines. You have one-on-one contact with them, even though it’s through the translators. You don’t think your job is that important because you’re just trying to keep them in line, but it really is.”