Solidarity at the End of the World

Solidarity. The example I was always told in school was, if you see someone get bullied you should take action and help them, instead of just watching it happen. It is coming together as a community and supporting each other in any way possible. 
When a kid in my class flooded our school’s gym and the teachers tried to find out who did it, none of us said anything. Which at the time was really inconvenient for them because someone needed to pay for the damage that was done, which wasn’t anything serious but still. Later our English teacher complemented the solidarity within our class, which made me feel very proud. Being thirteen or fourteen at that time I had never really actively tried to be solidary and I guess I always thought of it as more than just not betraying the people around me. Wether it was the right decision not to tell on the kid can be discussed another time. But that story is actually one of just a few that come to my mind when I think of solidarity. I just hope that it’s because I was just never good at recognising situations like that or because I just wasn’t in many situations where solidarity was needed and not because I wasn’t solidary.
But recently I have witnessed the biggest act of solidarity I’ve ever seen, not kidding. 
You should know that I am currently in New Zealand, which for me is pretty much equivalent to the end of the world, as an exchange student. Different family, different town, different people, different school. Everything is new and everything is different, but mostly in a positive way. 
The school that I go to here has four houses and each student is part of one of those houses, kinda like Harry Potter. The whole thing is really cool and exciting, especially coming from a school with no school spirit at all, it is nice to see students believe in themselves and the other students around them, believe in their school even.
So each year the four houses compete against each other, like I said it feels like Harry Potter. They do that with a variety of activities which the whole school participates in. Overall a really fun day for everyone, I mean no student would ever complain about doing tug of war, a parkour or playing soccer while sitting on the ground instead of doing maths, come on we’re all just human. 
You may be wondering though, what does all of this have to do with the topic solidarity? Well, the school also has a special education department for students with a disability. These kids usually participate in form class but for the rest of the day they have their own classes and activities. But on House Sports Day they joined the rest of the school and did all the fun activities with their form classes. 
The whole houses thing is about winning, but even when it was obvious that a group was being held back by one of the special ed students no one said that. At one point one of the girls in my group was physically not able to do one of the exercises but still was really keen on trying it anyways, so even though we ended up losing that activity, no one stopped her from trying, or was annoyed by the situation or complained about her. No one shifted the blame on her or made a nasty comment. 
Talking to a friend later that day I found out that my group wasn’t the only one where this phenomenon could be observed. She had notices the same thing within her group and one of our kiwi friends couldn’t even understand why we were surprised. For them that behaviour is normal, to put someone’s wellbeing above your will to win, but unfortunately that’s not what I’ve witnessed in the past.
This experience makes the perfect example of how we should behave and how we should people and I think that everyone can learn from this. I wish that at some point in the future I won’t be surprised by people being solidary and treating people as people, because that’s how it should be.