Well, I emerged from the night victorious: I didn't fall victim to the bug. Hurrah!
As some of you may be aware who were following Twitter updates, we drove to Mexico last week, taking a different route from the one originally planned. (We were on a coach bus and two vans, each hauling trailers.) Instead of going through Kansas, which had been socked by a huge snowstorm, we swung 280 miles east. This meant driving straight through the night instead of stopping to sleep at a church the first night as originally planned. Fiona became ill on the trip, and so she and I switched to one of the vans, so that she could sleep stretched out on one of the seats. We did stop at a second church the second night, and then at the mission station right at the border (this is a facility in Laredo, Texas, which offers a meeting site for groups about to go into Mexico on various relief missions). While we were Loreda, we made a run to Sam's Club to pick up the huge order of food we had previously placed with them, enough to feed us (60 people) and the people at the orphanage (120 people) for a week.
Our trip over the border on Sunday was very smooth, without any stop for inspection, and then it was just 15 minutes from there to the orphanage, located in Nuevo Laredo. The change once you cross the border is quite startling: the buildings are in extremely poor shape, and there is little sign of city services. Poor Fiona continued sick, and spent her sixteenth birthday (Monday) flat on her back in a bunk bed, feverish and sleeping and being waked up every half hour by me so I could nag her to drink more water, so as to bring her fever down.
Once she was on her feet, however, she joined the rest of us in a whirlwind of activity. Our group was divided into seven service teams. Each day, each team was responsible for one meal prep or cleanup (for 180). The seventh team worked on outreach prep, meaning preparing the food that was taken out to feed the people in the colonias -- more about that later. We hauled all our own water and did not use any of the orphanage's for drinking, due to the pathogens that our wimpy American immune systems could not handle. We also continually used Purell to sterilize our hands after washing them.
The orphanage has been built up a great deal over the years, both due to the efforts of All Saints Church as well as other groups who have come in to work. All Saints definitely has the most extensive relationship with the orphanage, however, with visits that have continued for a decade and extensive financial support. When All Saints first started coming, there was only one building, and the sanitary conditions were minimal at best. The children used pit latrines. There have been long periods of time when the children have had to endure no water, food or electricity. But there are several buildings now. The children still move out of some of their quarters to make room for some us, but the accommodations allowed us all to have a bed, whether than camping on the floor as in years past. The toilets are clean and work, although there was no hot water for most of the week, and no traps to stop the sewer gas meant that they smelled rather evil.
We spent the week playing with the children, preparing meals, and doing other projects. Mama Lupita, the remarkable woman who began the orphanage and runs the place, also does an astounding amount of work for the local community (she was named Mexico's Woman of the Year last year). She goes once a week to the local prison to feed the prisoners (some from our group went with her to do that at 10 p.m. Sunday night, the day we arrived). Prisoners in Mexico are not fed, and if they do not have local family to provide for them, their situation is quite desperate. She also had us go out to work on construction of a local church. Our people poured the concrete and did the wiring. The construction team also went to Home Depot (just across the border) for supplies and used them to construct two frames for what would be large sheds in the US, about ten feet by twelve feet. They will be completed next week by another group and then taken to the colonias where they will be used for housing--one of the families which will receive them were sleeping 10 people in a structure of that size. We worked on setting up a library of donated books in the orphanage, sorting through the donated books and painting and labeling the shelves. We created bases for 240 solar lights (cutting, sanding and painting) which were taken and given to the people in the colonias, who have no source of electricity, and therefore no light at night.
Interacting with the children was both heartwarming and extremely interesting. They hugely look forward to these visits from All Saints, and as they've grown quite a few children have built long-lasting relationships with members who have come on the trip year after year. We had a vacation bible school every morning, which included craft projects. We used the orphanage's decrepit bus (which the All Saints construction/repair team has continually repaired) to transport groups of the children to the city's park to play. Ordinarily, the children never leave the orphanage at all, other than for school, so this is a HUGE treat. One hour on the swings and a popsicle is something they will remember all year long. One of the children we brought was a young girl in a wheel chair, and we think she may not have left the orphanage at all since coming there, three years ago (the situation for special needs/handicapped people in Mexico is really quite desperate, as there is little for them in the way of programs or special services. Mama Lupita has taken several over the years). The children are very warm, but hungry for touch. They rely heavily on each other, and are quite responsible in looking out for one another. Everyone has chores, to help keep the orphanage going and teach responsibility. They have practically no clothes or possessions of their own, and all objects at the orphanage are basically communal, so we had to continually watch our own possessions (glasses, water bottles, etc.) as any child would be likely to pick them off and walk off to play with them. Meal times can be chaotic. The Mexican culture is quite easy-going as regards to time. We are continually warned not to be rigid in our expectations as to when people say they might be meeting us. Although we served meals at set times, we know that the ordinarily dinner at the orphanage might be served at 4 p.m. or at 10:00 p.m., and there are toddlers wandering the courtyard at 11:00 at night.
Every day, as I said, we went out to the colonias. While the situation at the orphanage is quite spare as to resources, at the colonias it is quite grim. No sewage, no water, no electricity. Hundreds of people live in shacks constructed from salvaged wood, plywood and cardboard. We brought Ziplock bags of pinto beans, used donated clothing, and personal care kits, which were extremely popular (through the year, the All Saints congregation gather sample sized soap, shampoo, etc. and put them in ziplock bags with washcloths and toothbrushes). We also gave out the solar lights one day. And we served them a meal. The people line up patiently, sometimes for hours in the hot sun, and wait their turn. They send the children through the line first, so that they will at least be able to eat even if the food runs out (and it is a real risk, since the crowd is so enormous. We were feeding over 500 people every time we went out there.)
The last night we were there, we had a special celebration for four young people who had managed a remarkable achievement: one was graduating from high school and three from college. Mama Lupita's goal is to find a way to send every child to college who lives there long enough to grow up and reach college age, as long as they remain at the orphanage, follow the rules, and pitch in with the work to run the place. These three were the first. One was graduating with a degree in nursing, one in workplace safety, and one had studied child psychology, with the intention of using her knowledge at the orphanage. The fourth had completed the high school preparatory (college bound) program, and wanted to go on to study dentistry. College is comparatively inexpensive in Mexico (perhaps $340 a year) but even that sum is well beyond the reach of many people, and so this accomplishment is huge, and is garnering quite a bit of media attention--they may be the first college graduates from any Mexican orphanage, ever. It would not have been possible without the financial support of the All Saints congregation. After the church service to honor them, we gathered back at the orphanage for a very late dinner fiesta, this one served by the orphanage to honor us, followed by music from a DJ and dancing and a pinata for the children.
On Friday morning, we got underway early. The children were extremely heavy-eyed from their late night, and extremely sad to see us go (in fact, a line of them even ran up the street as our bus was pulling away, to form, as a joke, a blockade at the intersection to keep us from leaving. We drove straight back from Mexico to Minnesota, fighting off the plague.
I took a bunch of pictures. We're setting up a Shutterfly site where everyone will pool their pictures, and I'll post that link once it is up and going.
Aftermath report: Fiona was weepy last night about the trip being over, and there were some disappointments. She was so sorry to be sick for part of it, and disappointed that we didn't stop as long in San Antonio as we usually do.
Delia may have lice, possibly picked up from one of the children. We're having her shower again, to try to get rid of her dandruff so we can eliminate that as a possibility, and then we'll be inspecting her again. Argh.
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