A Very Mexican Weekend - Lessons from the Heart

On Saturday, we arranged to spend the day with our Nino's Adelante student, Doraliz. Normally, when we see her, she is accompanied by her Mom and her 3 siblings, including even her brother who is 16. All previous visits have been to our casa and have centered around swimming in our pool and lunch. But because we wanted to take her to the new ecological park El Refugio de Potosi and then on to La Barra to swim and have lunch, we had said we could only take 4 safely with seatbelts, and we weren't sure if her Mom or her brother would be the 4th....well in the end, only 3 came, Doraliz, her brother Julio and their youngest sister Angelica. Liliana , the middle sister, was home with a toothache and waiting to see the dentist.

When we decided to become sponsors, we knew we wanted to be actively involved with our student because we are here 5 months each winter. However, spending time with Doraliz has been a mental challenge for me because I tell myself, a) we don't really know her or her family very well and are unsure of their tastes or preferences b) they only speak Spanish and our communication is limited c) I am very conscious of the inequities in our relationship.

Although our sponsorship involves a relatively small amount of money on an annual basis, it is obvious that we have been priviliged in the order of the world. On the other hand, her hardworking family has little. They live at the top of a steep hill overlooking Zihuatanejo. Some of the recent migrants to that area are accused of being squatters, but we believe her family own the property. Doraliz has a loan from the government and runs a small tienda attached to her families modest plywood and paper home. It is her way to contribute to supporting herself and her family even though she is only 13 and is working hard to maintain a top grade in her class and qualify for our sponsorship. Her Mom volunteers in the local community by arranging social programs for some of the areas poorest and her Dad is a gardener facing unemployment because the large Ixtapa home where he works is for sale.

I am sometimes unsure as to how to handle visits to her home where there is no place to sit and I feel like I am at risk to be perceived as critical. I want to know how to handle giving gifts, as I am constantly aware of how much they need and how little they have. So this Saturday it was a great relief to have some really fun time with Doraliz and her brother and sister. We laughed, we played and we ate. Gene finds it easier than me to just be with them and laugh and not worry about how to talk or what to say....he has the gift of being a Mexican at heart! It is the lesson I hear in yoga everyday....to be able to move from my thinking mind and live with an open heart. Doraliz may just be the gift I need.

Today, our friends and neighbours, Monica and Anibel, invited us to drive to their coffee plantation in the mountains just north of here. Monica was given the responsibility to live in the mountains and to be the cocinera at the coffee plantation of her husband's family shortly after she married Anibel, over 20 years ago. This was hard for her, a university graduate from Mexico city, but she learned the traditional ways of cooking and working the land and those skills are what she refers to now when she teaches her classes in the Cooking School of Patio Mexica. She had often told me of the beauty in the mountains, the crisp clean air and the quiet surroundings. We jumped at the chance of driving them, together with their daughter Jimena, to see their property. Monica had not been there for 5 years and now we know why!

We were unprepared for the 3+ hours of rutted dirt roads needed to travel the 80 kms and 1500 meters of elevation. We wound our way another 30 kms. past the tiny settlement of El Cedral, which is the last point along the route where someone could depend on a vehicle for assistance. After that point, we were the only car on the road which had been destroyed by the heavy rains that fell recently and ruined any surface repairs done earlier in the dry season. We passed herds of cattle and goats but saw no persons until we pulled into the property of Anibel's neighbour. We were greeted by his grandchildren and the children of his hired help. This hardworking family live in one of the most remote areas I have seen, but what they lack in amenities, they made up for in welcoming us to their home.

We wandered into his nearby coffee plantation to see how organic, shade grown coffee is picked. Now is the season when the workers from Chilapa arrive to work the plantation. The plants grow in the shade of the tall trees and on the natural slopes where rocky foot paths that are barely visible wind there way through the rough and often dangerous terrain. I learned that the men carry machetes primarily to protect themselves from animals.....snakes to be precise!

We shared our lunch which we had bought to eat enroute and Gene's 6 pack of beer was a real treat for the men of the house. The women were eager to have photos taken of their children and later we were given a tour of the gardens and the outdoor ovens, coffee washing and drying stations. We were served Cafe de Olla which is the local version of sweet coffee, and I learned it is a drink given to children as without electricity or refrigeration, they must live on what they have and grow. We were invited to have lunch with the family who wanted to kill and serve us a beautiful chicken who wandered in and out of the kitchen where we sat. However our time was short and after saying goodbye, earing gifts of produce and flowers from the garden, we were left with the feeling that no matter how hard we think we have worked in our lives, we had not even imagined the work that these kind and generous people who look old before their time must do. Life is not easy for coffee growers in Guerrero...and I will never question why coffee costs what it does. Our morning reward, is the product of much hardwork and sacrifice by these farmers.

Oh, and a final note, when we left the greeting "que les vaya bien" was wished to us. "That we go well",.....and that greeting carried us and our 1996 Ford Explorer back down the 80 kms. safely, despite some worried moments when Gene thought our brakes had failed heading down the steep mountainside terrain. Gracias a Dios one more time!