Week #14 dignity

This week we participated in protocolario events that marked the completion of two more humanitarian aid projects here in Mexico.

APAC is a non-profit organization in Mexico City that works with a network of medical and health professionals to assess, diagnose and help children with cerebral palsy. They offer officially recognized school classes allowing the beneficiaries to complete elementary and high school as well as qualify for and complete degree programs virtually with partner universities. The health officials offer their time and expertise on a volunteer basis. Our donation was an exoskeleton made for children. We helped purchase a third Atlas 2030, the first of its kind for children as previously they only existed for adults. The exoskeleton is a robotic therapeutic device that with the assistance of a therapist, allows a child to stand upright and to move their growing body which helps to rehabilitate muscles and muscle endurance for better mobility and to also improve their digestive and respiratory functioning. The photo is of some of the beneficiaries of our donation. In seeing and then donning the exoskeleton one of the children said he felt like Iron Man.

One of their mothers was present and in tears told us about the joy of seeing her daughter be able to stand for the first time ever, something she thought she would never see. The smiles on the girl's face speaks volumes. APAC serves about 500 individuals a day. I asked them about their capacity. They said their capacity isn't the bottleneck it's the families' ability to get their children to their facility. Mexico City doesn't have wheelchair accessible public transport and otherwise, Mexico walks. You will remember from a previous post that everyone builds their own sidewalk which makes for an impossible trip even if someone else is pushing the wheelchair. Our Uber driver described the neighbourhood (it's called Roma) as “feo” “ugly”. It has a reputation for violence. Thankfully, that wasn't our experience.  Below are pictures of a feo neighbourhood nearer to where we live that is affectionately call the "pueblito".  The dogs sleep during the day and hunt during the night - our experience is you don't want to be on the street once its dark. The dog in the photo belongs to someone -worse are the packs of feral ones. People are forever cleaning and painting but it doesn't ever look clean. 

 he beneficiaries and their families do not pay anything for the services they receive. We met and interacted with a number of the children and the staff. APAC has a bakery, workshops and a painting studio used to help them practice fine motor skills and where the older beneficiaries make and create things that are sold internationally to help sustain the programming.  

        

We took a 7 hour bus ride to Oaxaca - they carried in two adults on the chair you see in the photo that arrived in wheelchairs to travelled with us. This was a first class bus.    

BAMX. This is a relatively small food bank with 7 outlets in and near the city of Oaxaca that salvages donated food for purchase by the poor. Our church's donation was a walk-in cold storage unit, scales, pallet movera, stainless steel tables, sturdy orange plastic crates etc. 

 The staff said that in addition to increasing the capacity and efficiency of their work, the amount of donations have increased because donors’ have greater confidence that their donations are not being wasted. 

They spoke about two challenges. They pointed to the relatively small amount of fresh fruit and vegetables that they are able to provide saying that the vendors´ attitude in the popular markets is that either they sell their products or they throw them away – donating them to a food bank to salvage is not something most consider. They said the bulk of the donations of fresh fruit and vegetables they receive are from the large supermarkets (i.e., Walmart, Costco etc.) who have a corporate culture that invests in the communities they serve. 

With respect to the beneficiaries, culturally, handouts are not socially acceptable, even if the family is starving. They told us of a young woman that lives near the site we visited. Her husband died, leaving her with five children ages 11-5 years of age. Neighbours brought her to the food bank’s attention. She is illiterate, her children were not going to school. They are working with several agencies to help her and her family. Even then, she insists on paying something for the food she receives weekly as a matter of dignity.  Another challenge is the recipients need to be taught how to use the food that is available. Rice and beans are the staples. Not unlike many people in Canada they do not know what to do with a can of tuna, textured soybeans, powdered eggs and powdered milk. BAMX teaches them. Part of our donation included the insulated box mounted on a new delivery truck donated by others. They explained that the insulated box and the new truck give them a greater range both for picking up and delivering food – Oaxaca is in a desert and some of the communities they serve are off the grid and/or don't have telephones of any sort. If the truck breaks down, the beneficiaries wait for hours as there is no way to communicate with them. It was much the same when we lived in Mexico 25 years ago and unfortunately hasn't changed for many.

The decision to send us to Oaxaca wasn’t made in time to arrange for flights and maybe just as well as on Friday when we left, the Mexico City International Airport was shut down due to demonstrations. Amazingly, the closure didn't even make the news. I really enjoyed the trip there and back, the protocolario event at the food bank and our short stay. Reminiscing yes, and seeing everything agricultural again including drip irrigation, guys playing soccer on dirt fields, the Sierra Madres, the small scale maize fields, herds of goats, chicken barns and going to church on Sunday morning.  It was a fast and testimony meeting followed by a Sunday School class that focused on 1-3 John and Jude in the New Testament. Our discussion was about how to apply the metaphor of the light of Jesus Christ versus darkness (the absence of that light) in our everyday lives as we strive to be more like him. 

En route to Oaxaca we drove through the City of Puebla where we used to live. On Saturday after the Protocolario event we hung out in the Zocalo and watched a presentation put on by the city for tourists and foreigners like us. It was very loud but fun. I eventually even got Wendy to get up and dance with me. On Friday night after we arrived we went out for tlayudas – a Oaxacan meal that looks a lot like a quesadilla but is made with a much larger flour tortilla that is dry fried on a comal.  Mine was filled with quesillo de Oaxaca, beans and a generous handful of chapulín, dry-fried and seasoned grasshoppers. Some prefer to just eat without having a look inside - I thought you would enjoy a peek.

Quite the jumpy mess but very tasty.

We have only four days left to complete our immigration process before we are subject to deportation. I started lobbying last Thursday because if we were to be deported we would become personae non grata for the foreseeable future – I am still not a fan of winter and want to be able to come back. Apparently our paperwork was sent to the wrong mission. The young office elder looking after this had been waiting patiently for the paperwork.  They tracked the paperwork down late Friday afternoon in the Mexico City East Mission. We stood in line for a couple of hours this afternoon just to get an appointment for tomorrow. We hope everything goes well - no guarantees here.