Baking in Baja: the tortilla of life There were 22 of us, including the 2 trip-leaders. One suitcase didn't make it to San Diego on our flight but it turned up on the next one while we were picking up supplies. Realizing we weren't supposed to take fresh fruit across the border, we ate all the oranges and apples, warding off scurvy for the week in one fell swoop. Driving into Mexico was easy enough; I guess they don't have a big problem with Americans sneaking in to work there illegally. We kept passing road signs sporting the silhouette of a cow, although few cows were to be seen. After arriving at the mission grounds, we attended service at the on-site church and went out for dinner before crashing in the bunk beds provided for us.
The mission was founded about 3 decades ago by Charla Pereau and is centred around the orphanage that started it all. A few years later they created an experimental orchard with the goal of finding a cash crop that would grow in the arid climate of Baja. About 15 years ago they discovered such a crop: Macadamia nuts. Since Macadamia trees take about 15 years to mature, they are only now beginning to see the results of this effort and expect to have a bumper crop in a couple of years. I ate some of their nuts while I was there and found them to be delicious. The mission also provides emergency services (ambulance and fire-truck) to the surrounding area.
Most of the people served by the mission are actually not Hispanic but indigenous people from Oaxaca (pronounced "wahaka") who were brought to Baja when the climate was more hospitable so they could work as day-labourers in the farms and are now in dire straits. Men tend to move between ranches as work dictates, starting new families at each one and thereby creating many single mothers. This results in a lot of neglected children so the mission runs a daycare to alleviate the situation. It also ensures that every child there has an opportunity to attend either a college or a trade school before leaving so that they aren't forced to work in the fields like their parents were.
Before going to Mexico, I was expecting it to be something very new and different. During my first 24 hours in the country, however, I was struck by the degree to which it reminded me of Karachi, where I lived as a child. From the dilapidated and graffiti-covered walls to the Bougainvillaea trees to the endless swarms of children to the simple but spicy food to the satellite dishes on concrete huts to the carefree lifestyles, much of what I saw made me feel more at home than I had anticipated. While on a tour of the mission, I discovered that most Mexicans practise a blend of Paganism and Catholicism that was eerily reminiscent of the community in which I lived as a child and for virtually identical reasons: it seems the Spanish missionaries did in Mexico exactly what the Portuguese ones did in India.
Although I'd originally hoped to do some construction work at the mission, they were more in need of my computer skills so I ended up configuring the systems used by staff, students and teachers instead. Trying to use a UI where all the text was in Spanish gave me a very good idea of what computers feel like to most people: nothing makes any sense and the only way to accomplish anything is by memorizing the exact sequence of interactions required to perform specific tasks. No wonder so many people hate using computers!
On our first night at the mission we had an opportunity to house-sit for the group homes at the orphanage while their house-parents enjoyed a much-needed weekly break. I spent most of my time playing catch with a couple of kids, stopping briefly to rescue a kite from a tree. Once it grew dark outside, we retired to the houses and hung out with the kids. The house to which I'd been assigned had 9 teenaged boys. Although we were initially a little worried by their rambunctious behaviour, we soon realized that they didn't push it too far and always cleaned up any messes they created. When they discovered where I'd grown up, the buys were excited to share some of their spicy salsa with me. One of the boys disclosed that he wanted to be an architect and, after being beaten by him at chess, I'm convinced he can pull it off.
I'd arrived in Mexico with the idea of giving love to the kids at the orphanage but a chance encounter with a little girl irrevocably altered my perception. Her name is Brenda and she needs a walker to get around because she suffers from cerebral palsy. Amazingly, that hasn't stopped her from showering everybody she meets with love. When I met her, I was feeling a mite disconcerted by my inability to communicate in Spanish and haltingly asked her what her name was in pained Spanish. She smiled at me and said "I speak English and my name is Brenda." It totally made my day. And then she remembered my name and gave me a hug when I ran into her the next day. Quite possibly the sweetest child I've ever met.
Although most of the work I did on the mission itself was with computers, I did get to do construction work for a day while the mission was closed for a national holiday. Pastor Glen, who runs a nearby rehab centre, donated a plot of land for the construction of a community to house former field workers who've been abandoned by their families. We helped dig an outhouse in the adobe and built wooden trusses. The old men who lived there were quite happy to see us, although most of us weren't able to converse with them because we didn't understand Spanish. The language barrier presented itself that night again when I found myself unable to follow the Spanish sermon. Fortunately one of the Spanish speakers in our group happened to be seated in front of me and decided to transcribe the entire sermon into English in real-time so I just read that instead.
We had brought several dozen pairs of shoes with us for the kids who lived in the nearby camps so we tried washing their feet before upgrading their shoes but the camp was so dusty that this proved to be an exercise in futility. When we arrived at the camp, we were surprised by the amount of dust that the kids had in their hair but by the time we left our hair was equally dusty. Sometimes it was difficult to determine what size of shoe a child needed because many of the kids spoke only an indigenous language that was nothing like Spanish. In the end I made do with dead reckoning and vague hand gestures.
As we were encouraged to take babies from the nursery to the worship ceremony held each morning, I did that one morning. The baby I got came with a little bag of toys that he played with for a while. Eventually, however, he got bored with them and made increasingly determined efforts to crawl around freely. I think my efforts to distract him would have eventually failed if he hadn't discovered a baseball cap lying on the floor beside my chair and realized that he could play peekaboo with it, which kept him amused for an unbelievably long time, although he did keep laughing out loud every time I feigned surprise at his sudden appearance from behind the hat.
Towards the end of our stay at the mission we visited a migrant worker camp where we played with the kids, fed hot meals to everybody, took (and handed out) Polaroid photographs of women with their babies, showed a pair of dubbed evangelical movies and handed out bibles to those who wanted them. Apparently most Mexicans are literate because there is a concerted effort to ensure that everybody gets at least a grade 6 education. Although the kids were very happy to have us play with them, they did tend to go nuts if they thought we had toys on us. One member of our group actually got mobbed by a horde of kids who knocked her to the floor, although she wasn't hurt at all.
Just before we left the mission, pastor Glen (from the rehab centre) shared with us the very moving story of how he turned from a heroin addiction and a life of crime in San Diego to become a pastor in Mexico. He's a funny guy whose life stands as a testament of how God can change people. But he wasn't the only one who shared with me stories of God doing incredible things in their lives. One of my travel-buddies told me how her husband, who was told by doctors that he'd suffer from back-pain for the rest of his life, was healed in a single evening of prayer.
One the way back we were held up when the US border patrol noticed my birthplace and made an overtly bigoted remark about "countries that end in -stan" but they didn't actually question me. Some of my American companions were rather surprised at this behaviour. I guess I've become jaded by it now.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
quikchange) wrote,
contemplative
