Week 3, and All is Well

Tomorrow marks 3 weeks in Mexico, which means another week will be a month, and that just seems highly impossible.  Where did the time go?  Last night as I waited in a crowded dark one bedroom apartment with about 15 other people for a second surprise party, I was reminded of the weekend that I said goodbye to Philadelphia and great friends in a similarly cramped one bedroom apartment.  Emails from my Dad remind me that my clients from the group home still think about me, and I about them, as their pictures make up a prominent part of my room wall collage.  Yet, it already seems like another lifetime when I would spend my every evening at that country home, making dinner, joking, and sharing life with some of the greatest characters I've had the privilege to meet. 

Now there are new characters.  The Casa is full of them.  The surprise party was hosted by a guy named David, whose life story is about as crazy as they come.  He was born in Mexico but adopted by a family in New York when he was 2 months old.   He grew up in New York City, and everyone agrees that he is American through and through, from his baseball cap to his baggy jerseys to his loud and goofy personality.  I'm not quite sure of the exact details of what happened, but apparently his adoptions papers were never processed properly and when he was jailed as an adult, the error was found and he was deported to Mexico.  Born Mexican but raised American, he had no idea what to do when as a city boy he was deported to a small Mexican town where he didn't speak a word of Spanish.  Somehow, he ended up in Mexico City, and the people at the Casa adopted him into their extended family.  Now he lives three blocks away and frequents the Sunday night potluck.  I first experienced David in all his glory at a migration meeting last week.  It was a discussion about migration and the European Union, and he ended up regaling the crowd with an impassioned diatribe in Spanglish about how Mexicans care more about their tourist attractions than their indigenous people.  Anyway, he met his girlfriend April at "the place where everybody finds love"- the Casa de los Amigos- and threw a delightfully disorganized surprise welcome home party for her on Saturday.

Characters like David give the Casa its unique flavor.  Everyone is welcome here, and I love it.  While most of our guests are activists or travelers, we also have a connection with an organization called Sin Fronteras (Without Borders) that sends migrants and refugees to us for short-term housing on occasion.  Right now there is a refugee here from Senegal and a migrant family from Colombia.  I am amazed by Aminata, the French-speaking Senegali woman, because she has learned enough Spanish to get by after only three months in Mexico.  She is graceful and dignified, joining us for free meals with a smile and blending into the Casa family with comfortable ease, despite the heart-breaking fact that her own family is oceans away.  You never know who you might meet on any given day in reception, as on my second shift I found myself holding a beautiful 5 day old baby girl.  She is one of the daughters of a Colombian migrant named Diana.  The other daughter is 5, and she immediately won me over by chatting excitedly with her South American accent as we drew pictures of animals and princesses.  

Then there's Enrique, or "Kike," a Cuban guy with a huge amount of heart and charisma.  He's got a pot belly and a Spanish that's almost impossible to understand, but you would be hard-pressed to find someone who's more adored at the Casa.  Kike has been with the Casa doing maintenance for a few months as he's been in the process of working out a way to go home to Cuba.  He came to us from Sin Fronteras as well, but has fully integrated himself into the family with his lavish Cuban meals and irresistible Cuban pride.  He has not seen his family for 15 years... 15 years, can you even imagine?  Most of that time he was living in Miami.  On Friday, he received two letters from home saying that his homecoming is being facilitated by the communication between a Cuban Quaker and the Mexican embassy.  His eyes were brimming with tears as he told us repeatedly that it was the best day of his life.  Gosh, aren't moments like these only reserved for the movies?

One of my other favorite things that happened this week was coming face to face with a population of people that I have been intrigued by since Spring: Central American immigrants who are traveling atop dangerous Mexican trains en route to the United States.  Sonia Nazario, the author of Enrique's Journey, spoke at my college graduation in May, and while her speech was faulted for being too informative and soapbox-y instead of traditional commencement day encouragement, I hung on her every word.  It was the first that I had heard of this phenomenon in which children undertake a perilous journey by way of Mexican railways in order to reunite with parents working in the States.  While not about Central American immigrants, the moving film Under The Same Moon tackles the same issue of parents and children who are painfully separated by migration.  Reading Nazario's inspiring reporting in Enrique's Journey (she reenacted the journey of a Honduran boy named Enrique by riding atop the trains herself) truly affected me.  How could I go about my daily activity with the consciousness that desperate immigrants were losing limbs to get to this place which I call home?  

This week the Casa housed Honduran migrants coming straight from the train tracks for a night, and I was able to provide them with breakfast in the morning.  I practically leapt at the opportunity when I saw that we were short on breakfast supplies, running to the store to buy eggs and scrounging up the rest of the bread that I had bought the day before.  I sat at the table with them, searching their friendly faces and imagining the harrowing things they must have been through to get just this far, to central Mexico.  If I am assigned to work on the migration project at the Casa, one of my duties will be helping to figure out a partnership that the Casa can have with an individual or organization that provides direct support to the train tracks.  We are hoping to gather socks, clothing, food, etc in collection boxes that can then be transported to La Lecheria, one of the biggest and closest points of immigrant activity on the railways.