Friday - Crazy busy day

Is it really possible to feel so inspired and completely powerless all at the same time when you're supposed to be there to help?  Answer: yep.  Today goes down in the history books as one of those days that handed me just about every kind of spiritual and emotional teeter-totter one person could experience in less than 12 hours.

4:15 a.m. comes pretty darn early, especially when you're not used to it.  I'm not used to it.  Even getting up at 7:15 every day since I got here has seemed early, but subtract three hours and it's like I'm the bad guy in some zombie movie.  God did not program me to be a morning person.  Try as I might, mornings are just not my thing.  I've certainly gotten better since being here, but I don't even think 4:15 qualifies as morning.  I'm pretty sure that's still nighttime.  Yep.  Pretty sure.  It is in my world, anyway.

I digress.  So another missionary (Rusty) picked me up at 5:15 a.m. (hence the 4:15 a.m. shrieking, jarring, make-me-want-to-hit-something alarm) to head to The Breakfast Club (which is in Tijuana -- about an hour from here).  The Breakfast Club is a church in a former garbage dump that feeds the people (particularly the kids) who live in the dump.  Sounds unreal, huh?  OK, I'll give you a little background.  For years, the Mexican government disposed of its trash in an area of Tijuana.  Several years ago, people starting going to the dump to salvage the trash and sell it to earn money.  Eventually, the people started building their homes ON the trash because of the cost to travel to and from the dump to "harvest" their "crop."  The site ceased to be a dump about two years ago.  I'm told that now the inhabitants have to travel to the new dump site to collect things to sell.  The new dumpsite is a car ride away (many do not have reliable transportation or any at all) and there is a man or someone there who charges for people to enter the new dump and bring things out.  So, now these poor people have to pay to get to the new dump, pay to enter the dump, rummage through trash hoping to find something to sell, pay to exit the dump and pay to travel back home.  It feels so defeating to witness such poverty.  Our best guess is that these families somehow live on roughly $20-$40/week (roughly $257-$515 pesos under today's exchange rates).  Granted, things are cheaper than in America, but still!  That's nothing!

So there are these families, some of which have 3, 4, 5 or more children, living on top of rubbish.  Last year, during a rain storm, one of the families' houses washed away.  They use whatever they can find to construct a house.  Their retaining walls are made of tires.  Their walls are frequently several pieces of board haphazardly nailed together.  Their roofs are not shingled or anything of the sort...they are typically covered with blue tarps.  In fact, blue tarps are the hot commodity in the dump.

At the Breakfast Club, which is run out of a church and staffed by volunteers, they feed anywhere from 100-250 people each morning (I think those numbers are about right).  They do it to ensure that the children get a hot meal each day.  The adults are kind of secondary -- the focus is making sure the kids get a good meal.  The doors open at 7:00 a.m. and close at 9:00 a.m.  People trickle in throughout that time period.  The kids are frequently dressed and ready for school...the kids that go to school anyway.

The children are generally filthy.  Many are living in homes that we would call storage sheds with many siblings, without three meals a day.  To make matters worse, there are these little mini marts in the dump (they are frequently in a shack not much bigger than an outhouse) that sell nothing but candy, soda and other foods completely devoid of all nutritional value.  Many of the kids have teeth problems at a very early age.  Some aren't able to go to school because their parents can't afford the uniform or the school supplies.  In Mexico, every child must have a uniform (and it can't be last year's uniform) and the correct school supplies.  No uniform = no school.  No school supplies = no school.

There are dogs everywhere and most of them don't look too good.  Most of them have something called mange (sp?) and they bite at themselves until they have no fur.  It's a huge problem down here and it breaks my heart as much as the impoverished children.  They hang around looking for scraps and from what I could tell aren't very successful scroungers.

Today, a portion of one of the DoFo groups went up to the Breakfast Club to help prepare and serve the meal.  There were quite a few of them, so there wasn't much for me to do but observe and interact with the people.  I'm OK with that.  Meeting the people and talking to them is reward in and of itself.  Oh, before I forget to mention it: some of the people living in the dump have become so moved by the generosity of the volunteers that they have started volunteering at the Breakfast Club.  Thus, there are locals volunteering their time to feed their own people.  IMHO, just an example of God's work at its finest.  Here are these people that have nothing, and yet they want to give back too.  Their time is all they can offer, so they do it freely and graciously.  

Watching all of this made me feel proud to be a part of it, and completely and utterly powerless to change the cards in life that these kids are dealt.  I saw a group of teenagers there who each appeared to be up to no good in the grand scheme of life. As one person put it, "they would rather be somebody in a place like this than to get out and be a nobody in the big world."  So sad. 

After the Breakfast Club, Rusty and I went to "The Blue Tarp School" or Dave Lynch's School.  David Lynch was a school teacher in Long Island who moved to the Tijuana dumps and began teaching over three decades ago.  There was no building for a school.  Dave draped a blue tarp over the trash and began teaching the children of the dump.  Now there is a school and a community center.  

This is the school:

One of the gentlemen I met at Gringo Night is currently in charge of the community center and kindergarden school (if I understand everything correctly).  The community center prepares lunches for the kindergarden children four days a week; some of the volunteers are mothers of the children.  

Here are two of the women I met today.  The one on the left has three children; the one on the right has five, including that baby she's holding.  

Ironically, or perhaps the better word is divinely, I was standing outside the community center waiting for my ride, asking God to show me how I could help these people, when Rusty came out trailed by these two women.  Rusty said, "well Heather, we get to do some real work.  We have to run to the store because she needs diapers and milk."  So, seven of us (me, Rusty, the two women, the baby, one of the daughters and another kid) climbed into a mid-sized SUV and off we went to the store.  Rusty and I split the tab (or at least we each chipped in...I'm not sure that I gave enough) for diapers, two baby bottles, some baby formula and some baby wipes.  I was thankful to be able to help.  Sadly, it only leaves me wishing there is more I can do.  Even if I gave them all of my money, it wouldn't be enough to break the horrible cycle.

The community center has a computer room for the community to use...take a look at those old computers...yet the people are grateful.

There is a library of sort for the kids.  They don't have very many books, but they are working on it.  At least some volunteers have been helping to make the community center more vibrant, workable and usable.

Rusty and I finished and were back in La Misíon around 1 p.m.  It was really an amazing day!  So gut-wrenching and so rewarding to be a part of it all.  I am going back to the Breakfast Club again before I leave.

This is just a summary of a portion of my giving today, but there is so much more.  I had heartfelt, fascinating and rewarding conversations with Rusty.  I once again felt the miraculousness of the vast ocean stretching along the coastline on my drive back to the orphanage.  I had great local tacos at a taco stand in Rosarito.  I came back to the orphanage and got to hang with the kids here for a bit and get some hugs.

Despite the heartbreak and poverty, there's not one moment of today that I would change.  I thank God for showing this to me and allowing it to move me in ways that only He can do.