RVers find a different side of life
Here in Lake Chapala, Mexico, the weather continues sunny as the snowbirds and retirees dream through the beautiful days and balmy nights. We hear that California is being swamped by El Nino’s rain while here we are in Paradise. This IS a wonderful place to spend the winters! Now in mid February the day’s are lengthening and getting warmer as we head into March and April. Those months can be rather warm here but, we are told, without the humidity one encounters on the coast. We love this temperate climate. Can’t you tell?
Do my feeling show in these articles or am I silent, suffering culture shock? Retirement does not allow me to stand back; I am not just a tourist, ignoring most of what I see, feeling little as I fly back home. Driving through this country my friend Dorothy and I have seen a lot. There is so much to tell you and it gets to me, deep down. For instance: we sadly note the juxtaposition of poor and rich with shack and walled mansion standing beside each other on the same street. It continually surprises me to see beautiful gardens as I peak over a wall, while garbage piles up next door. Everywhere rich and poor pass each other by, hardly noticing. But I notice as little Mexican children come out of school, dressed in clean uniforms, and run home - to where, a shack? Someone is trying hard to reach for a future.
Yesterday friends took us to see where the REALLY poor live. We hesitated to take our Roadtrek camper van into the back streets of Chapala, worrying about potholes and cobblestones, but we drove carefully around parked trucks, over stone and pothole, safely skirting dogs and children, going so slowly that the drink on the counter didn’t spill! Yes, Treky has good shock absorbers but how long will they last on that kind of surface without gas shocks? We parked, thankfully, at the bottom of a long steep hill and asked if we were to go up there? Yes.
Across from the van we peered inside a pottery workshop where a man pounded and mixed the clay with his bare feet. Further inside we watched, after our eyes had adjusted to the gloom, as the clay was moulded and smoothed into lovely Mexican pots. The workers meanwhile stood in thick dust among walls that were there just to give shade and looked like they could tumble down. Another shop - this time a tooling shop - welcomed my video camera as the machinist showed us a beautifully crafted wall hanging, explaining in Espanol how the sun fitted inside. His laugh was infectious, but I noticed the poverty of the surroundings that produced such a beautiful wall hanging.
Then we started climbing up the hill, carefully putting one foot at a time on the rough steps, slipping over sand and rocky spaces holding on to helping hands most of the way. As we climbed we carefully stepped around runoffs of what looked like sewer water; it didn’t smell too bad though. Up a little way we looked down upon an outdoor kitchen with a pot boiling on an open fire. In the same opening a gaunt, tethered cow bellowed up at us. Further up chickens clucked as we looked over a ramshackle wall, and a little further up we could see the roof where two mangy mutts were tied. Do they ever get down from there? Dogs are not treated well here being left to scrounge for whatever they can find. Our pampered cocker spaniel, with her funny haircut, causes amazed looks and laughter!
Bit by bit, as we climbed, children gathered around us and were delighted to get a tennis ball each, though how they could throw them to each other on such a rocky hillside escaped me. As I took some good video shots and played it back, the children laughed at seeing their pictures on the feedback. That’s always a big hit! At the top some children tried on sandals brought from Canada, but one mother said to return them for another child poorer than they! How could one be poorer? Pride keeps a family going here, without it what would happen? Even these children are dressed in clean clothes, obviously cared for, but their “homes” were what Canadians would call hovels. We watched as one woman carefully swept the dust, dirt and garbage away from her front door, wanting to make the best impression she could with the little she had.
We had climbed all the way up to get pictures on my video of the homes of two little children with spinal bifida. The association PROGRAMA POR NINOS INCAPACIDADOS DEL LAGO was working to provide them with wheelchairs. When Mother goes shopping for the little she could buy and carry back, she must first carry her handicapped child all the way down the steps, along the streets to the shops and back up the hill! Those two little girls badly need wheelchairs, but the usual stroller won’t last long on that rocky terrain.
Volunteers are cannibalising wheelchair parts from Canada to make up one with sturdy wheels, even so, the wheelchair would have to be left with relatives at the bottom of the hill as there is no way it could manoeuvre the stairs and rocks. But what a great help that wheelchair will be for the tired mother who must walk everywhere carrying her handicapped child. There is a continuous need for such wheelchairs.
The Programma Pro Ninos Incapacitados del Lago was organized in 1993 and registered by the Mexican government; today over 150 children are being helped in the Lake Chapala region. The main objective is not only the medical care of disabled children and young people but also to provide mobility, i.e., wheelchairs and braces to enable them to be integrated into the community. This program also provides prostheses, surgery, consultations with specialists, speech therapy, diagnostic tests, walkers and transportation for therapy and treatment. All the equipment for mobility comes from Canada, with much of the equipment provided by the B.C. Paraplegic Association or gathered by the R.V. Association of B.C.
Margarita, this Program’s Mexican liaison, accompanied us up the hill. She explained the sad circumstances that so many of these little handicapped children must live in. The first little girl was alone when we arrived so we couldn’t get in. The grandmother had died so now the mother has to work to support the family. An aunt who lives next door helps out but she had to go shopping, so the child, blind and spastic, lay alone inside, accompanied only by a radio. Meanwhile a thin, mangy dog lay on the step outside and growled if we came too close. The aunt arrived shortly afterwards and brought the child out. Her little bobbing head was adorned with earrings and she was clothed decently, but such need! With no social assistance or welfare, children often have to go to work, bagging groceries or whatever, to bring in some pesos to support the family. The street is their extended family, where most are inter-related. This is part of the problem, but also provides the solution as other family members, living close by, help out.
The view from way up was spectacular as we looked down on the rich man’s lake from the heights of poverty. We didn’t see inside any homes, but from the outside the poverty is real and life should be gruesome, yet the children looked happy as they accompanied us up. One little child tipped my hat off as I walked below her window and we both laughed with glee, just as my brother and I had done from behind the church wall as children in Bermuda years ago!
Another friend is offering to take us to see some of the local leadership who are trying to do something to help their community. This is a good idea as we don’t want to give the impression that the community and Mexican people don’t care, they obviously do! But this is a third-world country, even though it is rumoured that the Ex President declared it was not! Much help and money is needed before such deep rooted poverty can be irradicated and a social assistance net set up to help the families we saw yesterday.
On getting back to the PAL Trailer Resort, we washed up, had lunch and went for a swim. Were we so untouched by the poverty all around? No, we were feeling it deeply and marvelled at what women in such circumstances have to do each day just to live and get by, caring for their children with so little. It hurts to see such poverty while the rich live next door, or down by the lake, encased in mansions with beautiful gardens, unaffected behind their high walls. The garbage strewn around on the other side of the wall is a kind of silent protest: this is WHERE THE POOR LIVE TOO.