Things are looking up around the Hardt's motor home. I actually had enough energy to not only do the laundry, but make a pot of beans using the ham bone Juni had saved from our Christmas dinner. It's been a couple of weeks since I've had any extra energy at all and it felt good to feel like doing something besides sleeping and napping every chance I've gotten.
I had been totally worn out by my junket into Mexico with the Executive Board and spent most of the weekend recovering from it. It's hard to believe one could rest and sleep so much.
Unfortunately, Forry is still hanging on to the dregs of his cold, or flu, or whatever it is we've had. We were planning to make a Costco run this afternoon, but by the time he got dressed and ready to go, he didn't feel up to it...
Juni and Tom stopped by on their way to town and shared a large bagful of oranges, lemons and pink grapefruit their neighbor had shared with them. Juni also shared some cucumbers, lettuce and other veggies that she had picked up in quantity. We tried one of those grapefruit -- it sure was delicious! I sure hope this chilly weather we're having doesn't affect the citrus crops.
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Monday, January 14, 2013
Saturday, January 12, 2013
BorderLinks
Early Friday morning (7 AM) we (Members of the Executive Board of Mennonite Church USA, a couple of spouses, the CEOs and staff of church agencies and our Executive Director) boarded a charter bus at the Sheraton Hotel where we had been meeting and headed down the highway to Tucson, Arizona. We were going to the headquarters of BorderLinks, a partner of Mennonite Central Committee. BorderLinks was going to take us on a tour that will also be offered to attendees of Mennonite Church USA's Assembly this July in Phoenix.
After a bathroom break, we gathered in the living area of BorderLinks for an orientation. The lady in the middle speaking is Fernanda Morillon and the lady in the cap next to her is Rachel Winch (Rachel was the driver of the van I rode in.)
There were twenty-seven of us in our group. We left BorderLinks in two vans and headed for Nogales, Mexico. We crossed the border almost without knowing it. They have a random system. If you get a green light you go on through. A red light diverts your vehicle for questioning. Both vans got green lights and we stopped just the other side of the fence.
This is where deportees from the United States are dropped off. There is a Red Cross clinic here, but there was no one around it.
We had enough Spanish speakers with us that we were able to talk to some of the people who had been deported that day. I was hesitant about invading their privacy, but it turned out they were anxious to talk. This group of folks had been abandoned in the desert by their "coyote" when the Border Patrol came upon them. (They had paid the coyote $3000-$6000 each to be safely transported across the desert.) As Fernanda talked with them, the young woman on her left broke my heart. She was 23 years and her face looked so much like my oldest granddaughter. She had three children (all born in the US) and had spent six years in California picking strawberries. She went home to visit her family and now is separated from her children.
One of the women had become separated from her younger brother in the desert and had not heard whether he was alive or dead. They were trying to check with the Detention Centers to see if he might be at one of them.
A cemetery adjacent to the deportee area --
This area, with its services for deportees, is actually a service of the Mexican government --
Next door is one of the many factories established following NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) --
Nogales is NOT the sleepy little village I remember from visiting over forty years ago. There are many American chains represented here -- and the Mexicans say they "take all of their earnings back to the US as well!"
No different than the US, there was lots of road construction everywhere --
After our visit at Grupos Beta, we drove to the top of a ridge overlooking Nogales where and organization named HEPAC (Hogar de Experanza y Paz A.C.) was our host --
Here we ran into something I hadn't seen since we were in Bolivia -- composting toilets! There's a bucket of wood shavings out of sight over on the left for throwing down the hole when you've finished your business. Used toilet tissue goes in the waste basket...
Due to the incredible numbers of workers moving to Nogales to work in the factories, the hillsides are filled with various shanty barrios --
Most families have both parents working in the factories. The schools are open only four hours per day. Therefore, there are lots of children left alone most of the day. HEPAC tries to run camps and classes for children. A good share of their work is trying to educate the children that they do not have to allow inappropriate touching by others...
More of the hillside housing. The mountains in the rear are across the border in the US.
More housing --
This is housing built by one of the factories as part of their contract with the Mexican government. This unit houses a couple of hundred workers, but the company employs over five throusand!
That housing complex is next door to this Maquiladora, one of ninety-five huge factories in Nogales.
Another Maquiladora. You can see the border fence in the background --
We crossed the border back into the United States without incident. The Border Patrol agent took the fourteen passports from our van, ran them through her little machine and waved us on by. We drove around to look at the infamous wall from the American side of the border --
It's an ugly steel thing, twenty four feet high, rusting away --
Incongruously, there are gates in the fence about every hundred feet or so --
And of course, a couple of our group had to try and see if they could climb it --
We hadn't been there long before the Border Patrol stopped by. We were very close to the spot where a couple of weeks ago, a Mexican sixteen year old had been shot (on the Mexican side of the border) eighteen times by US Border Patrol after he threw rocks at them. We heard a lot about it while we were in Nogales, but I sure hadn't read anything in the Phoenix paper.
A chilly prayer vigil at the fence; some quiet time for reflection then it was back to Tucson and Cas Miraposa where a wonderful hot meal was waiting for us.
Casa Mariposa is a house of hospitality for people being released from immigration detention. Our meal was prepared by recent detainees who later shared their stories with us.
It was a long, emotional day that will require a great deal of reflection and processing on my part. Id you are going to be attending the Mennonite Church USA Assembly in July in Phoenix, you can sign up to spend a day with a BorderLinks/MCC trip.
After a bathroom break, we gathered in the living area of BorderLinks for an orientation. The lady in the middle speaking is Fernanda Morillon and the lady in the cap next to her is Rachel Winch (Rachel was the driver of the van I rode in.)
There were twenty-seven of us in our group. We left BorderLinks in two vans and headed for Nogales, Mexico. We crossed the border almost without knowing it. They have a random system. If you get a green light you go on through. A red light diverts your vehicle for questioning. Both vans got green lights and we stopped just the other side of the fence.
This is where deportees from the United States are dropped off. There is a Red Cross clinic here, but there was no one around it.
We had enough Spanish speakers with us that we were able to talk to some of the people who had been deported that day. I was hesitant about invading their privacy, but it turned out they were anxious to talk. This group of folks had been abandoned in the desert by their "coyote" when the Border Patrol came upon them. (They had paid the coyote $3000-$6000 each to be safely transported across the desert.) As Fernanda talked with them, the young woman on her left broke my heart. She was 23 years and her face looked so much like my oldest granddaughter. She had three children (all born in the US) and had spent six years in California picking strawberries. She went home to visit her family and now is separated from her children.
One of the women had become separated from her younger brother in the desert and had not heard whether he was alive or dead. They were trying to check with the Detention Centers to see if he might be at one of them.
A cemetery adjacent to the deportee area --
This area, with its services for deportees, is actually a service of the Mexican government --
Next door is one of the many factories established following NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) --
Nogales is NOT the sleepy little village I remember from visiting over forty years ago. There are many American chains represented here -- and the Mexicans say they "take all of their earnings back to the US as well!"
No different than the US, there was lots of road construction everywhere --
After our visit at Grupos Beta, we drove to the top of a ridge overlooking Nogales where and organization named HEPAC (Hogar de Experanza y Paz A.C.) was our host --
Here we ran into something I hadn't seen since we were in Bolivia -- composting toilets! There's a bucket of wood shavings out of sight over on the left for throwing down the hole when you've finished your business. Used toilet tissue goes in the waste basket...
Due to the incredible numbers of workers moving to Nogales to work in the factories, the hillsides are filled with various shanty barrios --
Most families have both parents working in the factories. The schools are open only four hours per day. Therefore, there are lots of children left alone most of the day. HEPAC tries to run camps and classes for children. A good share of their work is trying to educate the children that they do not have to allow inappropriate touching by others...
More of the hillside housing. The mountains in the rear are across the border in the US.
More housing --
This is housing built by one of the factories as part of their contract with the Mexican government. This unit houses a couple of hundred workers, but the company employs over five throusand!
That housing complex is next door to this Maquiladora, one of ninety-five huge factories in Nogales.
Another Maquiladora. You can see the border fence in the background --
We crossed the border back into the United States without incident. The Border Patrol agent took the fourteen passports from our van, ran them through her little machine and waved us on by. We drove around to look at the infamous wall from the American side of the border --
It's an ugly steel thing, twenty four feet high, rusting away --
Incongruously, there are gates in the fence about every hundred feet or so --
And of course, a couple of our group had to try and see if they could climb it --
We hadn't been there long before the Border Patrol stopped by. We were very close to the spot where a couple of weeks ago, a Mexican sixteen year old had been shot (on the Mexican side of the border) eighteen times by US Border Patrol after he threw rocks at them. We heard a lot about it while we were in Nogales, but I sure hadn't read anything in the Phoenix paper.
A chilly prayer vigil at the fence; some quiet time for reflection then it was back to Tucson and Cas Miraposa where a wonderful hot meal was waiting for us.
Casa Mariposa is a house of hospitality for people being released from immigration detention. Our meal was prepared by recent detainees who later shared their stories with us.
It was a long, emotional day that will require a great deal of reflection and processing on my part. Id you are going to be attending the Mennonite Church USA Assembly in July in Phoenix, you can sign up to spend a day with a BorderLinks/MCC trip.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Trip to Nogales
Today the Executive Board of Mennonite Church USA and the heads of its agencies and its Executive Director went to Tucson, Arizona and then across the border to Nogales, Mexico. It was a long trip and a lot of driving. We met some incredible people and heard some very moving stories. I have a lot of pictures, but it is late and I am very tired. I'll leave you with the picture of the bus we rode to Tucson and a promise to write more about it tomorrow.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Day Two
Another day of meetings. We started at 8:15 this morning, which meant leaving Valle del Oro at little after seven. Fortunately the traffic was not as bad as we had anticipated and I was actually a few minutes early for the meeting.
It was a long day. The Moderator-elect chaired this afternoon's session and she did a very good job getting us w-a-y ahead of schedule. In fact, we thought we'd be getting done by 5:30. But, it was not to be. When the Moderator took over, he had several things he wanted to add. Then he introduced some pretty heavy material very late in the day. Of course, there were lots of questions and ideas, so we actually got out late.
I had called Forry mid-afternoon to tell him of the anticipated early dismissal. He ended up waiting in the parking area by the lobby for over an hour! Though I think he was in a better mood than I was by the time I got there!
Tomorrow the charter bus we are taking to Mexico is scheduled to leave at 7 AM! And the word is we will be getting back to the hotel at 9 or 10 in the evening if all goes well. So off to bed for me!
It was a long day. The Moderator-elect chaired this afternoon's session and she did a very good job getting us w-a-y ahead of schedule. In fact, we thought we'd be getting done by 5:30. But, it was not to be. When the Moderator took over, he had several things he wanted to add. Then he introduced some pretty heavy material very late in the day. Of course, there were lots of questions and ideas, so we actually got out late.
I had called Forry mid-afternoon to tell him of the anticipated early dismissal. He ended up waiting in the parking area by the lobby for over an hour! Though I think he was in a better mood than I was by the time I got there!
Tomorrow the charter bus we are taking to Mexico is scheduled to leave at 7 AM! And the word is we will be getting back to the hotel at 9 or 10 in the evening if all goes well. So off to bed for me!
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Site 1659
After spending last night at Colorado River Oasis RV Park, we headed back on Hwy 95 to Quartzite and then onto Interstate 10 to take us the 133 miles into Phoenix and onto Mesa. As we gotten further south, we've seen more flowers in bloom. I always enjoy my first sight of bougainvillea. I remember how excited I was the first time I saw these tropical blossoms when we took our little trailer to Mexico back in the sixties.
There were scattered patches of bougainvillea in the landscaping on either side of the freeway --
The area around Phoenix is heavily populated -- it seems to have sprawled considerable larger since we were last here two years ago. There are now 13! exits for Mesa alone.
This is where we turned off on Ellsworth Road -- those are the Superstition Mountains in the background.
And here we are at Valle Del Oro, which will be our home for the next three-four months.
We had just gotten settled in at Site 1659 when our friend Juni and Tom drove up. They were on their way to a Costco run and just happened to spot us as they drove by. We made plans for dinner at Tia Rosa's tomorrow night and then went back to unpacking the lounge chairs and bicycles from Toad II.
There were scattered patches of bougainvillea in the landscaping on either side of the freeway --
The area around Phoenix is heavily populated -- it seems to have sprawled considerable larger since we were last here two years ago. There are now 13! exits for Mesa alone.
This is where we turned off on Ellsworth Road -- those are the Superstition Mountains in the background.
And here we are at Valle Del Oro, which will be our home for the next three-four months.
We had just gotten settled in at Site 1659 when our friend Juni and Tom drove up. They were on their way to a Costco run and just happened to spot us as they drove by. We made plans for dinner at Tia Rosa's tomorrow night and then went back to unpacking the lounge chairs and bicycles from Toad II.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Kathy's Korner Nursery
Ever since we met our RVing friend Leslie, she has talked about her aunt's nursery in Florida. Today we met them in St. Petersburg and got to visit Kathy's Korner Nursery. It is a spectacular sight as you drive up as the entire front is covered with huge pots of Bougainvilleas. To me, this is the flower that symbolizes the south. I was captivated the first time I saw them in California and Mexico where they spill down adobe walls and look wonderful. I only discovered recently that the colorful "flowers" are actually leaves (similar to that of poinsettias). The real flower is that tiny white speck in the middle of the display.
I never knew they came in so many gorgeous colors! This is the front of the nursery from across the street showing the colorful display.
I have lots more pictures of the plants at the nursery, but I'll share them another day. The one thing I didn't get is a picture of Kathy -- she is VERY camera shy!
I never knew they came in so many gorgeous colors! This is the front of the nursery from across the street showing the colorful display.
I have lots more pictures of the plants at the nursery, but I'll share them another day. The one thing I didn't get is a picture of Kathy -- she is VERY camera shy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)