Hero Holiday

We aren’t Metalica, but we do have a lot of metal… literally. In the time it took me to actually come up with that joke, we would’ve had two walls built already. While driving back up to the work site this morning, I realized just how much we actually got done yesterday. Still knowing that we had much more to do, I got out of the van, put on my gloves, and picked up a drill. If you knew me, you’d know that power tools are not particularly my cup of tea, but after drilling all day yesterday with only one injury (a sliver to be exact), I was ready for round two. Should I mention that I actually enjoy it?

With the roofing under our belts come lunchtime, we headed back to the house for some food. As soon as we got back to the site, we were ready to put the roof on! A few of us left early on in the afternoon to make 99 bags of popcorn for our movie night at the wonderful school in San Quintin. Trying to avoid work you might ask? I guess I forgot to tell you that this isn’t your regular microwavable popcorn, it was all made on the stove top! After our hours of work, the popcorn was gone in just minutes.

Sitting on a tarp under the stars, watching Megamind on the side of the school, listening to the chomping of popcorn, and having kids giggle while sitting on your lap.  That’s something that is irreplaceable. Much like any building project, in this case an ambulance station, we won’t fully understand how much of an impact we have just by setting aside a week to use our hands and feet to help others out. Today, while on the work site, one of the paramedic’s that’s helping us build this week received a message on his walkie-talkie about a car accident that happened: a car rolled 100 metres. The ambulance came to take the patients to the main hospital, which was hours away, and found out that one of them had passed away in the vehicle on the way.

I will never know how much the four walls I’ve been building mean to them, but it feels good knowing that I’m helping to play my part. It’s not hard to pick up a tool and just do it, and trust me, if I can do it, anyone else can.

Mucholovefrommexico,

-sarah! : )

It was back to early mornings today - another day working in the field. The students slept through their alarm and ended up running down the street in the first light of the day to catch their ride at 5:45am. We went back to the same tomato field as earlier in the week but by this time the regular crew had almost finished taking the trellis’ apart in the whole the field. We continued to roll the plastic tubing into football shaped bundles like we did last time. It was nice to arrive and know how to do the job - it didn’t feel nearly as awkward as it had our first morning in the field. It was even better to hear the field boss say he was impressed by how quickly we had caught on to the job and how well we were doing. Once we were finished that last section, the field boss sent us over to a different section to clear away the dead tomato plants that had been pulled out and left drying in the middle of the rows. Half of us used sticks to roll the plants into large piles. The other half of us used a giant sling made of burlap bags to carry these piles down to the end of the row and throw it onto a giant pile to be burned. By the end of the work day the pile of dead tomato plants that stretched along the section was taller than us and it felt like we had walked a hundred miles up and down those rows. There are still many sections left that need to be cleared before the field will be ready for the next crop of tomatoes to be planted.

I marvel at the amount of work that goes into the produce that I pick through at the grocery store to make sure they are not bruised and then complain if the prices are too high. I also marvel at how hard the people I have met work to take care of their families and how generous they are with what they do have. I have been proud of the students for everything they have tried this week in an effort to get a better understanding of a life very different than what we are used to in Canada. Many Mexicans that we have met this week ask Santiago, our translator, why we would want to do such a thing? Why would Canadians live in a house made of cardboard, cook over a fire, give up their hot shower and work in the fields or go clamming? They do not understand why people would voluntarily do this and after some explanation they are appreciative of our efforts to understand where they are coming from. But they still leave shaking their heads. Little do they realize there is so much that we can and are learning from them.

Written by Rose Friesen, School of Leadership Mexico Facilitator

Dear world,
Today our job was clamming. We had to be up and ready to go in time for low tide which is prime clammin’ time. So we awoke at 2am, which is when I often go to bed at home in Canada. It was fairly cold - so cold in fact that three of the clammers we were to work with got scared off and didn’t show up. So we ended up waiting for an hour and a half for the rest of the clamming crew to show up. I wasn’t complaining because it meant more sleep in the van. We finally got down to the beach around 5am with the boss man and his two remaining workers. We were told to get out into the cold and trade our pants and sweaters for shorts, shirts and barefeet. Once we were suited up with our clamming gear, which consisted of a clam net tied around the waist and a trident (pitch fork), we went out into the freezing cold ocean water to search for some clams. After about half an hour you lose all feeling in your legs and the cold doesn’t bother you as much.
Clammers are paid 35 pesos for every dozen clams they bring in so we figured that between the six of us, each pair would need to collect 40 clams to reach our goal of 300 pesos for the day. Emily and I had no problem reaching that goal and we all went in to call it a day as the tide was coming in and the increasingly growing waves were making it difficult to continue. However when we showed our bounty to the boss we were shocked to discover that over half of everyones’ clams were not large enough to keep and had to be thrown back into the ocean. We did not come close to our goal in the end and didn’t have enough money to survive the rest of the day. So later in the afternoon we did some extra house and yard work to make up for the rest instead of going back out with the clamming crew for the afternoon low tide.
I personally really enjoyed our clamming experience, though most of my other counterparts do not share my joy due to the cold. If I were a Mexican in need of a job I could see myself doing this for a source of income. Though us rookies didn’t bring in a sizeable haul, the two full-time clammers we worked with each brought in about five dozen clams in the three hours we were there and I am told that on a good day clammers can make between 500-800 pesos a day. And that sure beats working in the fields.
Written by Josh McClelland, School of Leadership student