Good news! I’ve been telling you the story of the 2 little girls with the missing birth certificates. In Mexico, children need birth certificates to go to school. Unfortunately, getting one is not free, so often the poorest moms just don’t get it done. Which means the children who need education the most, may not be able to access it. It is frustrating and Veronica, the director at Manos de Amor has spent too many hours to count over the years chasing moms for papers. If mom won’t cooperate, her children can’t go to school. That has been the story for 7-year-old Britany for the past 18 months. She has been shuffled back and forth between Mom, Grandma, and Manos de Amor and has never been able to attend a school. She has watched her friends go to school each morning while she is left behind. Although Manos de Amor has offered to pay for the birth certificate and do all the legwork, Mom has simply refused to cooperate, and she is the only one who can make the application with a photo and signature.
On Monday, Mom came to Manos de Amor to tell us where her new home is, and Veronica insisted she go with her to get her photo taken. At first, she refused…. again…. but after borrowing some makeup from one of the staff members she agreed to go. By Tuesday Veronica had the papers filled out and signed and many copies made. It will still be a while before she gets the actual birth certificate – papers must be filed at 4 different offices around the state. But having the papers filled out was enough for the school to agree to allow Britani to attend – under 2 conditions:
- It is only approved for two months. If no papers are produced within 2 months, no more school for Britani.
- She had to bring her own chair. What? Nope, the school did not have an extra chair for Britani, she would have to bring her own. So Veronica took a little wooden chair from the Manos de Amor dining room, outfitted it with a desktop and voila…. she had a desk.
From the dining room to a classroom
By Wednesday, Britani was in school in her spiffy new uniform and polished black shoes, and when we picked her and her sister up in the golf cart after school she was happy beyond measure. She is a year behind others her age, 2 months behind those in her class – but she is in school and she is excited.
More than anything, we hope that this will be a turning point for this family. That Mom will step up and recognize how amazing her children are. Will be there Friday afternoon to take her daughters home from school like all the other mothers who crowd around the school doors. And if that doesn’t happen, our guest rooms are ready. But for this week we celebrate that finally Britani is in school!
Carmelo has been dating Paolo for a year or two. When he first approached her dad to ask for his blessing to marry Paolo, Dad said “It is too soon – she is too young. Let’s wait a bit”. Carmelo respected this advice and waited until Dad gave him the green light. Immediately the engagement was on and now, just 4 months later, it is the wedding day of these two amazing young people, the boda.
Over the next 2 days I called that number 35 times. One call lasted 1 hour, 44 minutes and 58 secs. Another was 31 minutes and 5 seconds. Norma would ask the same questions, give me the same instructions (you must email your boarding pass and passport and a letter) and I would give her the same answers (Norma, I emailed that to you this morning – please check your email) and then she would say “Okay let me check” and put her phone on the desk so I could hear her talking to the guy with the lost IPhone and then 15 minutes later we would have the exact same conversation. For 1 hour and 44 minutes and 58 seconds. I was starting to lose it. I could see that computer slipping away. She kept asking me which flight I lost it on and I kept saying “Norma, it is sitting at the Terminal 2 Lost and Found – please just check your email and then go get my computer and put it on a flight. PLEASE NORMA!!!!” “Okay let me check.” “Okay I found your email and boarding passes, but I need a copy of your passport.” “Norma, it’s in the same email.” “Okay let me check”. 15 minutes. “Okay I found your passport but I need a letter asking us to send the computer.” “NORMA IT’S ALL IN THE SAME EMAIL. PLEASE CHECK.” “Okay let me check”.
The oldest children – those 10 and over – use the Duolingo language learning app. We don’t really have to teach them – we are there to help when they are stuck and to do group review from time to time. We are also there to stop their little fingers from ‘accidentally’ going to the App store and ‘surprisingly’ downloading games. “I don’t know how that happened Karen”. Sure you don’t. We do reward them with a few minutes of game time to keep them coming back. I love using this app because each child moves at his or her pace and new students can join at any time.
The funnest class is the littles, the 4-6 year olds. They are hilarious and are actually learning quite a few words. They are the ones who speak to me in English every chance they get. “Hello, my name is Azbeth, how are you I am fine and you?” They just run it all together and are so proud. This week they learned shapes and today we finished the week by making Shape Guy heads. They practiced shapes and face parts and colors on one little craft and they were pretty excited with the final product once they had added some butterflies and dogs and family members.
The same inspector looked at the trailer yet again and this time he admired our ladders on top of the trailer. “I could really use a new ladder – how much are these worth?” We ignored the bait and we headed inside. He looked at the new sticker, shuffled and reshuffled the papers, punched away on the computer and finally said “Sorry – this number doesn’t seem to be in the computer database. There’s nothing I can do. You’ll have to go back to the border”. WHAT? Okay I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS. We are not taking the trailer to the border. You can see the serial number matches the papers now. “Well then you’ll have to see my boss in Tepic”. We already saw your boss – in his office in Bucerias. “That’s not my boss. That guy has nothing to do with this. You need to go to Tepic”. I really wish I had taken a selfie right then – my face had to be in complete shock. What was going on? So I did what I should have done 11 months earlier. I sat down in a chair in front of his desk and said, “We are not going anywhere – you have to do something.” And then I sat there. For 90 minutes. A standoff of silence. I was not leaving until the inspection forms were stamped and stapled to the other papers. Just. Not. Leaving. He phoned a few people. Told me over and over he couldn’t do anything and I just sat there. After about 90 minutes I said “Look, just fill out the form and give us the plates.” And you know what he said? He said “Okay”, and he pulled out his inspection pad and filled it out in triplicate and handed me the green copy to take back to the DMV office. We were getting plates – and just to be sure, one small ladder stayed behind.
When we arrived back at the Transito office we lined up at the cashier – one last step. But nope. Back to our friendly lady in the office. I am not even exaggerating. She unstapled our stack of papers, made new copies, reshuffled, and restapled. Then she sent us back to the cashier. After another ½ hour or so the cashier went to talk to the woman in the office and they both came to us, “This telephone bill you gave us to prove your address – it is dated September 2016. That’s a year old. We can’t use it- we need a current one.” WELL NO KIDDING IT’S A YEAR OLD – CAUSE THAT IS HOW LONG THIS THING HAS TAKEN. ONE YEAR. Luckily we had just paid our phone bill that morning and it was in our car and we handed it over. Surely that is it right? “No we are missing the original registration to prove it was registered in Canada.” Oh my gosh – you are seriously kidding me. How can you need more papers? You have every paper I have ever owned. It is all stapled in that stack with 1 million staple holes. I don’t have anything else to give you! And then she pulled an email out of the file folder I was carrying. It was the email Grant had sent to the manufacturer asking for another Serial number sticker. “Okay, this is good enough”. WHAT? That paper had nothing to do with the registration – in fact it was evidence we had changed the serial number on the trailer. But it was in English and she had no idea what it said and she was happy to have one more piece of paper. Whatever. Back to the cashier. We paid the fees. And then the cashier handed us all our papers back, divided into 2 piles and told us to go back to the office and get 2 copies of this pile and 3 copies of the other one. WHAT? We were just in that office. She made lots of copies. How can you need more copies? Back to the office. More copies. More fees to pay for the copies. Back to the cashier who stamped every copy, reshuffled the piles, restapled them all.
Market analysis and profit margins and business plans are not a thing here in my neighborhood. There is literally a corner store, a mini super – on every single block. All selling exactly the same things. At the cheapest price you have ever seen. You can buy one egg, one diaper, one cigarette, one bun. No one is getting rich – but everyone can have his own business. And this week when I went to buy a loaf of bread at my neighborhood mini super, the owners were in the middle of eating their family meal and offered me a tostado. Customers, neighbors, friends.
Karen Moves to Mexico 