We have 2 pieces of VERY exciting news to share…
But let me back up a bit. Today on this Canadian Thanksgiving, I am once again reflecting on all we have, remembering where we have been, dreaming about where we will go. Last month marked the 5-year anniversary of our move here and it would be an understatement to say that my life looks absolutely nothing like I expected it to. I have had a lot of 5-year bubbles in my life, but this one picked me up and took me to a place I had never known existed and had not bought a ticket for. I have always promised to be real, and I know you are wondering if we’re still happy here or if that bubble has burst.
It is hard to answer that without acknowledging that 2020 has been LOCO! For everyone. In the world. And it has indeed been crazy for us too.
If you follow my social media accounts, you already know that we have been delivering food to those in need in our community for the past 7 months. Our Golf Cart Rental customers scattered in March and within a week we were delivering bags of staples to those who were most affected by the tourism shutdown. Beach vendors, restaurant workers, hotel employees, market vendors – no tourists meant no income and that meant no food. Most had no reserves, no savings, no pantries, no stockpiles. They were instantly in trouble and our empty golf carts were perfect to deliver supplies throughout our town.
In these 7 months we have changed. Yes, our daily routine is different. We have met new people. Learned about new colonias and barrios. Seen Mexico through different eyes. But it is more than that. It is us. We have changed.
When we first moved here 5 years ago, it was our intention to build a beautiful house in a beautiful development with a beautiful view of a beautiful bay. We always planned to help others – we were already connected to volunteering at a local orphanage. But I think I saw our service at a bit of a distance from our actual life in the suburbs. 2020 drew us into the center of pain and poverty. We became friends with women with bruised faces. Homeless families living under tarps in fields. Seniors with untreated broken bones. Children with rotting, black teeth from their steady diet of coca-cola. Animals with protruding ribs and open sores. So much sadness and need and pain.
But also, so much love and strength. New relationships with strong moms carrying babies on their chests or backs – heading to the beach to try to sell a few trinkets. Families banding together to care for one another. Loud music and laughter and fiestas because birthdays are just really important here. Everywhere we go now, people waving at us and offering us frozen fruit water and crafts and tortillas to thank us. One mom told me last week that her 2-year-old daughter was very angry at us. When I asked why she said her daughter had seen us drive by a few days prior and we hadn’t stopped to talk to her. She had called after us but we didn’t hear and we didn’t stop. She now looks forward to seeing us every week and I look forward to seeing her too. That’s not just offering charity – that’s friendship.
A few months ago we made a decision that this work is part of who we are now and this week we signed some very important papers. That’s our first piece of good news. Grant and myself and our friend Francisco signed the final documents to register Refuge of Hope, Bucerias as a charity here in Mexico. It wasn’t easy. Legal things never are here in Mexico. And then you throw in a pandemic and you can only imagine how slow it all was. But it is now official, and we have some very cool plans for working in a community that I didn’t even know existed 5 years ago. A community that I would have been frightened to drive through just a few months ago.
Which brings us to our second piece of Thanksgiving news. A few months ago, we stumbled upon a big, abandoned building on the edge of the community we have been working in. We immediately felt a pull to the building and after a bunch of miracles we found the owner, made her an offer and today she accepted. We also were able to find the owner of an adjacent lot and make a deal with him. So, on this Thanksgiving Day, it appears that we are about to be the owners of a true Refuge of Hope!
We have lots of pictures and visions and thoughts that we will share with you in coming days. We will need your support as we create a place for the children of the neighborhood to come for meals, after-school care, help with homework, skills training, psychological and spiritual guidance. Maybe even a residential children’s shelter. We are excited. We are terrified. Mostly we are grateful that in the midst of pain, we have seen and experienced great hope.
You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat Isaiah 25:4
So Happy Canadian Thanksgiving friends and family. We miss you terribly but we know we are exactly where we are meant to be in this crazy 2020 and so are you! And don’t worry about us – we managed to find ourselves a traditional turkey dinner in a beautiful garden under the stars. We couldn’t be more grateful!
When we started this feeding program, we spent time researching what should go in our bags of staples. We googled and we spoke to other groups doing the same work. We asked some of our local friends who themselves were struggling. Our goal was to feed a family for a week. After a few changes and substitutions – balancing cost with need – we came up with these ingredients:
I won’t lie – I am glad this week is over. I am ready to get back to eating what I want – a pizza, a big salad, some peanut butter on a slice of toast, a steak off the BBQ. Did I mention bacon? The people we are serving don’t have that option. For many we will deliver their 2nd or 3rd or even 4th bag and they will eat it all again. More rice, more beans, a couple of oranges divided up. And they will also be grateful that strangers from Canada and the US and Mexico donated money so that their children could go to bed tonight with food in their bellies. Thank you – your generosity has blown us away! I don’t know how long this will last. Every night before bed I look at the money left in the bank and tell Grant “We have enough money for 200 more bags”. 5 more days. And then it multiplies. And we keep delivering.
A few days ago, we came home to find a note shoved under our door. The note (translated) said: “Hi, I am Luna. Nacho, tomorrow you will marry me. I love you. Please wear a suit. At 1:00. It will be at your house.” Enclosed with the note was a red and white bow tie. To go with the suit, I suppose.
I will never forget that day. We had absolutely no shared language, but we played games and colored pictures and ate soup and wiped snotty noses and honestly, we didn’t consider if our presence in their home could be hurting these little ones, we just wanted to love them. Perhaps our motivation was more to assuage our gringo guilt, but our love was genuine, and our laughter was shared.
But on Thursday, Carlos took my phone from me and asked for a selfie with me. He applied some filters, opened my Facebook app and posted the picture with the caption, “Carlos. Karen. Friend” with a bunch of emojis of smiles and heart and thumbs up. He looked happy in the picture. And it hit me really hard. I have known Carlos for the better part of his life. Longer than his dad was alive with him. Far longer than his own mom knew him before she left. What started as an afternoon visit from strangers turned into a selfie and a caption filled with love. A friendship.
I have had many people tell me the main reason they couldn’t live in a southern location like Mexico is because they would miss the changing of the seasons. I know what they mean. The crocuses and tulips popping through the ground in spring after the many months of cold. The hot days and nights of summer with vacations and BBQs and lake swims. The reds and golds and oranges of fall leaves. The new crisp air and the change of wardrobes from cutoff jeans to long jeans. From flip flops to sneakers. Everything pumpkin spice. And then the inevitable sudden blast of that first snow. The beautiful frosty trees and the not so welcome blizzards and wind chills and trapped at home snow days. Life in Canada, especially in Saskatchewan, is defined by the change of the seasons and conversation about the weather. Good and bad. So much talk about the weather.
We also were visited by a large poisonous cane toad last week – probably looking for water after a long period of winter drought. As per usual, puppy Nacho needed a 3:00 a.m. visit outside. I haven’t decided if he really needs to go peepee every night, or if he is just too bored to sleep – I strongly suspect the latter. But I staggered down the stairs and into the garage to let him out the front door. I could see something in the stray cat’s food dish which sits in the garage and as I bent down and looked closer, I saw the dangerous cane toad. Nacho sniffed at is as well which could have been deadly for him. Cane toads are extremely poisonous and dogs who touch their skin can die within 20 minutes. Being as it was 3:00 and my superhero protector was snoring deeply upstairs, I found a pail and covered the food dish, leaving it for a morning evacuation by someone other than me. Unfortunately, when hubby went down in the morning to bravely save his family, the little poisonous darling had escaped and now I live in fear of whether he is long gone or whether he is waiting amongst the garage stuff to reappear. We have moved all pet food and dishes inside to keep everyone safe, and I am wondering if that was raccoon cat’s plan all along – conquering the final frontier to move from the garage and into our home for good.
These are the signs that tell us that rainy season is almost here. Hurricane season officially began this week. There are 19 hurricanes predicted for the Pacific side of Mexico this season. Living in a bay, we are mostly sheltered from such occurrences, but many of our neighboring communities are at risk. As the dangers of the hurricanes pass us by, the winds and rains of the accompanying tropical storms will make themselves known. The clouds have started to roll in. It is almost time. Time for the heavens to open and the pounding rains that come quickly and stop just as quickly. The fun of watching little children dripping with sweat, running around enjoying the cooling waters on their faces. The deep puddles for jumping in…. and getting stuck in. The powerful thunderstorms and mesmerizing lightning shows over the ocean.
guy) had to tell him we have no carts available. We have bookings into September. We have an Art Gallery in town acting as an agent and they also have more bookings than they can handle. It’s still a tiny business. It’s not exactly going to change the world. But for Kelly whose husband can’t walk very well, it has meant they can get out of their condo and enjoy the next month of their vacation. It means families can take their children on real Mexican adventures in a new culture, seeing more than the fake Mexico of an all-inclusive resort. It’s a service that is welcome here and that is good for us. It means we can earn enough to allow us to continue to give freely to the little ones we have grown to love so deeply. It means we can finance the life that we know we have been called to. And it means that we too can continue to jump in our own cart with our shaggy puppy and be part of the fabric of this town.
Our house is not grand but it’s comfortable. You can pick whichever guest room you want – you can either have a garden view or a closet. Not both. Of course, the closet won’t have much room for your stuff – sometimes we have foster children from the local children’s shelter staying with us, so the closet is full of little shoes and backpacks and cute dresses. Which reminds me – if you walk around your room barefoot there is a very good chance you will be experience the pain of stepping on a Barbie shoe. It’s like the Lego thing but it hurts more because those Barbies only wear stilettos. Sorry. Also, those little hair elastics are everywhere. If you glance under the bed (please don’t) you will find enough hair elastics (called ligas here) to hook a rug big enough for Buckingham Palace.
ur neighborhood has everything you need for a few days. Next door is the little tienda where you can buy all of the staples – bread, milk, coke and chips. And tortillas. Around the corner to the left is the fruit and veggie store, the fish store (with delicious ceviche to go), the taco shop (open in the evening – get 2 tacos de pollo, take one of the tortillas off the bottom so you now have 3 tacos, cover it all with veggies and beans and sauces from the topping bar – boom, 26 pesos, about $1.50), and the other taco shop (open at noon for fish and shrimp tacos and at night for tacos pastor, the meat on the spinning thingy – also less than $5). There’s the chicken lady selling whole flattened grilled chickens, the Taco de Cabeza stand that sells tacos made of all things ‘head’, the guy with the rolling cart of delicious drinks made of pineapple and lemon and ginger and chia. If you need a pinata or a giant bag of candy, there’s a shop for that. Nails, hair, clothing, pirated DVDs – new or used – it’s all there.
If you walk another block and dare to cross the crazy highway (if it doesn’t work out, there’s a brand-new hospital right there on the corner) there’s another whole world of restaurants and galleries and shops more geared to the gringo tourists and year-round residents. You can walk for days looking at cool buildings and amazing flowers and stop to sample every kind of food – there’s Italian, and Sushi, and Thai and Vegan and the best hamburgers I’ve ever tasted and lots of Mexican. After all that, if you’re still hungry before nodding off at night, just listen for the blaring song driving by around 10:30 – that’s the donut lady with a van full of every kind of donut, muffin, croissant and sweet bread you might need. Who can’t love a place that does donut drive-bys every night!
n our garden, you’ll be joined by some tiny colibris (hummingbirds). Really the only critter you have to worry about is Nacho the puppy. He will keep you company, love you to death, and drive you crazy. DO NOT leave any shoe at his height – or really any item that you value in any way. Paper, pens, clothing, pencils, jewelry – he’ll take and destroy it all. If you find yourself missing underwear, check behind the palm tree in the garden.
Whatever you do while you’re here, enjoy the people you will pass on the streets and meet along your way. The Mexican people seem shy at first, but they are watching for a smile, for you to say “Hola, Buenos dias” and then they light up. Everyone is friendly, but they usually wait for you to say hi first (except for those blasted Time Share guys). The children, so very many children, all eager for some love, some attention from the gringos. Your red hair will make you the most popular tourist on the block. My neighbors are poor, but they are kind. Even while having so little, they will have family over for fiestas during Christmas week. They may set up tables in the street, chickens wandering through, fireworks exploding. It will be fun.
I know I do it. One of the things I have struggled with here is looking into the bitter eyes of the children I work with, and not being filled with anger and judgement towards their parents and caregivers. Oh, how I want to judge. Drug addiction, prostitution, poverty, alcoholism, violence, abandonment. So many mistakes that have landed on the shoulders and hearts of these children. It’s not hard to justify my stinkin’ judgey attitude.
I have over 950 items now. The hummingbird in the garden today, the laughter with my husband, the help of a friend, the crazy antics of a puppy, a text from a daughter, a really good taco …. So many things to be thankful for. Family and faith and home and my daily bread. But I also recognize that I did nothing to deserve any of it. Where I was born, who I was born to, the education I was given, the security I have always had and always taken for granted…. I did not earn any of it and do not deserve it. Not more than the sweet boy who lives in a one room house in the slums made of tarps, or the 5-year-old who was given an STD by a relative or the young daughter raped by her father who she trusted.
Karen Moves to Mexico 