"No, I don't want to bathe with cold water." Notes from WVU's Mexico Service-Learning Course

Thanks again to Kat Stackel, WVU-Amizade Course Facilitator, for contributing from the road:

Here goes my last e-mail from Mexico, and hopefully I can try to encompass our entire experience so far. I think that I should preface this e-mail by saying that Mexico is HUGE and every place is so different that it is difficult to give an explanation of "how it is," and better to remind you that our experience has been limited to two parts of a very diverse country. In the words of a student I'm traveling with, "my stay in Guanajuato has made me question my previous classification of Mexico as a poor, developing country lacking the infrastructure necessary to maintain safe and healthy conditions." For the last week I've been questioning my assumptions of Latin America in a new way. I know that my experiences in the Peace Corps and otherwise are the backdrop of my knowledge and this is something different.

To start, we finished our volunteer projects in Puerto Morelos on 6/14. The kids at the pre-k center were an absolute delight. I think that my students would say they learned more from the kids than they actually taught them. Their Spanish went from zero to about 2.0 pretty fast.. with them having a great, big vocabulary for directing students to learn and play, and a working knowledge of enough Spanish to ensure their survival.

Our favorite project was completing a video translation for the visitors' center in that town. It was an 8-minute video about the reef national park and the history of the settlement. At first we were confused on how we would go about this project since I am the only one who could understand the video. Well, my English-translation skills are mas o menos when it comes to sentence construction, and with a grammar expert in the group, it turned out to be a very inclusive project for all. We translated all of the text, timed the video perfectly, and re-recorded all of the audio in English. It was fun, frustrating, hilarious and completely satisfying.

We were sad to say goodbye to the Puerto, but we think we'll be back. Actually, all 5 of us ended up taking a parasitic souvenir from the place, which wrecked the beginning of our stay in Guanajuato, but left a special memory in our hearts for forever. Dignity was lost, but things could only go uphill at this point!!

We arrived in Guanajuato at the level of "fist" on a scale of fist, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (think hands). Two got sick first, then two more, and then our "MVP" who lasted until the 3rd day. We were out of commission for about 4 days total and the Mexican mothers were having a field day with suggestions for our improvement. With my help, the students learned some new and very important vocabulary:

No, no quiero bañarme con agua frio... No, I don't want to bathe with cold water

No, no quiero tomar bicarbonato con limón...No, I don't want to drink baking soda with lime

No, no quiero sopa de verduras... No, I don't want vegetable soup

Last one- very important.

Since we've recovered, we are discovering how different Guanajuato is from the Puerto. We are up at 6,700 feet and north of Mexico City, and our homestays were arranged with some pretty wealthy people in the area. In contrast, we are volunteering with some extremely disadvantaged groups. Most of the beginning of work was filled with heartbreak and guilty feelings. We are moving past that somewhat and getting down to what needs to be done.

Our project here is to work with an NGO called Arco Iris, and a convent, battered women's shelter, and girls' orphanage. Arco Iris is a group of Mexican, American and Canadian women that work with the latter 3 groups. The latter 3 are all inter-connected yet separate at the same time. At the convent, we've been doing some serious spring cleaning for a group of nuns that are elderly and need a lot of help. I am always hesitant to use this word when talking about volunteering, because it has a lot of implications and the power structure is skewed, but, they need helping hands.

We are also working with the children of the women's shelter. Pretty much, these children were taken out of their homes because of death threats against their mothers, and they are currently at risk of being kidnapped by other family members. They were taken out of school, relocated, and are not able to re-register until the next full year begins. They do not have their friends, other family members, many of their possessions, etc. We are playing with them, working with them to express certain values (given by their group leader), and for those that care to learn- teaching English.

In the girls' orphanage, we are simply spending time with a group of 30 girls that is otherwise only attended to by the two very busy people that run the orphanage. The girls range in age from 4-17 and it is clear that they all have very different needs. We are happy to take a few hours to just play with them. Simple things like coloring books, sidewalk chalk and jump ropes can really change a child's day and so that's how we went armed. I love watching my Amizade group remember all of their games from camp, and the girls are loving learning them.

This is how we will continue our last week in Mexico, with slight interruptions for certain (ahem), World cup games, never to be missed (the hum of those horns can be heard at any time from any place here in GTO). Also, we are going to be attending a special ceremony for some of the girls and will hopefully get to visit another much bigger orphanage before we depart. It's been a great learning experience.

Thanks for reading about our adventure. The rest of the pictures (so far) have been added to this album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/k.stackel/MexicoWAmizade2010#

- By Katherine Stackel

WVU - Amizade Latin American History Service-Learning Course Rolling in Mexico!

A GUEST POST from Katherine Stackel, Amizade's Facilitator for the WVU-Amizade Latin American History course taught online by Dr. Evan Widders, and including excellent cultural experience and service opportunities in Puerto Morelos and Guanjuato. Take a look:

Amizade site coordinator Luis (*see below) and I have been leading the students around and getting everybody ready for our month in Mexico. Since the first day things have been great. We are staying at Luis's family's inn, a 10-room hotel on the beach. It is rustic yet beautiful, and it has been very interesting to learn more about this region. I've traveled through the Yucatan peninsula before, but the other times what I saw was a little different.

We are working on a couple of different service projects. First, we are teaching ESL in a kindergarten across the highway on "the other side" of Puerto Morelos. This community is divided in a sense, because half of the town is located on the side of the highway with the beach (the highway runs parallel to the beach). On "the other side" you can definitely see what a difference it makes when community members do not see the good impact of tourism, i.e. money. The houses are much bigger on this side, and although I would call this a sleepy town, there are still various small, and professional, tour companies here. Many people speak at least some English. The schools on this side, since they are visible to tourists, are in better financial situations because they receive many more donations than those on the other side.

On the other side most of the houses are "casas de interes social" (social-interest houses: built by the government for people with no savings/money. These citizens can get these houses by agreeing to pay a small-ish monthly fee for the following 15 years-- though people in town say that the fee is actually quite exorbitant compared to what the houses are actually worth-- credit options for the poor... always a debate-able theme...). Luis and his family, and Amizade, have worked on the other side of the highway for years.

Because of this project our days have been filled with hours of planning. Kids learn so fast! We have been having fun trying to remember all of the songs that helped us learn things when we were children. Songs we have sung so far are "one little, two little, three little indians," "hokey pokey" (to learn body parts), "head, shoulders, knees and toes," an invented song about colors, among others. There is no shame in this work. The kids love to see us make fools of ourselves. They love learning English and have been really good about participating. But I think their favorite activity is dragging us around the playground. There's an album at the end here.

Other than that we spent a good part of today translating a video for the tourist information center in town.

Basically, Playa del Carmen and Cancun's mega-tourism infrastructures have destroyed much of the ecosystem in this part of the country. There is not sufficient infrastructure for controlling these resorts. Puerto Morelos is located almost directly between the two. Giant building projects have destroyed reef areas, caused flooding, sewage problems, and are not really providing jobs for people in this area or (for the most part) in the cities where the operations are located. It seems that most of the workers in these big places come from other areas of the country, or other countries in the world. This is not to say that the region doesn't gain from this tourism. The transportation systems (highways, airports, etc) are phenomenal- which can be of great help. Having such large, important projects in the area has also brought high schools and even a university to the area. There is a give and take happening, but it is definitely happening more on the latter end.

Puerto Morelos is an extremely organized community dedicated to changing that. In 1995 the community got together and gained enough support to get national park status for their area. They are protecting 21 km of reef, and some great mangrove areas that are important for fish hatching and bird migration. They got government support to limit the amount of development that is happening in the area. They continually lobby against plans to continue developing the town (and especially limit its tourism operations) until they are able to achieve proper sewage and water control. The workers at the tourist information center (and many hotels involved in these projects) volunteer their time for these efforts. You can sense a big culture of conservation and it is very refreshing. They are also careful of how they talk about the mega-tourism operations. Their idea is to learn from them and continue working towards positive change and better regulations.

At night we have 2-hour long classes based on academic service-learning articles, and the students' overall experiences and how they compare to the stereotypes that we brought to the country. We are analyzing our own way of life as well, and how it relates or absolutely does not relate to what we find during our experience. We will continue working on these and other projects (eg. cleaning out and preparing for organic gardens, etc) until June 15th, when we head to Guanajuato in the central hills. We have other service projects planned for that time. I am lucky to be traveling with 4 very open-minded, well-behaved and somewhat reserved (and observant) college students. We are learning a lot from our Mexican partners and we know that we are all very lucky to be having this experience in paradise!

Here is a short album of everything so far: http://picasaweb.google.com/k.stackel/MexicoWAmizade2010#