TheBanyanTree: #2 Post from Mexico

[apmartin at canada.com]

Vegetable Program


It was Thursday; I had been in Mexico four days.  It
was exciting to experience another culture but
unsettling trying to adapt to living with a Mexican
family.  I’m a person who likes structure and I wanted
to know what was expected of me and how I could best
help the children.  When I asked Victor he said, “I’ll
have to think about it.”  So far, he has not given me
any direction and I don’t feel I have been earning my
keep. 

I’ve started studying Spanish in the mornings and
supervising/playing with some thirty neighborhood
children for 3 hours in the late afternoon.  In the
evenings I play ‘serpientes y escaleras’ (snakes and
ladders) with Natcho, Carmelo and Beto.  Still, it
doesn’t feel like I am making much of a contribution
compared to what I was doing in Guatemala. 

When I talked to Andrew about my feelings, he told me
he had already spent around $700 buying tools and
setting up a carpentry program and I shouldn’t feel
guilty about eating the Project’s food.  He also
reminded me that much of the food consumed at Casa
Ayuda is obtained through the vegetable program. 

Every Thursday and Saturday afternoon, Victor and the
boys visit a local greengrocer and a bakery to pick up
the vegetables and baking unsuitable for sale.  Because
I wanted to feel more useful, I decided to participate.
 As the clock neared 4:00 pm, Beto came to tell me it
was time to go.  

At the far corner of the property, there was a huge
compost heap and a goat pen.  A large homebuilt
flat-deck trailer filled with grimy plastic crates sat
next to it.  I watched Beto, Natcho and Carmelo hitch
the trailer to the Project’s pick-up truck.  Victor,
Ari (his 3-year-old son), Victor’s father, the three
boys and I piled into the box and we set off.  The road
was bumpy.  Three times we hit potholes that caused
some of the crates to fly off the trailer onto the
highway.  It didn’t seem to faze anyone except me that
the boys had to run out in front of oncoming traffic to
retrieve them.

When Victor pulled over a fourth time, I saw the market
on the other side of the thoroughfare.  The boys
scurried to unhitch the trailer.  When I asked what I
should do, Victor suggested I stay with the boys while
he and his father visited the bakery. 

Carmelo bolted across the road.  When he returned, he
said we were to unload the crates on the roadside where
we were.  My Spanish wasn’t good enough to understand
Carmelo when he tried to explain why.  When we
finished, we had to wait until there was a gap in the
traffic and a place to park the trailer in front of the
store before trying to cross. The highway was busy and
my adrenaline was pumping as I threw my body weight
against the heavy metal alongside the boys, crossed
four lanes and helped to wrestle the trailer into
position in front of the grocery store.

Heavy plastic and wooden crates of discolored, limp and
partially rotten fruit and vegetables were stacked
outside the shop.  Many of the boxes were too heavy for
me to carry on my own so I shared the load with the
boys.  When all were on the trailer, the store keeper
asked us to sort through hundreds of pounds of apples,
pull the ones unfit for sale, wash the others and
restock the shelves.  Then, we sorted crates of
oranges.  When Victor arrived, he organized the shelves
of lettuce, beets and tomatoes.  The five of us worked
for more than an hour.  By the time we finished, we had
cleaned up the shop’s shelves and filled our trailer.  

I noticed that the locals watched me with interest. 
Many of San Miguel’s gringos are rich Americans who
would never consider this kind of work.  They wear
designer clothes and sport huge diamonds on their
fingers.  I’m sure it isn’t common to see a gringo
pulling a heavy trailer across a busy highway or
dirtying her hands and clothes carrying boxes of
spoiling fruit and vegetables.
                               
When we returned to Casa Ayuda, several women from the
neighborhood waited to sort through our haul.  The
worst fruit and vegetables were used to feed to the
goats, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, ducks and dogs. 
Yes, dogs.  The interesting thing about Cheetah and
Oso, Casa Ayuda’s dogs, is that they are not fed dog
food but must survive on bread, fruit and vegetables,
and very occasionally on outdated donated cans of
Campbell’s soup. Until Casa Ayuda, I had never seen
dogs dive into mangos, squash, carrots, apples and
oranges and eat them with relish.   
 
Casa Ayuda has numerous animals to try to teach the
children some responsibility.  The problem I see is
that the boys often forget to feed them. For example
Oso, the Golden Retriever pup so boisterous he needs to
be tied up at all times sometimes goes without food and
water all day unless I attend to him. I love animals,
and it upsets me to see this sort of maltreatment.    

Everyone at Casa Ayuda eats meals together, and Andrew
and I have had to adjust to ‘odd’ meal times and
equally odd food combinations.  Breakfast is anywhere
from 8:30 am until 10:30 am, lunch (the main meal of
the day) is anytime between 2:00 pm and 4:30 pm, and
supper is from 9:00 pm until 10:30 pm.  For me, it is a
very long wait between meals.  Andrew and I now
purchase and sneak food into our room for the times we
simply can’t wait.  Sometimes we buy extras such as
milk, butter, sugar, flour, cereal and coffee for the
entire family but it is impractical for us to feed
everyone. Victor and Alicia’s family and friends
regularly drop in for a meal and to visit.

Before leaving Canada, I had been on an expensive
‘Optimum Health Diet’ prescribed by a naturopathic
physician to boost my immune system.  It was a great
diet and I lost some unneeded pounds without feeling
hungry. However, it is impossible to follow that diet
in Mexico because many of the foods are not available
here. Even if I could find all the organic foods and
vitamins, it is very hard not to share everything one
brings into the house with all the family.  

Now, I eat whatever is put in front of me, but the diet
is almost entirely made up of carbohydrates, such as
bread or tortillas.  Plates of food are made up in the
kitchen and everyone is served the same amount.  We
very seldom eat protein such as meat.  A recent
breakfast consisted of white rice, buttered white toast
and left over birthday cake.  Jello has also appeared
on the breakfast table.

Lunch is by far the largest and best meal of the day.
Victor and Alicia are good cooks and make spaghetti,
tacos, quesadillas, salads etc. There are always bowls
of chili sauce, gallon jars of hot peppers and homemade
salsa on the table and they pile it on nearly
everything.  There are 150 species of chili peppers of
varying degrees of hotness here in Mexico. I never know
how spicy the sauces will be so am always careful to
sample them first.   I am, however, developing a taste
for spicy food.

I’ve tried a few new-to-me foods including a cactus
croissant, a rectangle of puff pastry with small pieces
of cooked cactus in the middle. Although outdated, it
had been warmed in the oven and was very tasty.  All
the markets have cactus for sale and it is used in
salads as well.  Victor makes delicious Aztec soup. 
When I talked to him about different foods consumed in
Mexico, he listed many dishes I have no desire to try
including:  burro and dog tacos, ants, iguana, and
earthworms.  During our discussion, Victor told me that
when Natcho was living on the street, he ate earthworms
in order to survive.  They are a high source of
protein, but one I can do without!

Nearly every night, supper consists of outdated donuts
and pastries.  Andrew and I eat yogurt, granola and
store-bought fruit in our room before supper so that we
don’t fill up on bread when we go to the supper table. 
It is going to be very hard not to gain weight here.

Compared to the children in Guatemala, however, these
children eat a more nutritious and varied diet with
lots of fruit and vegetables but the portions are very
small and all three boys are underweight.  Oranges with
dry, discolored skins still make delicious fresh orange
juice.  Often there are pounds of overripe bananas and
bruised apples included in the discarded fruit.  I plan
to make banana bread and apple crisp once I have
purchased all the other necessary ingredients.  If the
family likes them, I’ll share my recipes with Alicia.   

***