Additional thoughts on the ministry week
In my entries from last week, I wrote about what Eloxochitlan was like demographically and then shared about what the ministry week was like. In my next two entries, which I can hopefully write up this week, I plan on sharing some additional thoughts on the ministry week and then some final observations.
To start off, when I wrote that Dave Miller, the head of Adventures in Life ministry (AIL), mentioned that it was his hardest week of ministry in his twenty so odd years of doing missions in Mexico... it was emotionally draining, not physically as one would assume. Our hosts were incredibly gracious with their homes (Manuel's home had wi-fi! and Kimi watched her first full length movie at David and Ellisa's, Despicable Me 2, with their daughters Valeria and Mimi), the food was amazing, we had beds and running water... we really couldn't complain. It was hard because of the socioeconomic condition of so many of the other residents of the town.
Malnutrition/ Poverty
As mentioned in my last post, malnutrition was rampant, as shown by the prevalence by which our doctors prescribed multivitamins and stomach medicine. The townspeople are not getting enough nutrients from their meals. Eloxochitlan is the town where Pastor Chable ministered so faithfully for many years, and it is where he suffered the tragedy of having a baby die in his arms due to malnutrition.. and subsequently transforming his understanding of the gospel and ministry
There was no apparent solution to the obvious problems we witnessed. The town needs an influx of income... jobs and money would bring in the change in diet needed to counter the malnutrition. But where would that come from? Eloxochitlan is hours from any major city, with difficult to manage roads to get in or out. There were plenty of crops being grown, corn and sugar cane, but those were subsistence crops, not enough to sell by any means.
There was no apparent solution to the obvious problems we witnessed. The town needs an influx of income... jobs and money would bring in the change in diet needed to counter the malnutrition. But where would that come from? Eloxochitlan is hours from any major city, with difficult to manage roads to get in or out. There were plenty of crops being grown, corn and sugar cane, but those were subsistence crops, not enough to sell by any means.
With that in mind, the grim outlook made me admire our hosts, Manuel and Mali and David and Ellisa. It was obvious that they could easily leave Eloxochitlan and move to a larger city with more amenities and comfort in a way that impossible for the majority of their neighbors... but they chose to stay because it is their community and their people. It's pretty cool if you think about it.
Education
One of the first things that I noticed on Monday, the first day of the clinic, was how kids were around at all hours of the day. That included Valeria and Mimi, David and Ellisa's kids. When I asked Dave Miller about it, he said that the kids in Eloxochitlan go to school from 9-12 or 10-2, as the kids work in the fields in the morning, go to school, then head back home to go back to work in the fields. If we think the educational system is broken in the States, in Oaxaca it is horrific. The teachers' union is one of the strongest in the nation, and routinely strike one or two days a week.... so not only do the kids only go to school for a couple hours a week, they only go three or four days a week. It's got to be hard to learn anything with such a short schedule. It's like year round summer school. I asked David what he thought about his kids going to school so infrequently, and he was discouraged knowing that his daughters will need to go to school away from home in order to succeed. For those who do get out (Vali is one who will be coming to the States to study English next year), what inclination will they have to come back to Eloxochitlan after being fortunate enough to leave to get the education they so deserve?
Glimmers of Hope
Sorry for the length of this post, but I wanted to end this entry by focusing on a good note. The first is the area is beautiful! Once the clinic days were over, David took us in his truck to various sightseeing locations around the town.
Glimmers of Hope
Sorry for the length of this post, but I wanted to end this entry by focusing on a good note. The first is the area is beautiful! Once the clinic days were over, David took us in his truck to various sightseeing locations around the town.
If not for the remoteness of Eloxochitlan, there is potential for some sort of tourism/ income generation to develop. We also spent an evening roasting our own coffee, and coffee could be a revenue generator for the area. Dave M. and I brainstormed off and on throughout the week about the possibilities... exporting coffee to restaurants in larger cities like Oaxaca to bring in some level of income to the area, and Dave brought up the potential of making Eloxochitlan a destination for coffee aficionados, a place where they could enjoy nature, harvest and roast their own coffee, etc. Dave M. shared the ideas with Manuel and Chable, and they started dreaming. Who knows what will happen from it, but hope is something that can turn into action.
One of the most depressing stories we heard during the clinic was of a boarding school near where we held the clinic. The boarding school was more like an orphanage, as the kids don't really have loving homes to return to. Some of the kids came to the clinic, and their health was poor (or whatever descriptive is worse than poor). We found out that each kids' daily food budget was $5 pesos, less than 50 cents a day! It gets worse... their bedding was infecting with lice, so the kids had lice in their hair and skin that had open sores from constant itching/ scratching. It gets worse. It has been widely known in the community that the kids are molested as well. Hearing the story of the school was a gut punch to all of us... but amidst the darkness came some amount of hope. Gabriel, one of the translators on our team, brought up that his mother received a large amount of blankets from some government grant, and for whatever reason the blankets were unclaimed and sitting in their house. Gabriel mentioned that they could donate the blankets to the school.... which then got David excited, saying that he had connections where his family lived in Puebla, and that if they were able to get blankets, he was certain he could get beds... then Chable added that he could get some resources together to delouse the buildings! It didn't solve the paltry food budget or the horrific stories of molestation, but the school was now on the radar for the church, and things are beginning to happen!
Thanks for reading, the next post, whether its tomorrow or later in the week, will conclude my thoughts on the mission trip; whether we accomplished our objectives in bringing our two year old daughter, and in retrospect, whether it was worth it. (sneak peak, it definitely was!)
One of the most depressing stories we heard during the clinic was of a boarding school near where we held the clinic. The boarding school was more like an orphanage, as the kids don't really have loving homes to return to. Some of the kids came to the clinic, and their health was poor (or whatever descriptive is worse than poor). We found out that each kids' daily food budget was $5 pesos, less than 50 cents a day! It gets worse... their bedding was infecting with lice, so the kids had lice in their hair and skin that had open sores from constant itching/ scratching. It gets worse. It has been widely known in the community that the kids are molested as well. Hearing the story of the school was a gut punch to all of us... but amidst the darkness came some amount of hope. Gabriel, one of the translators on our team, brought up that his mother received a large amount of blankets from some government grant, and for whatever reason the blankets were unclaimed and sitting in their house. Gabriel mentioned that they could donate the blankets to the school.... which then got David excited, saying that he had connections where his family lived in Puebla, and that if they were able to get blankets, he was certain he could get beds... then Chable added that he could get some resources together to delouse the buildings! It didn't solve the paltry food budget or the horrific stories of molestation, but the school was now on the radar for the church, and things are beginning to happen!
Thanks for reading, the next post, whether its tomorrow or later in the week, will conclude my thoughts on the mission trip; whether we accomplished our objectives in bringing our two year old daughter, and in retrospect, whether it was worth it. (sneak peak, it definitely was!)
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