De Colores

This weekend, I was privileged to join a group of about 30 LMU students on a service/immersion trip to Tijuana.  Just two hours south of LA, TJ is a different world.  Each month, a group from LMU goes down to the community.  After around 25 years of these monthly trips, the link to the community is quite strong; students and staff have built strong and lasting friendships, and many students go back month after month. As JVs, Chris (from Casa Maura Clark) and I were guests on the trip and got to participate and experience the weekend while sharing our experience with undergrads, many of whom hadn’t heard of the Jesuit Volunteers before.  It was really interesting to accompany the students on the trip, as for some of them it was their first exposure to service projects or international experience.

So, what did we do?

On Friday evening, we drove from LMU to the North family home in San Diego. The North’s are a fantastic family. The parents actually met on a similar trip when they were students at LMU, and eventually married. They continued working in TJ with LMU and with their own foundation.  You can read more about their story and Build a Miracle foundation here!. The North’s graciously hosted us all and talked about the experiences in Tijuana. They were truly inspiring!

On Saturday, we crossed the border to Mexico and arrived at our first project site. We mixed and poured concrete in a true assembly line style.  We laid the slabs for rooms on two homes that are currently being built by Build a Miracle. Families are chosen by a committee of community members who identify those with the most need.  Families are asked to contribute service hours to their own home, but many are so grateful for their homes that they keep helping build homes two and three years later. There were about a dozen men and women on the work site with us in addition to the parents who were preparing for their new home!

El Florido, the neighborhood where we worke

Mixing cement in tray

One of the wisest parts of this whole operation was the development of a community center in the neighborhood.  The center was built before all the homes were constructed, and has been the single most unifying element of the community. With no local parish, consistent work, reliable schooling, or really any sense of camaraderie between neighbors, the neighborhood was previously full of strangers. With the advent of the community center (which offers adult education, trade skills classes, mental healthcare, and so much more), the families have come together to form what Father Greg would definitely call kinship. Beautiful.

So anyway, after a delicious lunch at the community center, we headed to Casa del Migrante, a shelter that houses recently deported migrants for up to 12 days. We had the chance to talk to Brother William, who works at the shelter, and ate dinner with men who were sent to TJ just a few days or hours before. Talk about a powerful experience.  With all the talk about the border patrol and immigration issues, I had never met someone who had actually been deported. Some of the men I talked to had been living and working in the US longer than I have been alive, spoke English beautifully, or were born and educated there. Can you imagine!?  I’m still not sure I know what to make of the experience, but I do know that I kept thinking of my students; some of them have parents who can’t come to the US or who have been deported. 

Later Saturday evening, we played a soccer game with some of the kids in the community.  We also colored valentines with them and had a great dance party.  On Sunday, we visited an orphanage in a different neighborhood and made valentines with the kids that live there. We played with kids from 2-12 years old.  They were beautiful and happy and reminded me so much of my students.  I must say, this wasn’t my favorite part of the trip.  I was so sad thinking that while my students don’t have much, at least they have family to go home to at night. 

View of the US/MX border fence

In the afternoon, we ate lunch and then headed back North. It took just over an hour to get through border patrol. All along the highway where cars are backed up for miles to get back to the US, there were all sorts of street vendors selling everything from chorros to puppies to sombreros to Mario piggy banks.  It was a bizarre experience to see so many people making a living off of the very captive audience of vehicles waiting to have their passports okayed by Customs Border Patrol.  After we got through, we pulled off to a great viewpoint of the fence that separates San Diego from Tijuana.  One of the student leaders presented a little bit about the physical border history and how he’s seen the policy change even just in the two years that he’s been going on De Colores trips. 

That is a super abbreviated version of the weekend…please feel free to shoot me an email if there’s anything else you want to know about!