Reflections of time spent in a migrant camp.

I'm back! "Back from where?" you say while furling your eyebrows or eyebrow (I'm not one to judge.) Well, I spent the last four days in a migrant camp about an hour south of Tijuana. And when I say I spent four days in a migrant camp, I mean I spent four days in a migrant camp. We arrived Tuesday morning after I had taken a 'goodbye' shower (seeing as we had no running water in the camp) and returned to what we know as civilization Friday afternoon. Have you ever been embarrassed? I have. I'm a pretty silly and klutzy person so I'm pretty familiar with embarrassment. But Tuesday morning I experienced a different kind of embarrassment. When we arrived, I got out of the van I was clutching my pillow. The kids from the camp had flocked to see all the foreigners and a little boy pointed and laughed and said, "Oh look at the pillow." How ridiculous it was to bring a pillow. This was not the kind of place where people had pillows. How arrogant it was to bring my pillow. I did not intend this, but it was almost a way of flaunting just how well off I am. Do you know what I mean? It's an awkward feeling. Making people feel beneath you. This is not what I want to do as a missionary. But this experience in the migrant camp made me realize how blessed I really am. And what I mean by that is not that I am so blessed because I have things. Not because I have running water or electricity. Although all of these things are true, I learned that I am blessed because I was given the opportunity to go. I live this crazy adventurous life where I am blessed with opportunities to go to migrant camps. Have you ever been to one? Well I have. And I had an amazing time. I had so much fun. That is why I am so blessed. The first day I was there we cleaned the rooms that we stayed in. They were ten by ten shacks that were filled with trash and smelled like urine. We cleaned up all the trash and painted the room white. It's an amazing feeling to be able to see a room being completely transformed just by painting it a cleansing color like white. After lunch I spent some time trying to get to know the community and the kids. I sat on a plastic crate and began talking to two moms about their lives in the camps. Their names were Maria and America. America had a darling little girl and I tried to start a conversation with her. I quickly found out that she doesn't speak. Her mother told me her name was Monserrat and she was three. My friends and I continued talking to Maria but America went home. Little Monse stuck around and I asked her if she wanted to sit on my lap and she hopped up and sat down. Maria told us about her life in life in the migrant camp. She has seven children and her husband works in the fields during the spring and fall. He plants and harvests tomatoes and onions. He works twelve hour days and receives about ten dollars a day for his work. The rest of the year he goes into town selling tomatillos with the help of his eleven year old child. To live in their ten by ten shacks, they pay just short of thirty dollars a month. If they want to use electricity the cost is doubled. Seven kids. Ten dollars a day. We talked for about an hour and little Monse sat on my lap without saying a word. I began bouncing her on my lap and she would rock from side to side. I decided to make a game out of it. I told her that we were on a boat and huge waves were coming. We would rock back and forth till she was almost falling of the crate. Then I would tip her upside down and tickle her. After all of this I started getting some giggling out of her. In class we had been learning about developing relationships. I think I earned the giggles by simply letting the little girl sit on my lap for as long she needed. Relationship is meeting a little girl where she needs to be met even if that means sitting in silence. So what else was I up to? Well let's see. My team and I made a toilet. We dug a hole in the ground about fifteen feet deep. The deeper the hole got the more entertaining it was to watch the person digging the hole try to flop out of the hole. After the hole was deep enough for about ten years of feces (yup) we constructed a port-a-potty above the pit. We also dug trenches. Each 'home' has a spigot just outside the doors. Because a build up of trash, feces, and other nasty what nots, the water from the spigots did not flow into any outlet. The water would sit and fester. Clearly not sanitary. It was pretty stinky to say the least. So we dug trenches and canals so that the water could flow away from the homes and not sit stagnantly. Now, I'm not one to get all excited about manual labor. I'd much rather be playing with the kids. Usually people say, "Liz put down the hammer and go distract the kids that are getting into the paint." But this week I had a lot of fun digging that hole and making trenches. It's awesome to see water flowing because you were removing trash and making a trench deeper. Plus I got to use a pickaxe. Pretty cool eh? All this to say, this is the reason I am so blessed. I had a great week playing with kids, swinging tools that are taller than I am, and playing in dirt (and at my age that's not usually socially acceptable.) And you know what? I was doing it in the name of Jesus. I think that's the coolest thing ever. I love my crazy missionary life. I love this season that Jesus has called me to. Yay! 


Quote of the week: "When I was 5, he said, my family forgot & left me at the fair. I wandered around in the bright sounds & smells of hot sawdust & cotton candy for hours. It was already too late by the time my parents found me. I haven't been fit for decent society since." - Brian Andreas

A typical room where the families live. 

Monsita and I!

Face painting!