Magisterio

Hope Road is muddy and deeply rutted from the heavy summer rains.  Our drive is laborious, our snail’s pace symbolic of the long road of transformation experienced by the families living and working at the transfer station at Magisterio, a village on the outskirts of Puerto Vallarta.

This seems an unlikely place for the new construction of a 70+ unit apartment building, an adjacent community center, classrooms, laundromat and soccer field/basketball court.  Rounding a curve in the road the project looms up, its juxtaposition as powerful as the hope of the aspiring tenants. The work accomplished by the non-profit Families at the Dump since my visit in April is amazing.  (www.familiesatthedump.com) The Foundation has worked for years to break this cycle of poverty, a testament to their constancy and dedication. Kids are sponsored in school, adults are learning new job skills, micro-loans are providing small business startups, a daycare center provides lunches, kids are engaged in art and games at the activity center, a computer classroom connects them to the world. And sometime within the next year families who have demonstrated the greatest desire to change their lives, who have applied themselves and focused their hearts and minds on a better life will leave their shanties and move into these new apartments with running water, toilets, refrigerators, cooktops, tile floors, ceiling fans, beds to sleep in, chairs to sit in, a table at which to eat, doors and windows, and walls that don’t flutter in the wind or leak during torrential downpours.

I volunteered at the community center on a hot, humid day when there was a lot to do.  Four of us spread the load.  We served lunch, a pasta salad that we scooped up and slathered on tortillas, to about 50 kids but only after inspecting the small hands of each child confirming that they had used the wash station outside the lunchroom. 

We washed dishes changing the cold, soapy water several times, re-using the plates so that everyone had a meal.  For some, it would be the only one of the day.  We spent time in the activity center making Halloween masks, with the kindergarten class learning numbers, and joined the middle school kids for belly dancing and yoga before they left for their afternoon sessions. In the coming weeks, I’ll be teaching English during the morning session. 

 

Once again, I left this amazing place awed by the strength of the human spirit and the fundamental goodness of humankind.