FHF Mexico

Well, in addition to seriously struggling to get everything back on track after Christmas break, it's taken me a while to publish this post because I've felt some anxiety about how to accurately describe this experience.  Wish me luck.

First, some background.  Families Helping Families Mexico is a small nonprofit organization run by 3 Americans who have other jobs and oversee the charity in their spare time.  They provide high-quality, low-cost housing to struggling families in the coastal town of Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point), Mexico.  They have an employee in Puerto Penasco who takes care of much of the day-to-day running of the organization, plus a crew of "muchachos" who work year-round building houses.

FHF Mexico strives to create healthy neighborhoods by establishing clusters of small houses, and finding good families to live there.  They build, finish, and furnish houses with three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen/dining/living room, and a washing machine.  They have an extensive process for selecting families to occupy the houses, and require families to follow 3 rules during a probationary period: they must pay a low monthly rate, they must be good neighbors, and they may not do drugs.  If they break the rules, occupants are kicked out (though there is some leniency in the payment), but if occupants abide by the rules then they will own their house outright after 10 years.

The organizatoin has been around long enough that this pattern has been deemed successful, and there are several homeowners in their neighborhoods.  There is extreme poverty in the area, but the organizers have found that most of the people who want to work and live healthy lives (not do drugs) are able to do so, so they focus on people who are going through tough times but trying to do what's right.  They like to say that they're giving a hand-up, not a hand-out.

Where does the Christmas project fit in?  Every year, the organizers set aside three days right after Christmas for families to come build houses.  The goal for those three days is to get the cinder block walls finished (all the exterior walls and one interior) and the roof built.  (The families do not do any of the finish work - the stucco, painting, plumbing, tiling, and electrical work, etc., is done by the muchachos and various local contractors during the year.)  The muchachos were also there with us while we were building to start the cinder block corners of each house and make sure we were doing things correctly.  About 40-50 volunteers worked on each house.

DAY 1

We took this picture as the introductory meeting was getting started.
You can see pallets of cinder block behind us, and behind that, a finished house.

One of our first tasks was to place these flags at the corners of the FHF neighborhood.

Laying block!

Mixing mortar.

Pouring concrete.

If you're not dirty, you're not working.

Cat did a lot of cutting and bending rebar, and Eliza helped too.

I took this picture a couple of hours before we finished on the first day.
Our house is in the foreground and the other group's house is in the background.

DAY 2

Cat putting her rebar to good use reinforcing one of the layers of cinder block.

The walls were tall enough on the second day that
we were using scaffolding...

...though perhaps not in a manner OSHA would approve of.

The kids took breaks to play with some of the local children.
Here they're playing Pato, Pato, Ganso.

We brought jump ropes and soccer balls to share -
the jump ropes were a hit!

We ended earlier on the second day, and watched as a family was given a

finished FHF Mexico house.  It was touching to witness.

This is the finished, furnished house that was given away.

The family included a mom and three kids.  They'd just found out

the day before that they would have a house and not have to keep

moving around, as they'd been doing the last few years.

They were understandably very emotional.

DAY 3

Placing wood to be used as trusses for the roof.

Taking a break to play Jumanji.

Helping to cut wood for the trusses.

Hammering plywood on the other house's front porch.

Lunch came to us that day - we had two options: a couple selling tamales,
and a family selling fresh carne asada tacos, with a grill set up right on the site.

My pictures don't reflect how many people - mostly children and teenagers -
were hammering plywood on the roof.  By the time the wood was all up there,
there were at least 2 dozen hammers going.

This is the inside of the house we built.  Not bad.

The whole group who worked on this house!
(We started out with a smaller group, but some of the families working
on the other house weren't being included in the work so they joined us.)

The evolution of our house at the end of each workday:

This was definitely a positive experience for our family.  I still haven't reconciled my expectations and the reality of the project.  I hoped it would be intense and gritty, that we would have three full days of dirty, sweaty physical labor.  It wasn't that at all.  This was a laid-back environment where we were expected to work, but we weren't expected to work constantly - it was fine to take breaks and work at any pace. The boys were free to sit in the van and eat snacks or just play with their new friends; the girls took a little time to play with neighborhood children; and I shopped at the cars of the locals who'd brought their wares to the site to sell to volunteers.

I was disappointed.  I was afraid that the relaxed atmosphere would be less impactful than an intense one would have been.  Perhaps that's true, but I also realize that an intense work environment could have been too much for the kids, especially the boys, and they might have been miserable.  The laid-back nature of the project definitely made it a more fun, positive experience.  Time will tell if it was also memorable, but I think that it was different enough from everything else we've ever done, that we'll all remember it.

Side Note: Perhaps I looked forward to a physically demanding experience for the kids because I remember with fondness the many service projects I did as a teenager, both with my Ward/Stake and with high school groups.  They were often some of my favorite activities, because of the physical exertion, the opportunity to make a difference, and the camaraderie of working together.  But it occurred to me while we were working in Mexico that my kids haven't had those experiences.  They haven't had to do hurricane clean-up, they haven't painted a school in the poor part of town, they haven't even done yardwork on the temple grounds.  (Though Jack and his peers in the YM did help refinish the floor of the bishop's storehouse last year.)  Anyway, I'm really glad that they could work on this project and that we were able to be there together.

Mexico!

We left St. George on Christmas afternoon and drove to Phoenix.  We spent the night at a hotel there, then in the morning we met up with a caravan of families heading down to Puerto Penasco, Mexico for the Families Helping Families (FHF) home building project.

I'd been to Arizona before and seen the enormous Saguaro cacti, but I was amazed at how many there were when you continue to drive south from Phoenix.  We could see hundreds (thousands?) at a time - Saguaro forests covering the land on both sides of the road, and with mountains in the distance it was really an awesome sight.

Here's the border crossing into Mexico - you can see the metal wall on the right side.  Entering the country was quick and easy - we didn't even have to slow down, let alone stop and show passports or proof of identity or even write down our names.

And literally as soon as we entered Mexico, it was obvious by the state of the roads, signs, and buildings, the wild dogs, the beggars, and the street vendors that we were not in the United States anymore.

We continued our drive to Puerto Penasco, a small city on the Sea of Cortez.  The town itself is sad and rundown but there is a thriving tourism industry (it's the closest beach to Phoenix!) and the resorts were beautiful.  We checked in and took some time to check out the beach and heated pool.  It was too chilly for the elders in the family to get in the water, but the younger kids were all in.

After dinner, Ben went to the grocery store to get breakfast food for us while I stayed in the condo with the kids so they could shower and get ready for bed.  Ben came back with many Mexican delights, including a papaya, boxed milk, pan dulce, and these cereals.  Jack loves Nesquik chocolate milk mix, so he was really excited about the "mas chocolatoso" cereal.  And I cracked up at the name "Zucaritas," which means little sugars.

Our first real local meal was at a highly recommended shack called Pollos Lucas, and it was really delicious.  The kids loved the cats roaming around in the establishment and got a kick out of the soda bottles - there were no fountain drinks the whole time we were in Mexico.

Outside of the shack we ran into a man who was selling bracelets he'd made with different names in them and Luke wanted one with his name, but there wasn't one.  So the man whipped one up for him in a matter of minutes.

That evening we did some sightseeing and tried more local food, including elote and fresh-made churros with caramel and sweetened condensed milk.  This was at a place called... Churros y Elotes. And just down the street there was pizza!  P.S. The sunsets there were gorgeous.

And... more food... we tried papa asada (carne asada on a baked potato) at another highly recommended place called Tacos Brissas.  We did not eat a bad meal the whole time we were in Mexico, and thank goodness the kids were always able to get quesadillas if they weren't excited about the other options available for each meal.

On Tuesday afternoon the kids had a little more time in the pool before we got cleaned up for a fun fiesta FHF put on in the hotel.  There was more good food, a pinata, and lots of stereotypical white American dancing to songs like "YMCA" and "The Electric Slide."  Of course we had a blast.  After the fiesta someone in the group invited us to see their penthouse, and we were able to see Saturn (I think?) and a few of its moons using his big fancy telescope.

On our last day we made sure to go to Rodeo Drive to do some souvenir shopping.  I loved looking at all of the ceramics!

We left on Thursday morning to spend New Year's with family in Vegas.  Crossing the border back into the United States took longer than entering Mexico, but not by a lot.  A CBP agent checked our passports and we drove through a giant x-ray thing, then a few miles after we crossed into the US there was another checkpoint where they looked in the car briefly to see if we had any extra people with us.  There were signs posted saying not to bring produce into the US and we had some extra items that we'd bought at the grocery store in Mexico and were snacking on in the car, so we warned the kids that we might need to throw them away when we got to the border crossing.  When the CBP agent talked to us and looked at our passports, Jack was eating a carrot and he tried to hand it to the agent through the window but the agent laughed and said Jack could keep it.  I guess our few fruits and vegetables aren't a threat after all.

And... more Saguaro scenery heading north.  So cool.

I'll tell you all about the actual home building next time.