Day 4: Jean in Mexico

Day 4: What a long day. We drove about 7-8 hours back and forth to Tijuana to visit a shelter and distribute clothing and host a lunch and a pinata for the kids. They loved it and really appreciated our visit. It was exhausting but productive.

This facility was very different because everyone lives in different tents in a very large room. ½ of the room is tents, and the other ½ an open area where they set up tables to eat. There were at least 40 children here and the vast majority under the age of 10, and the youngest 2-months old. We did not see any sickness here, other than the occasional kid cough.

While we were there, “shrek” showed up and asked me to play Fiona. He then put a scarf around me and used me in his skit. To my surprise, he picked me up, threw me over his shoulder and ran around the room with me, while a woman chased us with a stuffed donkey. Very strange. I’ll just add that to the list of things I would only do for MdC.

How we are living shut-in these days flattening the curve with the Corona virus is pretty much how many of these children have lived for over a year. They spend all their time within the walls of the shelter. There are no parks or places outdoor for them to exercise or safely spend their time.

My head is swimming with so many different thoughts on how we want to run our facility, Casa Esperanza, many of which Francisco and I discussed on the way back. The time spent at some many of the shelters, this trip and many others before, reinforced our need to have our facility up and running as soon as possible.

We have heard Mexico is about to receive many of those that are currently in U.S. detention centers and I am not sure how the current system in place is going to be able to handle this well.

On the humorous side, we ate lunch at a restaurant named “Bol Corona”