Migrant Camp

Very cute kids

Who played well together 

 We had a bit of a change of pace and scenery for this last week. A team of people were supposed to come and run a week long event called Not For Sale looking at human trafficking and prostitution, but unfortunately that event fell through. So plan B was to go to a migrant camp in a nearby town. Families come up from the south of Mexico hoping to find work but when they get here there is no work so they end up in these migrant camps working in the fields hoping to make enough money to get back down south.

On Monday we had lectures about the different forms of abuse and how to recognise the signs so that we might be able to help the children we would be spending the rest of the week with. We had been told to prepare for pretty rough conditions and to expect to see a lot of poverty and when we arrived at the camp on Tuesday we did find the living conditions fairly basic but the poverty was not as bad as I was expecting. Everyone had warm clothes, shoes and looked like they got enough to eat, granted there may not have been much variety and most people didn’t have electricity but the poverty wasn’t as bad as I have experienced in Mali.

Our first job was to clean out the rooms we would be staying in, they had dirt floors and some had wooden beds, a crude window, a door without a latch and no electricity. I can honestly say this was the first time I had to SHOVEL out rubbish from the place I would be sleeping in. We also painted the rooms which made them much more pleasant to stay in and also masked any unwanted smells!

Front view of the houses, there are several more rows behind this one.

The rooms we stayed in. The migrants will have whole families in these small rooms.

Painting the ceiling from the top bunk.

Team work!

The reason we went to this camp was to put into practice what we have been learning in class in terms of working with children at risk and their families. One thing that I struggled a bit with was relationships; everything we have been learning in class the past weeks highlights just how important it is to work with the people and not for them but that didn't seem possible in this situation. Building relationships was difficult because only about half out team speaks Spanish and also we were only there for 4 days. Of course it was different with the kids where the language of play will get you a long way, although to get to a deeper level and talk about God obviously language is important.

Another thing we talked about in lectures that I saw highlighted this week is the importance of understanding the culture you are working in; the mindset, problem solving strategies...etc. Researching the culture and having locals working with you is invaluable and will prevent embarrassing and sometimes painful mistakes. For example we wanted to teach the mums some basic hygiene and thought it would be a good idea to ask the mums what they already know about health care and share that with the other mums...but...we didn’t really understand the way the women think. So when we went up to some of them and asked them fairly bluntly what they tips they had about healthcare the conversation quickly became awkward and it was evident that we were going about it all wrong. With the help of a Mexican in our team we realised our method of questioning was too intrusive and abrupt so we changed tactics and developed a presentation about healthcare and invited the mums to that. Ideally we would have had time to build relationships with the mums and gather the information more informally or get the mums teaching each other what they knew but with only a few days with them that wasn’t possible.

Now what did we do???

Other than cleaning the rooms and painting inside and out we...

Dug a 3m hole and built an outhouse on top of it

The beginning

Looking up form the pit

We didn't have any ladders or even rope so it was a little challenging to get the dirt out and the digger towards the end but some good old Kiwi ingenuity got it sorted (it was actually more like Kiwi / Canadian / America / Mexican ingenuity that got the job done). 

And we dug out clogged drains of raw sewage

Really dirty work

See the small child in the foreground playing in the drains!

We built a stove from cans and mud

 

And we taught the mums some basic hygiene, cleaned up A LOT or rubbish, filled in make shift rubbish dump where the kids played and of course played a lot with the kids.

Randomness: the DTS (Discipleship Training School) from the base here also came with us on this trip but they came a day later. When they arrived I had just taken a bucket shower and someone commented on that we were told we wouldn’t be showering, so I replied that I had fallen in the toilet and it took three guys to pull me out and that is why I needed a shower, but I quickly added that the toilet I fell in was the one I had been digging. But somehow the rumour spread and by the next morning everyone in the DTS told me how sorry they were for me and asked how it happened.

So all in all it was a very good week, I really enjoyed the physical work and playing with the kids and I learnt some new skills: how to build an outhouse and a stove, which I think may just come in handy in Mali.

Some good worship times around the camp fire

Ok so I didn't have any clothes to take that I could
get dirty so I had to take what I could find in the donations pile and so it was a little too big and not quite my style!

Fish tacos from a street vendor on our way back to base, they are as good as everyone says!

 (thank you to Lisa for all the photos)