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Ensenada #5: Laughter, the universal language.

Around every corner in Ensenada it seems there is little abarrotes (small grocery), a kind of throw-back to 1970 America. These little structures are no bigger than your living room but they offer a variety of goods for a handful of pesos, from pork rinds to Coca-Cola to fresh tortillas still warm from some abuela’s home cocina. This abarrotes was the fanciest one in the neighborhood by far, with fresh paint and fridges newer than the ’70s. Lydia and I wandered down from the Ochoa’s house during a lull in the action for a six peso Coke, which gave us an idea . . .

We trekked back to the top of that steep, dust-swept hill and grabbed Yazmin and Roman, plus Isabella, who, as part of our group brought laughter, joy, and levity to everything. I hung back as the four teenagers marched and laughed their way down the hill. They couldn’t communicate beyond hand gestures and smiles, but they were carrying on like old friends just the same.

Yazmin grabbed Isabelle’s hand which melted my heart.
Just three teenage girls buying junkfood and sodas.

It struck me, as I watched these four teenagers from immensely divergent backgrounds giggle and snack on junk foods like they’d known each other forever, how universal the need for friendship and connection is. These kids have never gone to school, they don’t play volleyball or rock climb in expensive gyms. They work all day to be able to eat that night. They take care of their younger siblings and help build and repair their family’s shelter. Roman dreams of moving somewhere to get a good job so he can help his family climb out of poverty. He is sixteen years old and he bears the weight of 12 other lives on his young shoulders and in his heart. Despite all that, despite the daily struggles they face, struggles that gratefully our daughters will never face, they still want to laugh, to drink a soda and spend time with other teenagers and for just a moment to forget everything and just be kids.

Yazmin is a typical, sassy teenager.
ust as I had hoped, Isabelle gets Roman to crack a smile on camera! You can’t NOT laugh when she does.

Sigh. Mi corazón.

To be continued . . .

Ensenada #4: Love Language

Several months before we left for Mexico I decided I should try to learn some Spanish. I knew I couldn’t become fluent in a few short months but I could at least pick up a few useful phrases and greetings. “Dónde está el baño, anyone?” I took Spanish in high school and remember almost nothing. I took it again in college where I managed to get a C, one of only two grades below a B earned in my tenure there. Undeterred by my past failings I downloaded DuoLingo and got busy. Armed with my new words I attempted to order tacos at a Milwaukee restaurant in Spanish, only to confound the waiters who apparently don’t understand bad Spanish with a Minnesotan accent; who knew? I tried it out on my beloved housekeepers whom I have been trying to befriend for years but without a shared language I barely knew. We shuffled along poorly but still, it was something! I was far from a Spanish speaker with my sad list of forty or so words but ready or not, the day came when my knowledge, such as it was, would really be tested.

sillouette of photographer and child.
My teenager and I on Day One. She really was a joy on this trip, when it was all said and done.

It was only Day One of our trip when my sweet hija (daughter), who is also clearly an adolescente (teenager), informed me that I was embarrassing her; obviously, I was getting it all wrong. People had to ask me “¿Como?” (What?) a LOT. My list of words lacked connectors which left me asking “Where . . . food place . . . no . . . flour . . . stuff?” (by the way, they don’t really know about gluten-free so don’t bother, ha). I felt a little sad at her teasing, sadder at my poor speaking skills, but as I laid in my bunk that first night I reminded myself why I learned it in the first place. I decided that the words of an embarrassed teenager are not really words to live by (duh).

blonde woman with two small boys
Me, Esua, Caleb, Yazmin, Randy and Esther (our translator).

I think that learning someone else’s language is a form of respect. You honor them, even if your attempts are broken and silly and completely out of order. You show the other person that you are not there to make Mexico or Africa or Haiti into a Little America, but you are there to stand alongside them in their own journey, in their own country. It feels good when someone tries to understand your language, whether it’s spoken or unspoken. We all want to feel heard and known.

The day I met the Ochoa family, that wonderful family with ten children at the top of the steep hillside, had I not learned my little basket of Spanish words we would have simply said “hola” and gone our separate ways. I would not have come home with twelve new friends. They may have continued to feel isolated and alone and would not have found a new community in a local church (more on that later). Beautifully, we made a meaningful connection, starting with broken Spanish and flourishing through a translator, a translator app, Facebook’s multi-language interface and now hours of chatting through Messenger and texting using Google Translate.

I am so excited to build on my Spanish, to keep learning more about this family, to get back to Ensenada to visit them, get real-life hugs from them and most importantly, to have deeper conversations with them using my newly acquired language skills. It is a journey worth taking, ya’ll. Connections are life.

Yesterday, Roman, the Ochoa’s oldest son, told me to hug my husband and kids from him and from his family. I told him to hug his family, too, teasing that it will take a while to hug them all. He replied to me “Oh, no, solo reuniré a todos a mi alrededor y les daré un gran abrazo”, basically, he will gather them all together and give them one big hug. “Ah” I said, “We call that ‘a group hug’ and it sounds wonderful.” I can’t wait to deliver an “abrazo grupal” to them myself very very soon.

Like kids everywhere, Caleb waves a leaf in my lens. So funny how kids are the same everywhere.
Oh, Caleb. 🙂
Stephany, me, Roman (who refused to smile but is the smiliest guy, usually)
Lupita, mi favorita!

Click for the next chapter: Ensenada: Laughter is the universal language.

Ensenada #3: Sometimes you are sent.

It was just Day One in Ensenada when a beautiful miracle began to unfold. The house build was going along swimmingly with local pastors, church members, YWAM volunteers, the family,their family, plus our little team from the midwest all working away like ants on a hill. My official capacity was to capture the story of the day through photos and video so I decided to walk through the neighborhood to create a fuller picture of where our family lived. My dad, the self-appointed supervisor of all things, came along to “keep me safe” (I think he just wanted to look busy, lol).

humanitarian documentary photo of two women carrying a sheet of plywood building materials on construction site

The neighborhood was really quiet that morning. Some people peeked their heads out of doors and windows as this blonde lady with a camera and her distinguished, mustached chaperone passed by, but it seemed that most residents were away at work or school. Dogs, cats, chickens, and a goat or two, on the other hand, were everywhere. Lounging in the middle of the road, barking at us like they might eat us or squawking and cock-a-doodle-doo-ing indignantly on the end of a string.

humanitarian documentary photo of very small house in Mexico with fabric canopy sun screen
Typical yard. That house was built by Homes of Hope or similar organization years ago.

I saw this cool scene at the top of the steepest hill; a man on an iPhone in one of the poorest neighborhoods in North America shepherding a bunch of cows up the side of the mountain, a really beautiful house and garden in the foreground. I wanted to capture it and immediately started to scurry up the dusty hillside. My dad just stood at the bottom, waiting for his crazy-loco-en-la-cabesa-daughter to take her silly photos and come back down. It was just then, however, that the real purpose of our exploration began to unfold. He would have to climb the mountain after all.

Mexican man talking on the phone on a hillside with cows
small but beautiful red Mexican house on a hillside with blue sky above
This beautiful home is not typical. It’s the equivalent of a mansion on a hill. Still no running water or indoor plumbing, though, but with several buildings, rock walls, green foliage and ample space, it is a truly stand-out homestead.

As I made my way up the hill I saw a family, thirteen of them in all, walking single-file across the hillside like a scene from the Sound of Music, superhero T-shirts in place of curtain-play-clothes, the little one (Lupita, I would later learn) sipping on a three-liter bottle of Coke. I was so excited to find people outside their homes, people to connect with (my most favorite thing in the world). In my limited and broken Spanish, I said “Buenas Dias”, asked them how they were and asked their names. I introduced myself as Au-na, the way they could understand my name most easily, and chatted a bit about who owned the houses nearby. I asked if I could take their photos and they said “why not?”. I gave each of the small children a dollar as we said “adiós” and we headed down our divergent paths. By now my dad had finally made it up the hill to join me.

Doug Thorson in Mexico walking up a dirt road
Dad reluctantly followed me up that hill.

Gabriela, the mother, who we would later learn had turned around to talk to us at the nudging of a voice, caught up to us as we began to walk back down the hill to the job site. “How can I get a home like that for my family?” she asked in Spanish. “We struggle. My children cannot go to school, our home is very small and we are very many. A home like that would make a great difference for us.” (a general translation, as I am just learning ). I tried to explain the process a bit as she motioned for us to come and see their home, an invitation that felt like an honor and one we happily accepted.

humanitarian documentary photo of Ochoa family home in Ensenada Mexico held up by tires on a hillside
The Ochoa family home. Thirteen people live in that tiny space. Families here work hard to build up the sloped hillside to create flat ground to live on. Tires are one of the most used “found” materials. I saw a man walking down the highway carrying three on his back. An invaluable resource, clearly.
Mexican boy peeking around the corner toward his sister
Caleb. The kids were shy at first. Hiding from my camera and my “crazy blue eyes”! Roman would ask me later if he could trade eyes with me. LOL
Mexican boy crawling out from under a bed with a cheetah print blanket
Esua hides from me, but only for a moment. This home has a concrete floor which is very high-end in this neighborhood. Most have dirt floors.
humanitarian documentary photo of four Mexican children playing in their small home
Caleb, Lupita, Esua and Ixtxia (its-ee-ah). This is the family’s main living area: Mom, Dad, Yeni and Lupita’s bed, a little cooking area and small storage space. They had a stove but their neighbors stole it along with all their valuables and sold them in the market.
humanitarian documentary photo of Mexican man preparing a meal over a fire outside their home
Cruz, the father of the family, builds a fire to boil water for baths. They have a stock tank they store on the roof and bring into the house for bathtime. The ingenuity is astonishing.
Toddler in Mexico drinking from an empty coke bottle
Lupita with her now-empty Coke bottle. Yeni, SUPER shy, peeks out at me from behind her brothers.
humanitarian documentary photo of a group of children siblings standing in front of their home in Ensenada Mexico
Ixtxia, Esua, Caleb, Randy and Yazmin.
These beautiful children have never been to school. In Mexico education is free, however, families have to provide uniforms, transportation, lunch money, books, and supplies. In addition, this family relies on all members to work. The older children wash cars and the little ones sell marzapan. It is technically illegal for children to work but there is little enforcement. Despite all the struggles the children are literate. Sixteen-year-old Roman had a phone with a translation app. He and I worked hard to communicate with my limited Spanish, his deep desire to connect, and that handy app.
a Mexican family of 13 people
Luis, Stephany, Ixtxia, Cruz, Esua, Lupita, Randy, Gabriela, Yeni, Caleb, Roman and Yazmin.

I asked Gabriela to walk over to the job site with us where a translator could help her learn more about a Homes of Hope house for her big, wonderful family. Through the interpreter, we heard more about little Lupita (Gabriela Guadalupe), who is actually their granddaughter. Their oldest child, Lupita’s mother, was badly beaten as a young girl and never fully recovered. She died when Lupe was a year old from complications due to her injuries. The family stopped attending their church when a pastor suggested that their daughter’s death was some kind of test of their faith. So heartbreaking and senseless. They have been struggling emotionally and physically since, isolated from community and friendship.

Just a few days before we arrived in Ensenada, Gabriela told us, she had been praying that she might find her way back to God and into a church family again. When we parted ways that first time on the hillside a voice prompted her to turn around and talk to us. We had no idea that through my crappy Spanish skills, my desire to connect to people and my dad’s reluctant willingness to follow me up that steep hill, we would be a conduit to bring God and his people right to her doorstep just days later.

Mexican children playing at the home, one of them in a superman shirt
Esua, Ixtxia and Yazmin. Ixtxia is the sassiest, funniest little girl. She is not easy to capture smiling, but I got a few!
two mexican brothers wrestling on the ground
Hermanos! Boys boys boys.
two mexican brothers wrestling on the ground
Caleb and his beautiful smile stole my heart. The first day we met when I handed out dollars I ran out just as he ran up to me. I WISH I had a photo of the puppy dog eyes he gave me. He looked like the cat from Puss de Boots! He is theatrical, joyful and sweet.
black and white photo of a small hispanic boy looking up at the camera
This photo is close, but he isn’t in full-puppy-dog-mode here. LOL
black and white photo of a small boy in Mexcio playing with a 5 gallon water jug
Families in this neighborhood purchase water in jugs and lug it up the hill. In the better-off households they have big tanks, like small water towers, that are refilled by a service. Water is scarce for all. Everything is dusty. EVERYTHING.
Mexican children playing
Mexican children playing
Caleb, Randy, Ixtxia and Esua. Such beautiful faces!
Mexican children playing
Caleb and Esua always jumping in front of the camera.
Mexican children playing
I mean . . . Caleb!
Mexican children playing
Caleb, Randy and Esua.
Mexican toddler playing on a tire
As we left with her grandmother to the jobsite, Lupita did NOT want to be left behind.
toddler girl walking through rough grass with an adult and an older child
This little spit-fire does not take “no” for an answer. 🙂
mexican toddler smiling at the camera with other people in the background
Look at that face! I’ve seen this face a thousand times; one that says “I got what I wanted! I got to come along like a big-girl!”

Click for chapter four- Ensenada: Love Language.

Ensenada #1: The Journey Begins

For the last seventeen years my dad has been traveling to Ensenada, Mexico, just a couple hours south of Tijuana, with teams from of his church and a scattering of his own kids and grandkids to build homes for families there. My oldest son, Tyler, went with my husband when he turned thirteen and Isaiah went last year on his own. My brothers, my neice, my nephew and my brother-in-law have all gone . . . I was practially the last to join the party!

Always eager for adventure my youngest daughter was beyond ready to take her turn at Grandpa’s side. We decided to make the trip together. It was one of the most memerable trips of my life. It was life-changing for my kiddo, it was an honor for me to bear witness with my camera to the beauty, the heartache, the resiliance and the tenacity of the amazing people of Ensenada and it was special to do it together. I will share our whole journey in this blog, but I will break it up into several posts. There is simply too much to tell all at once and I don’t want to miss anything!

The beauty of the world never ceases to amaze me.
I love thirteen. One minute a sassy teenager, the next snuggling with a beloved stuffed animal that came along on this trip. She is the perfect age for her first mission trip.
Crossing the border at Tijuana. It is like driving from one planet to another. Moving from the oplulance of California to the struggle that is Tijuana was jarring.
The beautiful sunset just outside the YWAM basecamp. If you look closely you can see the ocean and a mountain in the distance.
We didn’t even know that there would be other kids on the trip, but within hours these four ladies were laughing like old friends. They would make the trip all the better.
The road outside our basecamp. This photo doesn’t capture it but I have never been anywhere this dusty in my life! Dust in your bed, dust in your hair, dust in your shoes, dust dust everywhere!
The YWAM base is friendly place to rest in the middle of what is truly a foreign place. I have been to Mexico many times in my life but Ensenada is not a tourist destination with Mojitos and guacamole on the beach. It is the real-deal.

Read the next chapter. Ensenada: We are all the same.

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