Matthew Hunter
07-21-2001, 05:42 PM
Boy, what a trip. I don't think I have ever learned so much by going away for a week. I tell you, and I don't know what religion you all are, but Jesus Christ definitely called me for this, and guided our group every step of the way, there is no doubt in my mind. Since it is so off-topic to begin with, I will give you a shortened story, and oddly enough there were a couple of noteworthy cartoon items that I'll mention just to keep this on-topic...more on those later.
This was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. We went on a Friday and came back the next Saturday (today.) We spent Friday night in El Paso and then crossed the border the next morning, with very little trouble, in fact. The difference between Juarez and El Paso is stunning, it was like stepping through a portal into another dimension, a whole different world, a world in which the things all of us, even the poorest and wealthiest alike in America, take for granted, are revealed. Juarez is an interesting city, it apparently has a "nice" district, of which we saw a limited amount of, but got the idea. In the Mercado in this area, we had the chance to look around and buy souvenirs, I found a nice hat and a handmade blanket, as well as some gifts for my parents. There were some cartoon items there, none of them copyrighted, because apparently the U.S. laws either don't count, aren't enforced, or both down there (lots of ceramic banks of the likes of Pikachu, Pooh Bear, Piglet, Big Bird, Pikachu, Taz, Tweety, Yakko, Wakko, Mickey, Donald, Pluto, Bugs, and lots of other cartoon icons from different origins too numerous to name.)
The mission we stayed in was the church and visitor's apartments of "Los Manos De Dios" (Hands of God), a cinder-block building consisting of some nice rooms and a dining hall, plus the chapel. But that was hardly important, except that I noticed that the backgrounds in some of the earliest Speedy Gonzales cartoons are not too far off, many of the roads are unpaved, nearly all the buildings had cinderblock and plywood construction, yucca and cacti grew all over the place, and very little vegetation existed otherwise. The area was what I would equate to a ghetto, but much more....I don't know, not quite. Just watch something like "Gonzales' Tamales', and think a little bit unkempt with some junkyards around, you'll get a feel for it. The little stores and restaurants around the area were of interest to the cartoon fan, I'd suppose, because of the murals and artwork. There is a huge graffiti problem there, so in the attempt to discourage it, murals and ads are painted everywhere, along with pictures of cartoon characters, most commonly Winnie The Pooh characters and Looney Tunes, I don't remember everything. I remember an ice cream place that used Tweety and a bookstore with Mickey Mouse. The ads, most always for Coca Cola or Fresca, would be paid for by the companies and either painted by the owners or companies, depending on store/location.
Anyway, that was not part of our project. For that, we drove each day about 40 minutes away, to the district of Anapra, where even the slummy area we stayed in could not even come close to the poverty. I am not kidding, there were many houses made of CARDBOARD, more were made of tar-paper, and others were fashioned from plywood scraps, tires, cars, busses, sod palletes, anything that could be lived in or built with. No roads were paved, and if you've ever been to the middle of the Chihuahuan desert you know about the awful dust storms...so that was not a plus either. Most of these shacks had no running water, no electricity, and were lucky if fewer than 4 people were living in a 10-foot square area, it was not at all uncommon to have 9 people crammed into less space than that.
Our business there was to work at an orphanage, at which there were about 11 kids in residence at the time, both playing with/entertaining the children and doing construction. Some people painted, others fixed a floor, and I was working on the construction of a shower house building, I now know how to put up cell-tex sheetrock and chickenwire to form the framework for stucco walls, and I was the guy in charge of mixing the stucco, a nasty but fun-to-work with mixture of concrete, sand, water, and lime, spread to make stucco walls when it dries. Think the gray clay you always used to play with in art class.
Another bunch of us helped to build a new house for one of the workers there, he had started the project, and his story was interesting enough to tell. His name was Chilo, and he had been living with his wife, family, and another family in a tarpaper shack about 11 cubic feet in size, think a spacious outhouse, that's it. He had been working on a project for 7 years, a larger house made of adobe, so that one day he and his wife and family could live in it. He told Dan, the guy in charge of ours and dozens of other mission groups that come to help in Anapra, about a dream he had one night, in which Dan had built the roof on the new house. Dan thought about that, and decided to make it a project for the next group that came along, and we were lucky enough to do it, with him coordinating it. We built him a roof, a porch, and a floor, and strengthened the existing adobe. His thank you speech was moving to tears.
That's it in a nutshell, we got all the projects finished, and the things it taught me were amazing. Ask me sometime. What I can tell you that I hope you will ponder and take to heart is, how lucky we all are. I cannot speak for every last one of you, but look, we all have computers. There is not one computer in Anapra, Juarez, I can assure you. We all have houses or apartments to put the computers in, and beds to sleep in, clothes to wear, hot and cold running water, electricity, money. Many of these things are nonexistent there. Take a survey of things you own sometime...what do you really need? Look how lucky each one of you are. Even something as small as a video tape or a cartoon collectible or a comic book, or even your lunch, your car, a book to read, a newspaper, anything like that that you enjoy without even thinking sometimes....we should all realize our privilege.
-Now, hasn't that gone on long enough? If you have questions, I'll answer if I can. Oh, and I dare you to ask me about the connection between the Road Runner and the Juarez convenience stores.....:)Boy, I can't wait to watch the ol' Acme Hour tonight...I have a new appreciation for it, that's for sure, doc!
-Matthew
This was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. We went on a Friday and came back the next Saturday (today.) We spent Friday night in El Paso and then crossed the border the next morning, with very little trouble, in fact. The difference between Juarez and El Paso is stunning, it was like stepping through a portal into another dimension, a whole different world, a world in which the things all of us, even the poorest and wealthiest alike in America, take for granted, are revealed. Juarez is an interesting city, it apparently has a "nice" district, of which we saw a limited amount of, but got the idea. In the Mercado in this area, we had the chance to look around and buy souvenirs, I found a nice hat and a handmade blanket, as well as some gifts for my parents. There were some cartoon items there, none of them copyrighted, because apparently the U.S. laws either don't count, aren't enforced, or both down there (lots of ceramic banks of the likes of Pikachu, Pooh Bear, Piglet, Big Bird, Pikachu, Taz, Tweety, Yakko, Wakko, Mickey, Donald, Pluto, Bugs, and lots of other cartoon icons from different origins too numerous to name.)
The mission we stayed in was the church and visitor's apartments of "Los Manos De Dios" (Hands of God), a cinder-block building consisting of some nice rooms and a dining hall, plus the chapel. But that was hardly important, except that I noticed that the backgrounds in some of the earliest Speedy Gonzales cartoons are not too far off, many of the roads are unpaved, nearly all the buildings had cinderblock and plywood construction, yucca and cacti grew all over the place, and very little vegetation existed otherwise. The area was what I would equate to a ghetto, but much more....I don't know, not quite. Just watch something like "Gonzales' Tamales', and think a little bit unkempt with some junkyards around, you'll get a feel for it. The little stores and restaurants around the area were of interest to the cartoon fan, I'd suppose, because of the murals and artwork. There is a huge graffiti problem there, so in the attempt to discourage it, murals and ads are painted everywhere, along with pictures of cartoon characters, most commonly Winnie The Pooh characters and Looney Tunes, I don't remember everything. I remember an ice cream place that used Tweety and a bookstore with Mickey Mouse. The ads, most always for Coca Cola or Fresca, would be paid for by the companies and either painted by the owners or companies, depending on store/location.
Anyway, that was not part of our project. For that, we drove each day about 40 minutes away, to the district of Anapra, where even the slummy area we stayed in could not even come close to the poverty. I am not kidding, there were many houses made of CARDBOARD, more were made of tar-paper, and others were fashioned from plywood scraps, tires, cars, busses, sod palletes, anything that could be lived in or built with. No roads were paved, and if you've ever been to the middle of the Chihuahuan desert you know about the awful dust storms...so that was not a plus either. Most of these shacks had no running water, no electricity, and were lucky if fewer than 4 people were living in a 10-foot square area, it was not at all uncommon to have 9 people crammed into less space than that.
Our business there was to work at an orphanage, at which there were about 11 kids in residence at the time, both playing with/entertaining the children and doing construction. Some people painted, others fixed a floor, and I was working on the construction of a shower house building, I now know how to put up cell-tex sheetrock and chickenwire to form the framework for stucco walls, and I was the guy in charge of mixing the stucco, a nasty but fun-to-work with mixture of concrete, sand, water, and lime, spread to make stucco walls when it dries. Think the gray clay you always used to play with in art class.
Another bunch of us helped to build a new house for one of the workers there, he had started the project, and his story was interesting enough to tell. His name was Chilo, and he had been living with his wife, family, and another family in a tarpaper shack about 11 cubic feet in size, think a spacious outhouse, that's it. He had been working on a project for 7 years, a larger house made of adobe, so that one day he and his wife and family could live in it. He told Dan, the guy in charge of ours and dozens of other mission groups that come to help in Anapra, about a dream he had one night, in which Dan had built the roof on the new house. Dan thought about that, and decided to make it a project for the next group that came along, and we were lucky enough to do it, with him coordinating it. We built him a roof, a porch, and a floor, and strengthened the existing adobe. His thank you speech was moving to tears.
That's it in a nutshell, we got all the projects finished, and the things it taught me were amazing. Ask me sometime. What I can tell you that I hope you will ponder and take to heart is, how lucky we all are. I cannot speak for every last one of you, but look, we all have computers. There is not one computer in Anapra, Juarez, I can assure you. We all have houses or apartments to put the computers in, and beds to sleep in, clothes to wear, hot and cold running water, electricity, money. Many of these things are nonexistent there. Take a survey of things you own sometime...what do you really need? Look how lucky each one of you are. Even something as small as a video tape or a cartoon collectible or a comic book, or even your lunch, your car, a book to read, a newspaper, anything like that that you enjoy without even thinking sometimes....we should all realize our privilege.
-Now, hasn't that gone on long enough? If you have questions, I'll answer if I can. Oh, and I dare you to ask me about the connection between the Road Runner and the Juarez convenience stores.....:)Boy, I can't wait to watch the ol' Acme Hour tonight...I have a new appreciation for it, that's for sure, doc!
-Matthew