Travel with us to Oaxaca Mexico!

In April of 2010 and my husband and I found  ourselves packing our bags for another trip to the Mexican states of Oaxaca  and Chiapas. There we work with some of the poorest of the poor.  This is our 5th trip and we were as excited as the first time we went.  We couldn’t wait to go back and see all of the friends we have made on previous visits. We were Team # 45 going out under the sponsorship of the Salem, Oregon Non-Profit Organization; called “Friends of Pimpollo”.  Our team of 5 was small, but it allowed us to visit the 3 areas  of  work that Friends of Pimpollo have previously established.

Our first stop was the capital of Oaxaca, which included a few days of language school.  We were very excited to be able to brush up on our Spanish.  On our first trips we could only speak a few words but that didn’t stop us from having a wonderful experience.   We went to school in the mornings and the afternoons out in an area called Vicente Guerra, where the garbage dump is located.

In Vicente Guerra are sweet children who live in little tin shacks with dirt floors. Their families subsist on the things they can scavenge from the dump.  These people know in order for to move out of extreme poverty they need their children to be educated. We go there to help them build little one and two room tin schools. If we can gather enough funding we can pour cement floors for their classroom.

From there we travel 4 hours by bus to the southernmost part of the state of Oaxaca to a town called Juchitan.  In this town there is an orphanage called “Pimpollo” which means “little shoots”.  These children are little shoots indeed.  Pimpollo has  provided shelter for abandoned and abused children for over 20 years.  Sometimes we do a work project or take them into town and buy them much needed shoes.  We plan crafts, spend time reading and playing with them and getting to hear more of their stories. They open and share because they now know we will be back and they can trust us.

The last part of our journey we ride by bus 5 hours to Tuxtula, Chiapas.  There we are helping 13 kids from  Pimpollo and the high “Hill Villages” of Chiapas go to college. We are thrilled to have a  third  student graduating from the program this year.  His name is Marcos and he is graduating with a degree in natural medicine.  He  plans to go back to the town of Juchitan where he grew up in the orphanage and to set up a practice to serve the poor of that region. Julie is another student, that graduated last year with a degree in psychology and is now back at Pimpollo as the director.

I would like share the story of a young man named Jair who is currently in the preparatory college program.  We first met him when we traveled to Chiapas with a team in 2008.  He was originally from an abusive family in Mexico City.  As a small boy he travelled to Juchitan to live with his grandmother.  Shortly thereafter his grandmother sent him to the orphanage of Pimpollo.  He struggled through grade school and as time moved on he got in with the wrong crowd.  He was sent from the orphanage over to the collage program in Chiapas. Madre Estella, who began Pimpollo thought perhaps the couple running the college program, Chelo and Felix might be able to get he and 3 other boys on track.

We left Tuxtula in 2008 feeling very sad about these troubled boys and also the burden it was placing on the directors.  When we were there in 2009 we didn’t see much of Jair.  However, this year we were surprised when we saw him.  In fact we thought we might have mixed him up with someone else, only to realize he was one of the troubled boys we had met in 2008 .

According to of the directors of the college program he has turned from his troubled ways  and has stepped up to responsibilities within the program and is showing himself to be a leader of the younger boys.  He works during the week, goes to school on Saturdays to complete the classes needed to graduate from High School. On Sundays he does service work in the poorer communities of Tuxtula.  We are so proud of the way he has turned his life around.

The grants  that we send monthly largely pay for the 3 programs we visit on our trips.  They come from gifts and pledges of donors like yourselves.  What a privilege to be able to offer hope thorough the gift of education to some of the “poorest of the poor”.

Most of the teams that are sent out are a week long. Won’t you consider traveling with one of our future teams?

written by vicki frey-horton