Humanitarian Trip to Mexico 2024

This year's humanitarian trip was to a little village: Santa Rosa-Temascatio, near Leon, Mexico.  Blake, Shonna, Caleb, Lily, Hannah, Blake's parents- Mark and Donna, and Ken went this year along with one of Blake's dental partners and two assistants and their husbands.  There were five others in the group as well.  Most slept in families' homes.  Ken and the Camerons slept in a school room.  There was no running water or showers and just porta-potties (brought in by Choice Humanitarian.)  The conditions were very primitive.

               

Donna (Blake's mom), Blake, Lily, Hannah. Mark, Caleb, Ken, and Shonna (who went for the first time this year.)

Besides offering free dental work, the project this year was building cisterns to collect water and wood-fired cookstoves for people in the village- offering great lifestyle improvements. The women were cooking their family's meals over an open fire, outside their homes.  

Resting.  This was really hard work: shoveling, mixing cement, applying cement, building, etc.

Left to right: Ken, village lady, Caleb and Lily mixing the concrete.

L to R: Mark Cameron, Lupita (an in-country Choice Humanitarian employee), Ken, Caleb, a village lady, and Lily.

L to R: Shonna, Ken, unknown village lady, Caleb & Lily, mixing concrete.

Here, you can see the concrete mixing, along with those passing the mixed concrete in buckets up to the local village man and in-country Choice Humanitarian employee applying the concrete to the cistern.

Lily & Caleb mixing the concrete for the cistern. Note that the concrete slab the mixing is happening on is the lid to one of the village's septic tanks.

Ken handing a small bucket of concrete mix to the local villager, who is applying the concrete plaster to the cistern's top.

Ah, the joy of service!

The large group was divided into smaller teams- each group assigned a cistern or a cookstove.  Each group also had people from the village working with them.

This is the school where Ken and the Camerons slept by night and was the dental office by day. This is the side of the school that acted as the dental office. You can see some of the local villagers sitting in the que, waiting their turn to receive dental care.

Caleb, standing in front of the school classroom that served as the bedroom for Ken, Blake, Shonna, Caleb, Lily and Hannah. Note the porta-potties (restroom facilities) in the background, on the right.

They pushed desks together to create "dental chairs."

On Wednesday evening, the people in the village put on a quincinera for a 15-year-old girl (Lilly) in the group.  She dressed in a fancy dress and there were treats and a dance.

Daddy, dancing with his pretty daughter, Lilly.

The other project was making cookstoves for families.

L to R: Ty, Lupita, and the mom and daughter for whom the cookstove is being built. They both helped in the stove's construction.

It had a large cooking surface and two smaller ones.  They installed a chimney so that the smoke could go up that instead of into the face of the cook.

What a huge improvement this will be for ladies who cook over an open fire with smoke constantly in their faces.

 At the hotel in Guanajuato after the service portion of the trip. It's time for a shave!

After the projects were complete in the village, the group went to Guanajuato.  This city is a touristy destination, especially for the Mexican people. It's beginning had to do with silver mining. Today, it is a thriving city with a university. Ken met three Japanese girls from Tokyo that were graduating from that university while he was there. 

They went on a mariachi band-led tour of downtown Guanajuato.  It was a rainy evening, so they took them down into the city's tunnels and told stories through their music,and played for them. Currently, the tunnels are used as underground streets; but originally, some of them were created by the river that coursed through this area.

The music played by the mariachi bands were well-known Mexican serenades. The locals seemed to know the words as well as the musicians and sang the words with as much gusto as the band members. We gringos found the activity interesting and the ambiance enjoyable, but we felt mostly left out of the meaning behind all of the songs and activities. The band would play for us a while, one of them would speak to us a bit, and then we would move to another location in the tunnels for another song or two. There were many groups in those tunnels with their own mariachi band.

This is a picture of one side of the plaza just outside the Luna Hotel, where Ken, the Cameron's, and the other team members stayed in downtown Guanajuato.

A Catholic cathedral near their hotel.

Gorgeous views of the city from the Papila statue, which you'll see soon.

In the background, to the right of Ken's left ear, you can see the green area that is the plaza in front of the Luna Hotel. The hotel was located between the green plaza and the large yellow/orange cathedral just to the right of Ken's head.

The statue of Papila, a local Mexican revolutionary hero

Amy, a dental hygienist and her husband, Peter, posing in front of a Bougainvillea Tree, located along the pathway/stairway down from the Papila Statue to Guanajuato's downtown area.

Stairs at the university

The view from the top of the stairs. Note the Papila Statue, near the top of the hill, on the horizon.

You can see that Papila statue in the distance.

The guide told them the Romeo/Juliet-esk story that happened in this alley.  A rich girl fell in love with a poor boy.  Her father forbade her to ever see him again.  The father caught them kissing.  They were each on a balcony on either side of the alley.  He stabbed his daughter to death.  There was a long line to get up to where it happened and there was a charge to stand on the balconies and kiss.  Shonna and Blake said, "We will just kiss here.  It's close enough!"

One of the many Mariachi bands playing on the shaded walkway between the plaza and the hotel-front restaurants. This is right in front of Hotel Luna.

From the movie, "Coco" You could pay to have your picture taken with her.

Here are some more pictures of the village from Mark's camera:

Pushed together desks created dental chairs.  Hannah and Donna helped in the dental clinic.

This is the wire frame which will be covered with cement/plaster for a cistern.

Cementing/plastering the cistern.

Look at that cistern.  This is Mark's 18th trip with Choice Humanitarian.  He is a fine leader and a true humanitarian.

This donkey brayed for the workers throughout the work.
Who needs Pandora?

This dear lady did not want the Americans to leave. Such a sweet, tender picture.

Ken climbed a mountain overlooking Guanajuato.  It was a 6-mile hike and had beautiful views.  The others went on a tour of a mine and went to a mummy museum.  Ken was hoping to see new birds, but was disappointed that birds seen there were ones he sees here.

Guanajuato's Weeping Rock

Mariachi band playing in front of the Luna Hotel for the patrons of the hotel-front restaurant.

Though the trip had a very difficult start, it ended up being a good experience.   They had no problems flying home except that many were ill. Thirteen of the seventeen in the group had intestinal illness, but Ken was spared that, thank goodness.