Wendy & Peter, friends of ours here in Mexico, are members of a church in nearby Ixtapa that supports a school inside the grounds of the landfill serving Zihautanejo and Ixtapa.
Since we met Pete and Wendy last fall, we have been interested to hear about their experiences volunteering at the school. Although we’re not interested in joining the church, we were happy to accept Wendy and Pete’s invitation to go with them and Michelle (the wife of the pastor of their church) on one of their volunteer days in April.
Since then, we have had the opportunity to go out several more times (Tuesday mornings) to spend about an hour teaching English to the students. The addition of the two of us has allowed the program to expand to include kindergarten age students in addition to the elementary and middle school students that Pete, Wendy, and Michelle where teaching.
In the few classes we’ve had the chance to teach, we have focused on colors and numbers (in English) which has been a bit of a challenge because not all of the students know them in Spanish. So, we taught a combination of Spanish and English! Some of the kids display some knowledge of numbers in English, like saying one to ten (in English or Spanish), but we quickly learned they know one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten as a phrase like a person might know supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It doesn’t have any real meaning.
It’s amazing and tragic to see the conditions these kids (and their families) live in and we have really only gotten a peek of the first section of the landfill. Apparently it goes on and on, which we can see on Google Earth, and the families live way back inside where they can pick through the garbage for anything they might be able to use or sell.
One of the first times we visited, the students were given uniforms by students visiting from another school and, remarkably, in spite of their difficult circumstances, the kids are usually relatively clean and well dressed. The school gives these children a chance at normalcy in what must otherwise be a difficult and dangerous life.
Besides education, the students are given two meals a day and as a long term goal, I think the school is hoping to be able to build a dormitory some day so that the students can stay at the school during the week where they’ll have better access to sanitary water, bathrooms, and nutritious meals.
Happy Ramblers 
About 50% of our school district’s students are Latino, mostly from Mexico and lately more from Guatemala. Politicians should read this post as the kids are expected to take and pass high stakes tests without any real understanding of the language. It’s tough.
BTW: A couple of students said they are close to where you are, about five hours…
I think I’ve about given up on any possibility of empathy from US politicians. It’s all about getting and keeping power. Look at the GOP “family values” bs. Obama was everything they said they desired in a person (good husband & father, educated, hard-working, up by the bootstraps, etc.) and Trump is everything they oppose (not a good family person, business disasters in his wake, crude, not religious, etc.). They hitch their wagon to Trump for power. It’s sad and discouraging.
Mexico is a mess in a different way. The town we lived in before moving here (Piedras Negras) just had their former mayor and current congressional candidate assassinated Friday night. I didn’t mention it in the post about the dump but we can’t go there til after the election (July 1) because the cartel presence there is too dangerous. I have no idea why that is but we only need to be warned once. A few weeks ago, ten cops were ambushed and killed in the village next to ours and the police force responded by killing six cartel members. Corruption and violence. It’s hard for the kids in the dump to believe in a better future. But they’re sweet kids…
I’m curious where your students are from? We’ve traveled a fair amount up the coast and inland but we’ve avoided going south towards Acapulco for safety reasons.
I still feel safer here in many ways than in the US because most of the violence is either between cartels or police & politicians. Cross-fire danger is probably less here than being shot in a mass school shooting or at a concert or something.
Crazy world!
It’s hard to understand how power has such a negative effect on everything. Be it guns or shady backroom politics, people who aspire to be in control or caught up in “cash” forget that we better when we coexist peacefully.
I’ll check tomorrow on the area, I hadn’t heard of it, but they knew where you were.
I couldn’t agree more about Obama, the Repubs, and the hypocrisy of DC. I just wish they could realize that the middle is where it’s at. The extremes on both sides are “effing” it all up.
Be safe, don’t piss any cartel or police off, and keep working with those kids.
I’ll be in touch soon…
Alright, a couple are from Moroleon, Gro another said he’s from the southern part along the curve.