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Your Mexican telenovela

Last week we went to help our maid, domestic worker. Her name is María.

Mexican poor people are the same height as hobbits, they are not dwarves, and I'm not trying to be funny here, it's actually pretty depressing. They should be the same height as other people, but they have genetics and malnutrition as well.

I remember that some decades ago, everybody was always drinking home made "fruit" water. e.g. Lime water (in Mexico, we call them Limones, but the gringos say that those are limes), Jamaica water (Jamaica is a flower), Horchata (which is made of rice), and Tamarindo (an acidic sweet bulbous fruit), and it was beautiful, and into this paradise came Coca-Cola, with all its production and factories... another conquerer to fuck us over.

My parents are really nice with the people that does domestic work, and they also try to help poor people. I guess they have been like this to teach us to always be humble to whoever lack stuff.

Doña Mary lives one hour away from our home. I believe she just found some place to stay, and in Mexico, poor people often do that. They just select a nice location and start living there. If the land is not reclaimed by anybody (for five whole years), they become officially the owners of that place. Whole colonies emerge with really bad housings, I'm talking about some bricks and sometimes not even a proper roof on their heads. Poor people usually do these bad housings on dangerous zones. It takes one bad season of raining to destroy their puny houses, but it doesn't matter, they don't have any other option.

We were protecting our house with a metallic fence (I don't know its name in english, but its the one from the image)
the fence was lying around for some time, just catching rust, and Doña Mary wanted it for covering parts of her "residential" zone.

My dad is 60 years old, but you know, he's one of those individuals that like to keep on doing physical jobs no matter their age. I decided to help him, because the fences were heavy; besides, our old Honda pilot likes to occasionally fail in the middle of nowhere.

Fortunately, the Honda didn't let us down, and managed to pull the weight from all those fences. We finally arrived to Doña Mary's place, and we ended up doing our job. She only got some concrete posts around her house and some wire to signal its delimitation. She was really happy with us, and your inner self also ends up feeling nice. Doing good feels good.

And then, reality and pessimism kicked back in.

Doña Mary is older than me, she is probably around 45, yet, she has a 6 year old. She has another girl, around her twenties, this young woman has a little boy of two or three years old. There is also Doña Mary's mother in that little and poor house... three women and two little boys living all together in a place where the only piece of technology was probably a tv.

By Doña Mary own accords, the father of his grandson was beating her wife, she decided not to be beaten anymore, and that's why she is living now with them. I don't know what is the story of the six year old, but I can foretell his future, and is not a bright one...

Mexico is a place of big contrasts, a german girl who was helping us in a Zapatista community was marveled by this. Inconceivable for her to find such abysmal differences within a hundred radius meter, and yet, so common for us Mexicans.

In that occasion (many years ago), we went to a "separatist" community in Mexico, we went only for a week to "bring knowledge". Their conditions were deplorable. Beans was our one and only diet, you were drinking water from who knows where and hopefully expecting it to be clean, but it's only when you perceive such conditions from a closer look that you realize how lucky you are to have education, access to the freaking internet, a good nutrition, and many more other good things that you won't find in such communities... 

All these experiences change your mind, and they let you grow as a person... I guess today's post is just to reflect a little on our own lives. I hope this doesn't become a Christian outlet, but if you have the chance, go help somebody that really needs it.

See you around, total strangers from the Internet.
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