Fundraising for kids

Being back in my own home after 6 months in Mexico has been like a vacation from traveling retirement, my new lifestyle. I kinda like it. So true of vacations, you think you could live in that vacation destination forever, but after a while, it gets to be like real life.....you meet people, problems arise, health issues come up, you need a haircut, you start setting goals....

One of the goals I wanted to accomplish before taking off to Europe and continuing on with living at large in the world, was to earn some money for Casa de las Flores, so they could get another bathroom working.  Read about the school here:  CasaFlores

So tonight, in Los Alamos, with the help of longtime friends, we will put on a Mexican dinner (no not tacos) of moles, a red and a green. I learned to make green mole from Malena and will post the recipe here. The kicker is you need fresh epazote and that is very difficult to find, even in parts of Mexico. Many stores in New Mexico cater to Mexicans, but those people are mostly from Chihuahua and Sonora, not deep in the heartland...Oaxaca or Chiapas. So consequently, epazote is not readily available. I did buy some dried and that will just have to do.

We hope to raise about $600 and early donations have netted $120. Thirty people are signed up for the dinner and I expect about ten others to show up at the last minute, they always do. It will be a lot of fun, we're showing the movie Which Way Home, the story of children, from 9-17 who travel alone or in pairs across Mexico to reach the US. It's so dangerous, yet they do it and some do it more than once. One boy in the documentary reached the US only to be detained by immigration and ultimately sent back to Guatemala. He did it again before being detained in Washington state. Amazing. He was 13.

The kids in San Cristobal are equally street savy and grow up tough and wary. Most never learn to read unless they can occasionally go to a school like Casa de las Flores. Too many of them only see a future outside of Mexico. And getting out can be deadly.