I spent last week in Matamoros, Mexico, which is a city across the Río Grande from Brownsville, Texas. Being in Mexico, particularly near the border, gave some cause to be concerned. But we made it through mostly without incident (more on that later). I went with nine other people from my church to visit and help out a missionary we support there. Jack (the missionary) runs a camp in Matamoros (seen here from outer space) which in the past has been used as a camp for kids and teens. But he has more recently built some nicer cabins on the camp, and last week they were finally put to use during a retreat for four Mexican pastors and their wives. Part of the reason we came was to help out with this retreat, with preparing and serving food. The rest of us (myself included) were just there for physical labor. But rather than write a super long post that will bore anyone who wasn’t there, I’ll try to condense a few bullet points.
Texas is big, flat, and empty. At least the parts that we drove through.
The first three days, most of our group was working at Jack’s house, which was located in Texas. This means I crossed the border quite a lot—eight times in all (four times each way). I learned that:
The Río Grande is quite a misnomer. The river is actually rather small. And we were pretty close to the Gulf Coast, where you’d think the river would be at its largest.
Getting into Mexico is much faster and easier than getting into the United States.
Only once were we asked to get out of our vehicle while a guard took a look around, and looked in the glove compartment, but didn’t look in the trunk.
Refried beans are apparently a condiment in Mexico. At one meal, we had ham sandwiches with refried beans instead of mustard or mayonnaise. At another, there was toast with refried beans and cheese on it. I think the best local food I had was the breakfast burritos, which were actually not spicy (in fact, none of the food was very spicy). I also made crepes one morning, by putting jelly on a tortilla and rolling it up. Those were pretty good too.
Our accommodations were not exactly top-of-the-line. We had to shower in smelly water that was cold not clean enough to drink (even the locals don’t drink it), and we slept in cabins that were open and allowed plenty of mosquitoes in.
On our next-to-last day, we heard from the pastors who were at the retreat. It was humbling to think that these accommodations that we found so primitive were like the Hilton to these couples. I think they all still have jobs in addition to being pastors, because their churches simply can’t afford to pay them enough to live on.
I was surprised how well I could actually stumble through Spanish, having only taken it in high school about ten years ago. But I don’t know how well I could have communicated without the help of Josh, who is currently taking Spanish in high school, and got quite a trial-by-fire. When you’re speaking a subset of the language consisting almost entirely of common verbs and nouns, and not worrying so much about verb conjugation, and the person speaking to you slows down, it’s actually not so bad.
We went over to the Gulf Coast on our last day, where some of us explored a shrimp boat that had run aground. This was actually a lot of fun!
Most of Mexico was very dirty, with litter everywhere. I’m not quite sure why. I mean it doesn’t seem like you need to come from a wealthy background to know not to litter. Maybe garbage collection isn’t as reliable as it is in America, so people don’t have a choice but to throw their trash in the streets? I don’t know, I’m just speculating.
We also went to what Jack called “Fishtown”. This was a very poor fishing village on the coast. I asked Jack what happens when a hurricane comes through, and he said the city sends buses to pick the people up, and after the storm they go back and salvage what building materials they can to rebuild their shacks. We visited two pastors that Jack knew in Fishtown, one of which who is trying to start an orphanage.
After Fishtown, we came back and made lots of sandwiches, then we went to the Matamoros city dump to pass out the sandwiches and fruit and juice. There are a lot of people that live next to the dump, who make a living salvaging what they can from the dump and selling it. We passed out the sandwiches, along with fruit and juice. It was another humbling experience, seeing this level of poverty that only exists in the United States for maybe the bottom 0.01% or something.
As we were leaving Mexico on our last day, we got pulled over by the police. The officer claims we ran a red light, but several of us saw the light as we went through it and it only turned yellow as we were going through. In addition, another car followed us through the light. I didn’t catch that car’s tags as we pulled over, but I have a hunch that it had Mexican tags. The officer told us that we would have to go to the office downtown to pay the ticket. After putting on this show of being super strict for five or ten minutes, he said “O paga thirty-five dollars, ahora”. (He had a firm grasp on the English language when it came to the phrase “thirty-five dollars”.) Anyway, we ended up giving him thirty dollars and he let us go along. We learned later that the fine for running a red light is only about five dollars, and we’re pretty sure none of that thirty dollars will ever make it to the city. But there wasn’t much we could do. It was one of the few times we didn’t have a local with us, and it’s not like the officer gave us any paperwork. And we weren’t going to let him lead us to la oficina, because who knows where he would have actually taken us or what he would have done to us once we got there. And it’s not like we can report the guy or hire a lawyer or anything. I mean I know we have corrupt police officers in the United States, but they’re not quite so blatant about it. I guess it was Mexico’s way of saying “thanks for visiting, and don’t come back!”
Well the bullets were supposed to keep this post from being too long but it has gotten quite large anyway. And I’ve even left out a lot of stuff! I guess I’ll end by saying that it was a great experience getting to interact with people in another culture, and very humbling to think about the conditions that most of them live in, compared to the comforts I enjoy in the United States. I’ve always thought it sounded cliché to hear people say things like that, and maybe that’s what you’re thinking as you read this. I guess I just think the world would be a better place if more people had the experience of playing soccer with the locals in another country.
I have put up a bunch of photos from the trip. I may put up more as I get pictures from other people’s cameras, and you may have already seen these photos on my Facebook.
