Hi everyone, I know this is long but I wanted to give you an insight into the wonderful experience you helped become a reality!!
Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico:
We stayed in the Lantern on the Hill community Center located in Baja 89. This area was a shanty town with no paved roads and very little in the way of amenities. Most people build their homes with concrete and add on as they earn money- and many homes are unfinished, with holes patched with whatever they can use- fabric, pillows. etc.
It felt very much like a frontier, with the dusty roads and people staking a claim to whatever they could afford.
But amid all the simple living, people are technologically very much in the 21st century- with cell phones, TV, and internet in some houses.
People here are very hard working, they take buses to their factory jobs or domestic jobs in the city.
Many work 7 days a week and most adolescents must leave school to work.
Here are some images of the neighborhood and a saturday morning market:
Ginger and I had the unique experience to go out into the community to meet families and photograph them in their homes. The children especially loved this and they dressed to their best and posed for a million pictures!
Ensenada Trip 3/2012
Ginger was a great translator and I tried my best to speak what I could. Basically I just said "puedo tomar fotos?"??
- can i take pictures?
I brought a Polaroid back for my camera so I could give people a small copy to keep while they wait for the bigger ones to be mailed from the US. the kids really loved that.
I also baked a LOT of banana bread to bring with me as a thank you gift.
The people we were living with are a very Christian community. They are not Catholic, they call themselves "Christianos" and are very outspoken and zealous about 'spreading the word'.
Mexico is a mostly Catholic country, so the people are a minority in their religious practice.
There was a lot more "letting lose" and emotion in their church.
There is a lot of dancing, singing and even crying in church. It seemed to be a very accepting place and I felt that it was a much needed place for people to get away from their troubles and come to be with their community.
Ginger preached a sermon in Spanish! She got a lot of "Amens"!
 Ginger and the pastor of the church.  |
| Ginger preaching a sermon.
Lantern On the Hill's Community Center in Baja 89 is a house where missionaries stay, and children from the community come to learn and play.
Children go to school for a few hours each day. A lot of the families we met were involved in the community center- sending their children in for the art and english classes or the bible study held there.
The mission group had many projects, they worked on the grounds of the community cleaning up, getting the class rooms ready, and roofing new the house of the foundation's Mexican counterpart, Javier Felix.
Javier and his family live above the center and were our life-line to the people of the neighborhood.
  
the community center
   
martha (javier's wife) and pastor frank
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| the team helping roof Javier's house |
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| Javier in front of his new house |
Finally- on our last day ....
Ginger and I had a wonderful day, we were invited by the founders of Lantern on the Hill (JJ and Abby) to come to a new community that they are interested in helping,
called Zorillo (in spanish this means Skunk!)
The people here are Oaxacan migrants, who work in the agricultural fields in the valley.
They are paid much less for their hard work and are very discriminated against for their indigenous heritage, their dark-skinned appearance, and their native language.
Abby works with a woman there named Maria, who weaves bags to sell at the tourist markets.
She is a really amazing woman who, like the majority of the Oaxacan people living in Zorillo speaks a native tongue called "Trique" (pronounced Triki).
She has taught herself Spanish and is raising her young granddaughter here. She owns her home, a great feat, and is working to make a better life for her granddaughter.
Abby is working to raise more interest in her bags on some free trade shop websites around the world.
Here are some images from our photo shoot.
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| Maria and her newly attained social security card |
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| Maria's home |
More images from Zorillo:
Wow.
Well by now I'm sure you've stopped reading and are just browsing the images :)
I hope you can see from this how amazing the trip was, and I hope you know how glad and grateful we are to have friends and family like you, who have supported us!
Thank you again a million times-- and there are more more more images to come!
I will be in touch once I get them all online.
xoxo
Lolly + Ginger
all images © lolly koon 2012
