A Day in the Life

7:45am	Wake up and get out of bed. Don't take a shower. Put on my dirty clothes from the day before.
8:00am	Do an introduction with the volunteer group. Explain the work that we will be doing as well as some ground rules for the worksite and for the living facilities.
8:30am	Leave for the worksite. A construction superviser and I are in a pickup full of tools. The volunteer group is following us. Poor road conditions, distance, and traffic account for the 1 hour morning commute.
9:30am	We arrive at the worksite and I introduce the family and the volunteers to one another. This usually consists of the names and ages of the volunteers and a welcome by the family. Everyone is anxious to get started.
9:45am	We begin working. We unload the tools from the truck bed and pass them out to volunteers. I direct traffic and get people started on specific tasks, i.e. I "coordinate volunteers." These tasks may consist of tying rebar, digging trenches, stacking blocks, making cement, passing cement, and more.
1:00pm	Lunchtime. Lunch is cooked and served by members of the community. Lunch usually consists of rice, beans, tortillas, some form of meat, and agua (flavored water). I've been on this diet for over three months, and I still look forward to this food everyday.
1:45pm	Start working again. It's often a little slow immediately after lunch (you can imagine why), but after about 1/2-hour, the group picks up the pace once more.
3:00pm	Stop working. Just before the second wind is about to deflate, I direct the group to pick up the tools, clean up any materials we've been working with and get into their vehicles. "We're heading back to the Posada!"
4:00pm	Get back to the Posada (beautiful living facility). Let the group shower and change their clothes while we unload the tools and work on some other projects in the office or in the field. There's quite a bit of administrative work that we need to do to prepare for upcoming groups and to follow up on groups that already came. In addition, I've got some projects on my own to work on during this time.
5:30pm	Clean up. Maybe take a shower and change clothes.
6:00pm	Eat dinner. The volunteer group will usually invite me to eat with them. That means spaghetti or something else easy to cook for 30+ people.
7:00pm	Group activity. This may involve taking a group for a trip to the dUS-Mexico border, going to the Tijuana cultural center, visiting Rosarito to do some touristy shopping, going to a soccer game, etc.
10:00pm	Personal time. I try to read and/or do some e-mail correspondences although I usually end up falling asleep in the process.
11:00pm	Go to bed. Zzzzzz.....

That's my schedule for a typical day as a volunteer coordinator for Esperanza International. Note however that each day is slightly (read drastically) different from the next.

There is a lot of flexibility in this schedule, accounted for by the fact that there are two other people working with me. One, Eduardo Zavala has been doing this for seven years, and the other, Valentin Claudel, is a volunteer from the Brittany region of France.

In general we have at least 30 volunteers in a facility that can hold up to 64. This pattern will change as summer draws nearer and we will be double-, triple-, and even quadruple-booked. That means less and less time to do personal stuff like bathe, sleep, and eat. Am I complaining? Naw...I can't wait for the summer season.

Currently reading: "Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism" by Temple Grandin
Currently listening to: Los Fabolosos Cadillacs, Los Tigres del Norte, and Sergio Vega.

I am not Mexican

No matter how hard I try (or don't try), I will never be Mexican. At first sight, with my now-dark brown skin and black hair, I may pass for one, but hear me try to speak Spanish, realize that I'm struggling to understand a fast-paced colloquial conversation, or discover my inadequate knowledge of Mexican culture/geography/politics, and you will know that I am from elsewhere. Is this a big deal? It is if you live in Tijuana, Mexico.

In a city that has spent its entire history straddled between Mexico and "Gringolandia," it is incredibly obvious to me in which of the two classifications I am inevitably placed. Working with volunteer groups mostly from the dUS, I regularly receive friendly quips from my Mexican co-workers about "mis paisanos" at times when they feel like anything but. Even the French volunteer (he would tell you that he's really Breton) receives taunting calls of "gringo" from the sidelines of the local football pitch. Forget any notion of Freedom Fries, this is a place where polar opposite are the norm; a place where black and white force gray into anonymity.

But reality, 'tis neither here nor there. Tijuana, in national culture, sports, and politics, is neglected by the rest of Mexico, just as it is politically and physically separated from the dUS. It is an untouchable border town disavowed by its heritage. Like Tijuana, I have always felt like an outcast. With mostly Chinese physical features and mostly German cultural influences, for one reason or another, I am obviously earmarked as "from elsewhere" (even when traveling to Germany and China). #1 question from people that I meet for the first time: "What is your ethnicity/background/nationality?"

Yet, unlike most of the Tijuanenses that I've met, I have found comfort in my hybridity and instead of feigning affiliation to a particular team, I have embraced all of humanity as my people. Problem with no man, before "mixed" I'm first human (catch the Fugees reference?).

While the situations that prompt these conclusions are probably shared by mixed-culture kids roaming the world, more generally, it is also the experience of people are transplanted from their comfort zones to a radically different environment. Some examples include: the jump from a small high school to a large out-of-state university, living in a different country for an extended period of time or interacting with people from a different socioeconomic class in a work setting. Through the process of confronting these differences of environment, relative identities become forged into absolute identities (for better or for worse). For example, my half-white, half-black friend who associates herself with the Black community in Seattle was taken aback when she went to South Africa and was considered beyond-a-doubt White. As a result, she said that she has a new perspective on herself and is more aware of her affiliations. A more negative example might be someone whose basic assumption is that she/he is better than a particular "type" of person (i.e. poor, rich, Mexican, White, young, old, etc.). Upon being confronted with a particular example that is interpreted to support this hypothesis (I can't hide my science training), she/he assumes that it holds for all of the existing people of this "type."

This process of confronting one's identity is one that I try to facilitate week-in and week-out with volunteer groups here at Fundación Esperanza de México (exactly how, I'll try to explain in a future post). And while not all of these identity-confronting experiences lead to positive outcomes, those that do, make this work worthwhile. What makes an outcome positive? For me, it is the individual's conclusion that no matter how hard we try (or don't try) we are all equally human. And that is one step closer to world peace (insert a few seconds of silence for dramatic effect).