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 News from Around Banderas Bay | December 2005 
It's All About Love
 Kathy Taylor - PVNN
Puerto Vallarta - Holding their plates as they move in a polite line in front of the big pans of food, 170 of Puerto Vallarta's most needy citizens get a hot meal today. Every Monday, a handful of restaurants in this tropical paradise take their specialties to the local dump, to feed the kids in a loosely organized effort called Children of the Dump.
I have a neighbour, Larry, a retired fire fighter from Oregon, who recently opened a little soul food café in Old Vallarta. Safari Café is open Thursday through Sunday, but a few Mondays ago I saw him loading foil wrapped pans into the trunk of his car.
Where was he going? To the dump, he said, to feed the kids. From my poolside chaise, it took a moment for the words to sink in. I asked if I could come along next time. This is the story of my first trip to the dump.
We wind in a shiny cavalcade up the hills behind Sam's and WalMart, away from the time share hawkers and sunburned tourists. Soon, the pavement ends, really not so far as you might think, but we continue, and thick billows of dust rise from the road and settle on the car hoods and roof tops.
The trees look like what you might imagine post holocaust trees would look like - thick brown dust weighing down the jungle foliage. Big trucks, camiones de basura, garbage trucks, pass by, and reckless busses in low gear spit dust and belch diesel.
A pot hole almost swallows the car; the oil pan screeches and scrapes. The sight of a tower of garbage through a gap between crumbling buildings is startling; a bulldozer pushes and wheels on a flat mesa of kaleidoscopic colored crap.
On this dusty road the moms and kids wait with their plates and bowls. When they see the convoy of cars approaching, they cheer and swarm the first arrivals. The gates on a walled enclosure open to a dirt yard whose dominant feature is a huge pavilion, open on two sides, with a palapa roof and a tiled floor.
Along the back wall is a counter with a stove and sink behind it, shining clean. Sharing the same back wall are two doors leading to washrooms and a storage room. Stacked along a side wall are tables and chairs. The mums and bigger kids immediately begin to set up the tables and chairs like highly efficient banquet staff, and some of the moms move behind the counter to get ready to serve the food.
The huge plastic and stainless bins of food are arranged on the counter. Today, the food comes from Andales, Bruce's Bistro, La Palapa, Pau Pau, Pepe's, and Safari Café. There is pasta, beans, rice, quesadillas, sandwiches, roast pork and gravy. Dessert will be yogurt. Larry told me that the kids go wild for it.
At the end of the counter Jorge Zambrano, owner of Andales and past president of South Vallarta Rotary Club, pours juice and chats and smiles as the line snakes by him. He introduces me to Antonio, who is 10. In a place where a few dollars can make a difference between sight and blindness, Antonio is a success story.
Antonio's eye infection was identified at one of the Monday meals; quickly it was determined that he would lose the sight of both eyes if he didn't receive immediate medical attention.
Jorge leapt into action and in a day had both the cash for the operation and a doctor who would discount his fee for Antonio. He lost the sight of one eye, but the one that was saved glints a smile at Jorge as Antonio gets his glass of juice.
The Rotary Club has only been involved for about four years now. They were approached by a loosely organized group of volunteers that had already been going to the dump with food and clothing and school supplies on a regular basis for over four years.
The Rotary was asked to be involved when the group's grass roots efforts garnered some large cash donations that needed to be managed. The Rotary Club agreed to the stipulation of no overhead and that a hundred percent of all the money had to go directly into someone's hands. They provide tax receipts and accounting for all the funds received for the program.
Jorge says that the women members of the Rotary Club are the real driving force in the Club's participation in the Children of the Dump program. They source the best deals for all goods purchased, including the material and services needed to build this 2 year old pavilion, which is still under construction.
The newest improvement is a long tiled sink with a row of faucets to wash a lot of little hands at one time. This week, the soap dispenser is installed and is an immediate hit - there is a lot of hand washing going on. The little ones stand on overturned buckets and reach for the water. A fridge is next on the list.  Click HERE for list of most needed items
The Pavilion is used on other days too. On Tuesdays, the Rotary women bring ingredients and teach the local women how to bake cakes and cookies, a marketable skill. Two of the original volunteers recall what it was like before the Pavilion existed.
Cynthia and Don, from Oregon, tell me that they used to serve the food out of the back of cars in a dirt school yard. Taking the Monday meal "out of the streets and into a cleaner environment" has ignited other changes in the program. The moms are now more active in taking part in serving the food, basic hygiene, and bagging dispensas.
"Dispensas" are bags full of staple pantry items, like lentils, beans, rice, salt and vegetables. Cynthia said that they buy these staple items from the Vallarta Food Bank at a much reduced rate than if they bought them retail.
A bag costs about $2 to $3 this way. The bulk items are brought up to the Pavilion and the moms assemble them there. Usually they hand out about 20 a week, issued through a lottery system; sometimes the moms will identify a family that is really down on their luck and bypass the lottery to make sure they receive a dispensa.
It is hard to imagine how hard on your luck you have to fall to be considered needier than anyone else in this colonia. These veteran volunteers of the Children of the Dump fill me in.
The big city lures hundreds of people from the countryside every year with its promise of jobs and a better way of life - jobs that provide money for food and shelter and clothing and education. Each year families who don't catch that golden ring find themselves living an existence far from their dreams.
Even in paradise, garbage is as much a reality as anywhere else, and this is not the only city in the world where some of the most impoverished, disenfranchised, yet hopeful citizens of the planet live and survive in the place where the rest of us dump our trash. It is their livelihood. They eat the food that is still edible, wear the clothing that is still wearable and salvage bottles and metals to sell for a few pesos.
This is where the Children of the Dump program steps in. There is another group with a religious affiliation that uses the same name, but this group of restaurant owners and volunteers asks nothing of the recipients except their presence, and as Cynthia says, "we get a lot more than we give." Their needs, she says, "are all material. There is a lot of love and emotional support in these families."
For all they receive, the moms and kids are "very appreciative." Last year, the kids found out when Cynthia and Don were leaving at the end of their annual six month stint in Mexico, and threw them a little farewell fiesta, complete with gifts. She said she bawled like a baby as she received drawings and bits of embroidery. "How could I take anything from these people who have nothing?"
Today we meet Cynthia and Don in the WalMart parking lot. They are waiting with Lalo, who is known by the kids as "Dr. Lalo" on the "booboo" patrol. He is not a doctor, but administers first aid and performs a basic group triage once a week, and often is the one who finds and identifies medical problems. He is also known as the man who finds solutions to those problems.
One day last year when he was on his booboo patrol armed with band aids and antibiotic cream, a mom came to him with her little girl who was covered in inflamed mosquito bites. "I would have had to cover her in cream," he said, "and that wouldn't have been the solution. She was allergic to mosquitoes, which were eating her up at night."
The solution: Lalo bought a mosquito net with his own money, and brought it up the next Monday. He taught the mom how to tuck it in around the little girl and that was the end of that problem.
But the problems are endless, and in the stress of finding work and affordable shelter, some of the hopeful get knocked down so hard that they succumb to the temptations of drug addiction and alcoholism and the looming scepter of physical abuse. The children are the most innocent victims of this cycle, and their mothers are the key to family strength.
The local government of Puerto Vallarta also provides assistance in this area. After the meal is served, a few moms gather under a tree at the side of the yard, with Jose Munoz, a lawyer and teacher, who counsels on drug and alcohol and physical abuse prevention.
Munoz visits 10 different colonias every week, for 4 hours at a time, in loose meetings like these. He is here every Monday afternoon. Drugs, he says, are by far the biggest problem. He, and everyone else I talked to, agree that education is the key to changing the destiny of these children.
It is a sad reality that by the age of ten or eleven, school is out of the question for most of these kids. Not only do they not have the money for basic school supplies like pencils and paper, but their meager earnings are needed as part of the overall family income.
Once more, this is where the team of volunteers comes in. Promising students are identified, and the ones who are most at risk of being forced to leave school to get a job are helped with scholarships.
Currently, almost 60 kids and families are being supported by Rotary administered scholarships, with the first class of 20 students to finish 4 years of school graduating this coming spring.
After the meal is served, the excitement starts to build again. The Store is about to open. What Store? Back at the WalMart, when the volunteer brigade gathered, they excitedly showed each other what they had brought today for the Store.
There was a bag of toothbrushes and toothpaste, a few hair trinkets and bracelets. Someone else had pencils and notebooks. There were folded t-shirts and a few Christmas decorations. Everyone agreed that the bag of candy couldn't go into the Store but had to be given out at the very end of the day.
I asked what I could provide. Larry suggested a soccer ball for the older boys, who had nothing to do, since most of the treats were for little kids. While someone else was buying the yogurt for dessert, I ran in and picked up a soccer ball.
Now the yogurt was eaten and the soccer ball was being kicked around the yard, with a tree and a brick serving as goal posts, and the Store opened. Moms and kids waited in the most orderly and patient line up, clutching their "fichas", little numbered tickets.
Two or three people at a time are allowed in the Store, which is the cleaned up kitchen counter, and considerately, thoughtfully, each takes only 2 or 3 things, just what they need. While the families wait in line at the store, the volunteers fall into familiar patterns of interaction.
Don, a retired school teacher, checks homework and heaps praise on aspiring students. Mike Baremore, the Vacation and Rental Coordinator for PVRPV Rentals and Property Management, donates his time every week. Today, he lifts a little girl up to the new sink to wash her hands.
Pencils are handed out by Reed and Judy from Canada, who always spend a day of their annual vacation with the kids. Larry kicks the soccer ball with the guys. Chris and Brett help Lalo in the store and Cynthia and Don chat with old friends in the long line up and collect the fiches at the door to the kitchen.
The Store is almost empty. The next fiche reads "77," but the lineup still stretches to the back of the pavilion. No one pushes, but it is obvious that not everyone will get a turn today. Maybe next week. But there is candy. From the safety of his spot behind the counter, Lalo chucks the candy into outstretched hands.
The tables and chairs are stacked up again, and a couple of moms grab mops and begin cleaning the floor. As we go to pack the dirty pans and the soccer ball into the trunk of the car, we see that an artist has been at work. Drawn into the thick coat of dust that now covers the car, is a heart, with one word.
"Amor." That's right, love. In Cynthia's words, "we get much more than we give."
For more information on how you can help, call the Puerto Vallarta Rotary Club at [52] [322] 224-9851. To join the volunteers on their Monday trips to the dump, wait at the picnic tables in front of Sam's around 1:30 pm.
Most Needed Items:
• 6 tables
• 36 chairs
• Funds to pave the dirt yard surrounding the pavilion
• The use of a large vehicle on a regular basis for collecting and delivering items for "dispensas."
• More restaurant participation
• School supplies including pencils and notebooks
• Knapsacks
• Basic toiletries - toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, soap, brushes and combs
• Women's clothing
• Shoes for 2-3 year olds
• Children's books
• Children's clothing
• Toys
• Cash donations for scholarships and dispensas
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