Today we setup for two days of clinic in the local school of Xoxocotla. The standards of the facilities were low compared to even the poorer schools in the states: cracked glass windows, dirty concrete, rickety desks. But there were roofs and it is a place for children to learn. That is better than nothing. We walked right through the local marketplace to get there. Piles of fruit, fresh and rotting. Bundles of taquitos. Ropes of fried, cinnamon-sugar coated dough. Tortillas. Gorditos. Raw, plucked chickens with their feet raised awkwardly in the air in feeble surrender to rigor mortis. Flies sampling the wares everywhere. And people: talking, walking, laughing, pushing wheelbarrows, playing, selling, buying.
It was supposed to be our busiest day, but apparently there was a mandatory meeting for anyone receiving government aid for school, so that eliminated a lot of people. Still, many came through, patiently waiting their turn. Beautiful babies and wee tots. One little 11-month old girl, Paloma Rubi, with the biggest, blackest, most beautifully inquiring eyes I have ever seen. She was so alert, watching Dad like a hawk, curious to know what was going on! Lots of diabetics and high blood pressure cases...a few previously undiagnosed. There is so much chronic illness. Can they even afford the constant medication they require to avoid the complications associated with each disease?
We had lunch at the house of one of the local church members. It's a lesson in humility to accept such generosity from people you know do not have much.
Lavish like grace.
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