Mexico City

Me, Ali, Ann "B', Courtney and Anne "G" at a cafe in Mexico

how not to get to Mexico

I’m in the states for a couple weeks after a great pilgrimage to Mexico for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. More on that in a little while. First, I need to share the story of how Ann almost missed the bus, for the benefit of those out there who know her. It’s really an incredible, “Amazing race” type story!

Now, this is Ann who works at Mt. Carmel High School as a campus minister, whom I lived with last year. Ann reserved our bus tickets (actually, our friend Dinorah, being a Spanish speaker, reserved the bus tickets, with Ann’s credit card) to Mexico City for us, we were scheduled to leave on Saturday at 4:30 from Chetumal (the town which borders Belize). Us San Pedranos decided to leave for Chetumal on Friday so that we’d have plenty of time to make the bus at 4:30. I left San Pedro early Friday morning, took a water taxi to Belize City and then visited a former student who now lives on the way to Chetumal. (My water taxi experience was a whole other story—we were all settled in and then the police show up with about eight scruffy, cussing prisoners cuffed together, one of whom was definitely smoking something that smelled like Amsterdam. But I digress.) I had a lovely visit and then met up with the rest of the San Pedro girls who took a ferry straight to the border of Belize. We crossed the border, ate McDonalds, saw a mediocre movie and went shopping (which is what you do when you’re in Chetumal).
We planned to meet Ann in Chetumal around 1:00 pm when her bus from Belize should be arriving. However, 1:30 at the bus station and she was no where to be seen. Hmm. We figured she just arrived earlier and went to the mall to shop and eat McDonalds and we’d just meet her at the bus station later. We chill at the station, ordered a pizza, changed into sweats and p.j.’s for our 25 hour bus ride… and then slowly begin to worry when it’s 3:30 and Ann is no where to be seen. Our bus leaves at 4:30 and she has the tickets on her card. At 3:45 I announce, “we officially have a problem”. I have visions of Ann locked away in a Mexican jail being interrogated by a soldier with a bushy mustache and her not being able to understand him… or maybe kidnapped with a shady taxi driver who’s speeding off with her into the desert. I’m already imagining the posters we’ll have to make, “American volunteer, last seen wearing orange”. We start to consider other options. There’s only one seat free on the later bus, if we can’t catch this one than we won’t make it into Mexico for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Plus, we’ll lose our current tickets. We call our friend Dinorah (collect, just to add to the drama) around 4:00 p.m. to see if she’d heard anything. She tells us Ann left on the 5:30 bus and should’ve been to Mexico by now. Now we have Dinorah worried too. So, where was Ann? Not in prison, luckily

Ann gets on the bus to Belize at 5:30 a.m., psyched to be leaving Benque and heading to Mexico. She dozes on and off for a few hours before she awakes with a start. In all of her packing it never, not once, in a million years occurred to her to pack… her passport. She says, “looking back, this was a fatal error”. However, she does not panic. Instead, she realizes that Mr. Daniel Juan is driving Cathleen to the airport that morning, so they can bring her passport along. However, Anne does not have Cathleen’s cell phone. What else is there to do but call her mother, in Pennsylvania, to get it? After contacting Cathleen by way of her mom, Cathleen assures Anne that they’ll have it to her in time for Ann to take the 11:00 bus. 11:00 comes and goes, no passport. Cathleen finally arrives a little after 12:00 (how Cathleen managed to catch her 1:18 flight home is a whole different story). Now, Ann has missed her chance of getting to Mexico by bus. This leaves her with only one option, to fly to Corozal which ironically enough, has a layover in San Pedro. Ann caught the 1:30 flight to San Pedro ready to catch the 2:30 flight to Corozal. However, 3:00 comes and Ann is stuck on San Pedro because the plane is late!
Ann arrives in Corozal, grabs her bags and catches a taxi to Chetumal by 3:30. She has one hour to get to the bus station. This is the time when those of us in Chetumal officially began worrying. Ann’s taxi driver now admits to Ann that she doesn’t know how to get to the bus station. So, naturally, they have to go to the driver’s house to find her brother, Philip, who knows the way (anyone who’s taken taxis in Central America knows that this is a regular occurrence). Philip is not home, so they’re all hollering around looking for Philip saying, “this girl has to catch a bus!”. They finally leave at 3:37 and Ann flys through the border by 3:45. They enter Mexico by 4:00 and take a detour through six lights. Just when we were sure that Ann had been kidnapped by the Mexican mafia, she stumbles out of a taxi in front of the bus station at 4:22, with seven minutes to spare.

why the youth of San Pedro need a Youth Group...

Amazing, eh?  for the whole story, scroll down...

Manuel kissing Terri

our new friends with their "best friend"

Ann, chatting it up with our new friends.

this is an interpretive work I call "thugs in the sunset"

getting around

our thug friends

And you thought Mandy Moore in “Walk to Remember” was the only time Church girls were considered somewhat cool? Well, I’m happy to tell you that us San Pedro senoritas have officially arrived at that special tier of popularity enjoyed by religiously minded types who are socially acceptable. You know, people like Mel Gibson, Pope John Paul II and the band Mercy Me when that song “I Can Only Imagine” made it to pop radio. When you spend a few months on San Pedro, you come to recognize it’s characters. The drunks who sit in front of a certain internet café who pass out fliers for food. The Rastafarians who sell… “Jewelry” and “wood carvings” and “anything else you want from Guatemala… wink, wink, wink. The middle aged white expatriates whose hairy chests are visible because their TACKY Hawaiian shirts are halfway unbuttoned (if my passion was not Jesus Christ, it would be teaching the white folks on San Pedro how to dress. Hawaiian, tropical prints look good ONLY on swimsuits and board shorts and will never be considered “the new black” as these people seem to think). As much as I hate to admit it, I think we’ve joined the ranks of San Pedro characters. We walk into restaurants and through the streets and hear, “Hey, it’s the Church girls!” or “Are you still praying for me?”. The surprising thing is that it’s rarely sarcastic or derogatory, just the way we’re greeted now with our reputation.

Now, where does this whole “somewhat cool” label come in? Ok, so a couple weeks ago we had taken the time after mass on Sunday to actually appreciate the paradise we live in, and were reading on the beach. There’s this gang of boys who prowl around San Pedro all the time who my mom would describe as “surly”. Every time they saw us they’d say things like, “hey sexy, wanna ride on my handlebars” or something equally civilized. So, one minute I’m reading my trashy novel (the term my sister invented for basically anything that isn’t classical or spiritual. My housemates say that makes it sound like I’m reading a cheap romance. It was in fact John Grisham). Anyways, I look up from my book and see Ann surrounded by these little thugs, talking to them. We all strike up a conversation with them and they say, “Miss, how come you don’t talk to us?”
“Well, that’s because you’re obnoxious when you call out, ‘hey sexy’” I respond.
“Miss, but what are we supposed to say?”
“How about, ‘good afternoon. Nice to see you’. Then shake my hand and make pleasant non-creepy eye contact.”
Well, they bought that and all wanted to practice civilized greetings. Then, we started to hear a little more about them. Most of them live either with younger siblings or their girlfriends. No parents in the picture or at least the country. They go to night school and patrol the town during the day. Little thugs in training. We started talking about God, Religion and why they shouldn’t be living with their girlfriends. They listened seriously and asked us questions. Every time we told them what they were doing was wrong, I expected them to say, “forget it” and walk away, but they totally listened to everything we had to say. I think that they listened for two reasons. First, because deep down, everyone wants to hear the truth and recognizes it when it’s proclaimed and second, we’re just so weird to them that we’ve surpassed the “nerd” label and are instead “kinda interesting”. They’re so rebellious that they’ve come full circle to the Church girls.

In the next couple weeks, they’ve made a point of greeting us properly (“Good afternoon Miss Alison. Where’s your next friend?”) and have invited us to come to their school and basket ball games and to wittness their favorite afternoon activity which is, you guessed it, Feeding the alligators. Yes. Welcome to Belize where children pursue more unconventional means of entertaining themselves in the absence of arcades and Disney land. I’ve always been impressed with the way these kids amuse themselves… case in point, last year when we held a retreat for the second form boys the highlight for them was when someone took a look at the pond outside the retreat house, pulled the shoelace from his shoe and they all caught fish (which they then took home and ate!). Although T.V. is hugely popular, kids don’t really expect to be entertained by toys or adults.

So, was I surprised that these little thugs have taken to feeding alligators for fun (and profit, when they get tips)? Even after a year of watching kids entertain themselves in their yards with the typical developing-world amusements of marbles, chickens and Klim cans full of dirt, I don’t think I was prepared for what I saw. Keep in mind that I grew up on Hilton Head which has it’s fair share of alligators. I also had my only encounter with the police when I was about ten years old and got caught throwing rocks at an alligator. On Hilton Head, to feed or bother an alligator is against the law because it makes them expect food or want to attack people when they see them… I just say this to clarify that I know alligators are dangerous and am also not your average tourist who’s gonna be excited to see some indiscernible lump floating in the water, a hundred yards away that might be a gator or might just be a log. Comprendo? Anyways, far towards the end of Ambergris Caye there’s a lagoon full of alligators. They figure there must be about fifty or so. A regular Fear Factor set up. For the past four years these guys have been feeding them and training them so that they can put on a little crocodile-hunter like show which they do every afternoon. Ann, Courtney and I rode out on Sunday afternoon (yes Mrs. Robezolli, your daughter showed great caution and prudence by staying on the beach with a book) and found our thug-friends awaiting the arrival of a chicken so they can begin their fun. A random gringo pulls up in his golf cart and delivers a whole dis da fu wi chicken. (Dis da fu wi is to Belize what Tyson is to the states. “Dis da fu wi” is Creole for “this is ours” You’ll find that saying “dis da fu wi” is infinitely more fun than saying “ours” though. Try it.)

Manuel, the head thug/gator feeder takes a long rope that they have and ties the chicken, still in the bag, to the end of it. He then begins hurling the chicken, slingshot style, into the lagoon and then pulling it out again. I guess this is the equivalent to ringing the dinner bell for the gators. From the corners of the lagoon, we start seeing the spiny backs of alligators come as they slink towards the chicken splashing. Manuel keeps reeling the chicken in and then throwing it back. The first gator approaches, nosing the food as Manuel tugs at the rope to make it look… alive? Probably not, because at this point the chicken’s a little worse for wear from it’s many trips into the lagoon.

This gator’s huge, but the boys are yelling at Manuel to bring in “Terri”, the gator they describe as their “best friend”. Teri’s a giant at thirteen feet and so fat that I’m convinced they’ve probably fed some of their friends to her when no one was looking. By now there’s a fleet of golf carts full of tourists who have stopped to watch and Manuel’s ready to put on a show. Teri and her “baby” (also huge… These are so not the lizards you see on the thirteenth hole on Hilton Head) are both playing with the food, and then another gator swims over. I ask if Terri will fight the gator off, and Manuel says, “Miss, fighting is her first name”… Now it’s clear why Terri and the thugs are best friends. Anyways, Manuel teases Terri with the Chicken, getting her to climb all the way out of the water and jump up for it. The scene of a boy feeding his pet has all the warmth and poignancy of a scene out of “Lassie” or “Flipper” only you look at Terri’s huge teeth and hear them snap to gobble down the chicken and realize that somehow, the hobbies of San Pedro youth went waaaay off track. I turn to one of the thugs and say, “so, if I were to bring you back some cross-word puzzles or crocheting from the states would you guys consider doing something else with your free time?”. This is met with a round of “cho, miss” and “miss, dis here our favorite, we done like this… Look Miss, Manuel gonna kiss Terri today”. I turn back to see Manuel, knee deep in the water, kissing Terri on the mouth. They explained that Manuel’s the only one who can do that, although they all pet her. Manuel then offered to take my camera and take some of the very close up pictures you can see here. It was amazing, he really could just be in the lagoon without making Terri cranky. They tried to get us to pet her, but all I could see was me, flying home to the states… with my severed hand on a bed of ice next to me. I opted for more pictures.

In Youth Ministry 101 at Franciscan, Prof. Pauley explained how important it is that when you’re trying to share Jesus with teenagers, you have to take their interests seriously. That means going to basketball games, listening to their music and discussing what’s important to them so that you can relate Christ to their world and help them understand that the Church is relevant to their lives. However, I never would have thought that this strategy would lead me to the bank of a lagoon watching Manuel kiss a thirteen-foot long gator. If anyone has any ideas on “ministry to gator-feeding teenagers”, feel free to share. Meanwhile, check out these pictures and keep Manuel and his friends in your prayers. We’re excited about the rapport we have with them, God’s definitely put them in our paths for a reason!