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I am heading out in the middle of the night tonight, to try and find the two girls that I was unable to find when I was down there for Christmas. And to talk to a woman of 38 who wants to go back to school and get her degree in Child Psychology, and has chatted me up about helping her. Mostly, I concentrate on teen age girls, because they are the most disempowered, but I am willing to listen to Mary, and see if she has a plan, or it is just wishful thinking. Also there is a boy who will be graduating high school in may, and he is a straight A student, and very intelligent, and I found in a conversation with him that he had never even considered going to college, because he has absolutely no resources to do so. So I am going to talk to him, too. I just think it is a sin to waste good potential. I’ll be updating this blog when I get back mid week.  Saida shearing my locks
I am leaving in the wee hours tonight, to drive the 6 hours down to Rio Bravo. I need to take the girls school money for next semester down to them. I also have, thanks to my friend Linda and her friends at the Law Office, boxes and boxes of the very stuff we need to get the community center barter store back in bidness. Thanks to the amazing generosity of these folks, I also am taking a veritable treasure box for each of my girls, something not one of the girls has ever even imagined that they could have in one box… scads of girly stuff, like shampoo, body wash, perfume, hair bands, those hair appliances that girls use, clothes, makeup, nail polish, and more. I am sure that they will be stunned and amazed. Of course I will be shooting fotos of them, which I will post here when I get back. Thank you so much for supporting me in my efforts to help some girls get a better education than they might have otherwise.
I will be celebrating the season with my favorite families in my usual manner. I just went to HEB and bought some packets of their marinated chicken and beef, and will be taking my portable propane grill along. I just decide who I want to eat dinner with, and go knock on their door, and say… “Hi! I’m here! Hope you are hungry! If you can come up with some tortillas, then I have everything else we need.” and I go in and cook the meat, and we sit eat and I find out what has been going on with them. There is no better way to share peace with a family, then to sit down and eat together. I could say, biblically, “break bread together” but since it is hard to break a tortilla, I just settle for chomping down some HEB Chicken.
Of the six girls that I am currently helping, 4 of them have sent me their grades via email, and I am so proud of them. Esther got a 9.29 (out of 10) for her second to last semester in college. Saida and Tania are doing very well in high school. ( they don’t give out grades until the end of the year, but they have been doing well on all their tests) Nalleley is still enchanted with secondary school. The other two I have not heard from since the beginning of the semester, which is troubling, but as my grandpa always said, “Don’t borrow trouble, It will find you easy enough on its own.” So I will find out about the last two when I get there. I miss them all, and am looking forward to hearing their stories. Gotta get some sleep, if I am gonna leave in the wee hours. Hasta pronto. Sam
 Crabby Appleton and Lupita, One of my successes It grew out of a desire to be proactive in my life, and to live what I believe in, and from my disappointment in men, and how they have run things for… oh… the last 3000 years or so. I believe that if we are going to have a future, then we need to do something about it, or become extinct. And the best future we can have, is one where men and women participate in deciding it together. So, I am using what resources I have, to affect change in the microcosm, that we may realize change in the macrocosm. And in order to have more women available to help make decisions, we need to make education available to those who want one. My work is with girls in Mexico, who don’t always have the chance to become educated, yet, have so much to offer the world.
I started with one girl, who was going to drop out of school because her dad died, and she had no money to pay her school fees. I had known Juany for a while, and she was a serious girl, whose family was mired in the endless cycle of poverty created by circumstances and a lack of forethought, and not many opportunities for the uneducated. Juany wanted something more for her life, and had an idea that staying in school was a good way to realize that. So she asked me to help her keep studying. I agreed, and took over paying for her education. It was such a positive experience, and I gained such a good friendship from my support of her, that when another girl heard about how Juany was able to stay in school with the help of her sponsor, and came and talked to me about helping her, I was positively pre-disposed to say yes.
Over the years (8 or so now), I have tried to help a variety of girls stay in school. I have not always been successful. I have lost some girls to pregnancy (hard to study when you have a baby to feed), and to husbands/boyfriends (mexican men do not like their property having anything to do with other men, and particularly not an old american curmudgeon), and to boredom. Even so, I have persevered, and learned a lot about mentoring teenage girls along the way.
I currently have six girls studying at various levels of school, who would not be in school without the money (and, I hope, the mentoring) that I have brought to them. Until lately, it was less formal, but my experiences showed me that if I have them agree to a simple contract, (see Sams Contract With His Girls) they can better understand what is expected of them, and what the benefits are if they agree to it.
The six girls presently in my program pretty much keep me broke,(see “scholars”) but they are holding up their part of the contract, and so, I do my best to uphold my part. Amigos de las Escuelas has been kind enough to allow me to formalize what I am doing within their non-profit status, and I have hopes that I can raise enough donations to grow my program, and reach more girls. Plus, I will need to buy a netbook or laptop soon, Saida has more than earned it, and my old laptop that I gave her 3 years ago, which convinced her to go to High School and study Informatica, has finally died. When I go down to Rio Bravo in December, to pay next semesters fees, I need to talk to both Rubi and Saida about what is next after they graduate in June. Rubi for sure will want to continue on to college. Saida hasn’t told me yet what she wants to do.
 Esther
I just got an email from Esther. Her hinge on her laptop lid is breaking, and her classes are harder than ever. No Dell Repair center down there, I guess I will have to either fix it there, or bring it back here with me, and take it to the shop. I need to find her a loaner to use. Exams are coming up. My advice about the classes is to study harder. And remember that they are harder because she is smarter now. She sent me this link for fotos of her class in informatica. Lotta dang computers.
 Nalleley
I have known Nalleley ever since she was in first grade, and she has always been a good student. Her two older sisters provide a good role model for her. She was pretty bored with her last year in primary school, and when I was down there in July, she came and asked me if I would sponsor her in secondary school, and she hoped so, because she really wanted to go. I have had some experience with the secondary school that the girls from this colonia have available to them, and I don’t think highly of it, and have come to think of it as something to get them thru, and try to keep their interest up until they can get into high school, where the level of teaching is on a different level of effectiveness. I have no doubts about Nalleley. Secondary school will be a breeze for her, if I can find a way to give her some enrichment so that she stays challenged. Boredom is a huge enemy of school girls. I don’t know whether boredom or pregnancy has been my biggest cause of losing girls from studying. I heard from her older sisters that she is enchanted with her classes, and is up and ready to go every morning, excited to be going.
 Saida
Saida has had recurring outbreaks of “las ronchas” which translates to “boils”, but the ones I have seen on her are more like hives, just big red bumps. I have talked to her about allergies, and thinking about what she eats and is exposed to just before she has these outbreaks. She has seen a doctor, but the doctor available to her is… um… less qualified than I would like, and he gives her medicine that doesn’t seem very efficacious. Then about a month ago, I received an email from her, and when I opened it, there was a picture of her with her face so swollen that I didn’t recognize her for a minute. She needed money to go to Monterrey, where the specialists are (a bus trip of 6 hours), and get one to see her. She said, “I really hate to ask you for more money, padrino, but I can’t go to school with my face like this, and so I took my camera, and came to the cyber cafe, and took a picture and put it in the computer to send to you so that you would not think that I was abusing your generosity, and my papa still has no work, but, please, I need to see the specialist.” (I wouldn’t dare to put THAT picture up here. She would be mortified) Poor baby, she had to go out in public, with her face so swollen; for a seventeen year old, that must have been awful! Being Sam, I sent her a sensitive email right back that said, “You are right. With a face like that, one that even your mom must have trouble loving, you definitely need to go. You will never find a boyfriend if your face is like that.” And I sent her the money. She is used to me talking like that. And she is better now, tho I am not convinced that the reason for las ronchas has been dealt with.
 Tania, the graduate
Tania graduated from Secondary school back in June, and considering how awful I think the school is, she got enough of an education to be able to go on to high school. She is the first girl I have formally had read the contract, and discuss it with her mom and dad, and then decide if those are the conditions under which she wants to stay in school. The contract sprang out of needing something concrete for the girls to agree to, so they would have some personal stake in their education other than just attending classes. And some framework in which they could look ahead and have something to aspire to. Her father is a hard working man, who puts everything into his family, doesn’t drink, and is such a loving man to his 4 girls, who dote on him. I am proud to call him compadre. Unfortunately, he works for a maquilla, and right now, the USA isn’t buying what it has been built to produce, due to the economy, and Lupe has had no work to go and do, so he has no money to keep his girls studying. Tania decided to go on to high school. At first she planned to get a job and work for a while, but after watching her big sister, Saida, go to high school, she became more interested in what it could do for her as well. She agreed to the contract, and I gave her the $250 needed to pay the entrance fees and the first semesters tuition. Another thing I give the girls, is an email address, so that they have no excuse to not communicate with me regularly. I let them choose the name. Tania and I were backpack shopping, and she kept saying she wanted this Campanita backpack, which we weren’t finding. I didn’t know what a campanita was, maybe a little bell, but I didn’t know of a character that was a little bell. Then we found one. DUH! I am so dumb. Campanita is Tinkerbell, which Tania is enchanted with, so that became her backpack, and her email name.
Sam Birchall has agreed to formalize his Rio Bravo Scholarship Program this week and hopes that it goes really well.
In September of 2009 Larry, a resident of Rio Bravo, HotPCA member and returned peace corps member volunteered to take on more responsibilities at Casa de Katie. He is currently teaching English classes 3 days per week, a science class one day per week, and helping with general organization and goal setting.
We were very glad to see Marco at summer school, he had been saying that it was for sissies, but in the end he came, and had fun.
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