Villa Infantil

I had three main reasons for this sojourn in my Happy Place, Ajjjc, Mexico: to ensure the commemorative plaque my brothers and I commissioned for our mother was installed properly, to recover my writing mojo, and visit with our good friends Ulf & Mette, who live here during the winter months.

My driver, Arturo, pulled up in a Jaguar, which made me feel special, until I saw the contraption he’d rigged to hold the guts of the ignition. I didn’t get into the details of why or how that happened, but I was fascinated watching him hot wire the thing to get it started.

Even when he stopped for gas, he didn’t turn it off, which was an unexpected adventure. And the driver’s side headlamp assembly was damaged – probably he’d lost an argument with a larger vehicle. But he got me to Villa Infantil in Jocotopec and back safely. He was an entrepreneur, like so many of the people I’ve met – renting cars, running a taxi service, selling tequila a friend distills, to bars with permits.

Look at those dear little faces. And those innocent eyes. It breaks my heart to think of them in distress or danger.

When I visited in 2020, there were 34 children aged three months to 14 years. This year, there are 26: two babies two months old, about a dozen pre-schoolers who peppered me with questions and kept trying to clamber into my driver’s vehicle. The older children were attending the nearby school.

All of the children are wards of the state until age 14. Some were abandoned, others were rescued from human trafficking or saved from being apprenticed to the drug trade. The three nuns who manage the facility take such good care of the children, aided, thankfully, by members of the local ex-pat community.

My brothers and I donated funds to have a fresh water well dug on the property, so they would no longer have to purchase truckloads of water. When I visited in 2020, this is what Madre Maria said they needed desperately.

My mother’s plaque hangs in the pump house – I wanted it attached lower, but Madre Maria was worried the sun would fade it. Who was I to argue? She brought out a bag of bits and a cordless drill and my driver installed it under her watchful eye.

So many of us in Canada have so much, and it is easy to give to worthy causes. In this case, it was something direct and enduring, a legacy that my mother would be proud of. From an early age, she dedicated her life to helping others, starting with her three siblings when they were orphaned young.

It was a wonderful sunny day, bittersweet thinking of mom but joyful that we could help these children even a little bit.