February 07, 2009

Andy's observations:

Co-incidentally, JoAn has been working very hard this past week on a breast cancer volunteer project in the La Peñita RV Park where we have been staying the last ten weeks. They have been fitting Mexican women with prosthetics who have suffered with mastectomies and could not afford to be fitted with proper equipment. It was a huge team effort that came from everyone’s hearts. They made well over 300 hundred women very happy, many of whom went away crying in tears with happiness. Obviously their previous trauma had pulled them down and had changed their lives. This act of charity made a wonderful uplifting change for them. Maruka, speaking both English and Spanish was invaluable, along with a few of the other Spanish speaking helpers. Jackie, who lives in La Peñita, was first to organize this project and has carried it by herself for many years. Now it is time for others to help her.


While the men could not be involved helping directly, they supported with other projects like shuttling the women between the park and the buses, which stopped maybe a mile away. I was one of the drivers for three trips and when I helped the women off the van, practically everyone of them hugged me and thanked me—mostly in Spanish—for all of the team, especially the leaders, for the wonderful thing they made possible for them.


One Mexican friend who brings produce to the park twice a week donated a huge amount of food for the small restaurant to turn into soup and snacks for the patients who were waiting for their turn to get fitted. The three Mexican women who work in the restaurant donated their time for three hard days of work feeding those women waiting. They had never been so busy! Other women and men worked behind the scenes preparing the food, and running errands.


In preparation for the event, regular guests of the park and people outside of the park brought nearly 500 used bras and prosthesis from Canada and the US. It was quite a job setting up shelves and boxes to sort the sizes and types of everything, and fabricating eight fitting rooms in the clubhouse and setting up several sewing machines outside for customizing and adjustments. That is one place where some of the men came in to help. It was a big undertaking.
And you know what? It really brought the camp together even more. The guests here are pretty much a giving compatible kind of people that want to help. We believe it centers around Carole, who is the lady who rents the park and runs it. She is completely involved constantly. Carole instigates events and is always present.