The trek

When last heard from, I was heading out to the U.S. to pick up a pickup from California. I flew into L.A. where I had the pleasure of taking a bus downtown to meet up with Catherine Morris from the Catholic Worker house. What a joyous time. Jeff, Catherine, Jesse, Anna, Sheena and Manuel made my time there a wondrous one. I am always astonished at what good there is in the world, yet to see the works of mercy that these people do each day is a cause of more wonder. If only we, in Chiapas, cand do have the good these folks do in their daily lives we will be successful. Whatever successful means.. I spent my days in L.A. wandering around East L.A., picking up the truck and than visiting the Delores Mission- an amazing little church in the midst of the chaos of L.A.
Jeremy Seifert and Gerry Straub welcomed me to the studios and space of San Damiano Foundation in Burbank. A lovely time was had by all as I toured the studios and spoke with the filmmakers who, they promised me, will one day come and record what it is we are doing in Chiapas. Though I have to confess, I will probably get a better vision of what it is we are actually doing after I see what they film. Should anyone be interested they have a splendid web site (see the links here).
From L.A. I made it out to Corona and Chino Hills to visit and stay with my friend Debbie X and her son Garrett. Debbie, a single mom who is a teacher as well, is incredibly active in the immigration issues. From Chino I went to the Glen Ivy Spa and community of the Emissaries of Divine Light.
What a high falutin' title for such gracious hosts and truly holy people. Bob, Norm, Nancy,Yosef and Laurie all touched me deeply. I stayed for a couple of days and got to go to one of their prayer services. A wonderful retreat the folks there collected money and sent me on my way..
In Banning I met up with my old friend, Luis Castillo and his son. They run a body shop restoring old cars on the side. Luis put me in touch with some old friends and I moved on up the hill to the site of my parents house in Poppet Flats where I met again with Paul and Kathy. Kathy had stored the darkroom and cameras of My old school chum Gary Snyder. After a great dinner, talks and a decnt sleep I went on up to Idyllwild to visit Maureen and my child, Caitlin. A beauty she is and all of eleven years old. Oh, how time passes.
From Idyllwild I made my way across the Mohave desert at night and went to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ty Worsham, his wife Mercy and two of their three children hosted me for my time there. I got to met several friends of Ty's, most importantly Arturo.
The Vietnam war scarred those of us involved in it in such strange ways. For me, it forced me to confront my own violence and led me to a life with the Catholic Church as the only place I could find redemption. Others have found only pain. Others, a mixture of pain and grief. Such a trial for us all as we each search on the roadmap the scriptures give us to follow..
At the La ko ta lodge in Albuquerque Ty, Arturo and their friends invited me to take part in a Sweat Lodge ceremony. Oh such joy and ardor. It was for me, a special honor to sweat, to suffer breathing those heat filled scented breaths, to be a part of something so grand. The prayers were simple, heartfelt and totally appropriate for the world we inhabited. As I often say in Chiapas- I feel so humble when confronted by such faith and hope.
From Santa Fe I set out for Texas. Not just Texas but for San Antonio and the world of Jim Groff who hosts this site.. Jim, his wife Pat and Chris (their son) were all there to welcome me.. More later on the Texas time.....
Saludos, Richard

In Los Angeles

I am at the CW in L.A. this weekend, what a joy. Tomorrow I will be heading to Burbank to talk with the folks at the San Damiano foundation (who want to do a movie on our work.) Tuesday is for Riverside, San Bernardino and some jesuit friends...
I was asked if I can take clothes back with me to Chiapas. We cannot use clothes and are limited to the tools and other things we can take since we have to pay taxes on everything we take across the border. I can, however, use seeds of all types. I used to buy seeds from my local hardware store in the Winter and bring them along. My wife and her friends divvy them up and use egg crates to get things started. Since we have two growing seasons in Chiapas, everything gets used... The easiest way is to send the seeds along to Jim (Jim Groff, 1325 CR 2744 Mico, TX 78056) at his home where I will be stayiing on my way back... At the moment, our biggest need is money.. for the goat barns and for us to live on a few months... Thanks so much for your interest and work on our behalf..

Richard

Hello and Welcome---posted by Jim

Our project to set up a foundation herd of dairy goats at Casa de Camillo Torres Catholic Worker farm in Chiapas is underway. Please add your comments and check on updates.

This Blog will keep you updated on what is happening on the farm as well as with our dairy goat project.

This is really Richard's blog but because of the difficulty in getting things posted from Chiapas Richard usually sends me the text and pictures by email and I post them for him. So most of the time I will keep myself out of this blog.

Jim

A post from Sept 10--Posted by Jim

Richard wrote that they had been missed by the hurricane but that there had been so much rain that it was difficult to get much done. They had to move the cement block machine to higher ground and the road that they share with the next door Mayan community of Rancho Santiago was in desparate shape. A tourist from Floriday who visited gave them $200 and they were able to buy 10 loads of gravel to help repair the road which will help both the farm and the community.

A couple of local young men are going to begin setting the posts this week for the pens which will give them some work and income. Also Richard has a neat idea for a barn that will open on the lower level into the pens and on the upper level to the road so that feed and hay can be unloaded directly into the loft. Cool arrangement.

They are still working to get electricity to the farm but there is a hangup with getting a transformer. Right now they can have limited electricity by using a generator for a few hours a day.

Jim

Making stoves

Well folks,
The first three stoves are built and now drying (they are built of
clay so they take a few days to dry. I have included 3 fotos as
attachments.

Please note the smoke in the home of Don Jose where his wife is
cooking and you can easily see the difference that a stove with little
smoke will make in the life of that family...

Thanks to all of you for
your help, those who took the little class will now, hopefully, go on
to build more stoves in the community..

Saludos, Richard

Sept 20th update--a lot of building projects.

I have enclosed some more fotos of the recent work. It’s been a long week. As if the farm wasn’t enough, I have been working with two groups, one of which is building a clinic in a rural region near us. The second project is in helping launch a “church” camp for young people. The clinic will be expensive but a friend here, Allen Rice, decided to get it started by donating $5000. U.S. to start the wall around the site and deal with some of the issues of water inundating the area. So, I made the arrangements and we got two thousand block delivered to the site and for the last three weeks used a combination of local volunteers and some experienced masons. The project now is complete for the first stage, that is, two walls are up and a drainage system is in place so that the waters now go around the site- it’s drying out.. The volunteers will now level the space and we will build a central register to collect the sewer lines and pass them along to the city sewer system. When more money comes in we will build the actual register, finish the other two walls and add gates and pedestrian entrances. Meanwhile, at the same village, “Campo Santiago”, a Catholic Worker, Emily Sinnwell, has moved here and married a local journalist- she is an R.N. and now is working with the midwives and native Curers once a week. Additionally, we have a stove building workshop planned for this coming weekend. Three days to build three stoves of clay. The idea is that we will build three stoves with the instructor building one while everyone watches. The second day the students will join in the building and the final day the students will build one by themselves. Afterwards, the hope is that the stoves will spread and the young folks in the classes can make a little money building stoves for others in the village. Stoves are a little thing that is very important. Sixty five percent of the lung cancer in this region of the world is affecting women. All those cases are related to the carcinogens of wood smoke from open cooking fires. The stoves we are building use a stove pipe of metal to exhaust the smoke- also using only one third of the firewood of open fires. So, taking care of the above stuff has kept me busy trying to arrange for the work in Campo- which is actually near to us, as the crow flies, but takes about forty minutes of driving to get to. I have to use four wheel drive to get into the village- worse in the rains. This last week, however, I did manage to get some work done. Thanks to Santiago, our faithful employee, we got five loads of sand and gravel used for fill around the side of the workshop.

We also got “chapapote” or asphalt painted on most of the section to be interred. Santiago is so plodding, and effective. Always with a smile he fills up a wheelbarrow of fill and walks it around a hundred feet, dumps it and returns. For nine hours a day he keeps filling in the space. He also loves the animals so he feeds them every morning- talks to the rabbits and chides the hens and rooster. We bought another 10 chicks this week (sex unknown) and got them back to the hen house. Two of them were killed the following day by the older chickens who pecked them to death. We had to build a section within the chicken house, just for the new chicks to live apart until they get old enough to mix with the others. Oh- the things we discover each day.. We finally got the last of the drainage/sewage system finished early this week, as well. We had to build a register to join up the various old sewage lines with the new plastic. Now, I can pour a bucket of water in the toilet and hear it racing down hill and ending up in a “sumidero.” The sumidero is actually a kind of sink hole with probably a cavern beneath. Our region is filled with a series of caverns paralleling the main road.
The new site for the block machine is ready. We had waters invading the space where we had built a cabana to house the block machine and the generator. Over a meter of water entered last week so we had to move the machine to high ground- the best site is what used to be our kitchen at the old cabin. I removed the walls, we moved the machine, dried it out, oiled it and leveled out the space around for the sand, a space for the wooden trays and started to try and run the generator- it wouldn’t work. So, I had to take the generator to town where it is currently undergoing a cleaning and repair. The motor is back to running fine while the generator portion needs a replacement part which is on its way from Mexico City. In looking back at the process I wonder how I could have sited it better. It used to be the highest point but we started adding fill sand and gravel to have a level space for the drying of the block and brick. As we leveled out more space, we had to raise the fill up to a level of the road in order to be able to load the block. Finally, the fill got to be about five feet tall. Enough for now.
It’s late, saludos Richard