Mexico City: Communal Dinner

Fresh-gathered fruit for the communal dinner. Mexico City. November 2018.

Every Sunday evening there is a communal dinner at the guesthouse.

Last Sunday, a man of faith named John - bilingual Spanish and English - took the lead on the dinner. The centerpiece of the meal was spaghetti. Everyone brought something.

Rasha, of Oman, and I walked up to the corner rotisserie and bought two chickens, which she augmented with several containers of rice and a chipotle-based BBQ sauce.

Others brought couscous, chicken curry, pizza, mole, bread, refried beans, doughnuts, papaya, and freshly-picked local fruits, the name of which I forget.

People at dinner included tourist-guests like me; people of the caravan from Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua; guesthouse volunteers, and other folks connected to the guesthouse in some way.

The men from the caravan set up the tables and laid out plates, cups, and cutlery.

Before sitting, we made a circle around the two tables and introduced ourselves: our names and places of origin.

You can guess what I am going to say, right?

We were just a gathering of people from different parts of the world, some fleeing violence or poverty (or both), and some of us assured in our security of physical safety and food and shelter.

No Wall. No fear. No ugly talk.