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.

Mexico City: Making a Nest

My room. Mexico City. November 2018.

It´s good to build a nest when you´ll be in one place for a month.

This is especially important when sharing two showers, four toilets, one refrigerator, and one kitchen with up to 15 men and five or so women.

One day I walked up to Walmart and bought:

1. A bathroom floor mat to step on when I get out of the shower;
2. Plastic sliders with which I can wear socks and walk on wet surfaces, like in the bathroom; 
3. Apple-cinnamon spray for my room; and
4. A coffee mug with a lid.

I also splurged on a jar of decaf Nescafe for myself plus a large container of ground black pepper to share with my housemates.

The aroma of the decaf crystals, mmm, nice.


Some other rooms of my past

• Dubai
• Istanbul
• Playa del Carmen
• Gorgora (Ethiopia)

By the way, most of my housemates this week? They are sleeping on mats on the floor in a meeting room upstairs. They are members of the 1st refugee caravan, lucky enough to be in a shelter with a roof over their heads, a kitchen, some quiet ... safety.

I have a bed. I have my own room. I am the really lucky person, due to a large extent, to a random throw of the dice in our universe.

I do not take this for granted. No, that´s not really true. Most days of my life, I certainly do take much of what I have for granted. I´ll have food for the day, shelter, clothing, the means to clean my clothes, and physical safety.