Saturday, October 8, 2011

6 Octubre, 2011

Worked at a recycling center today, which will most likely be my other work site for the remainder of the year. It was a good place – some awesome people who have already invited me to participate in activities with them and for me to eat at their houses with them in the future. I think I've found a different crowd in Cuernavaca. People who literally dedicate all their time to the environment. Though this program is not at all related to Grail, the women's organization I am supposed to be working for much of the rest of the time here, I feel like the holistic approach these people at the recycling center have fits almost perfectly with the ideals of Grail. For example, I was driving in one of the women's car to pick up some car parts for our 'delivery truck' and she was telling me how impressive it is and how much she approved that a young person was a vegetarian. (She told me she'd make chicken for me, instead, when I came to her house.... beside the point). She said people do not pay attention enough to what they consume, food-wise or material-wise. Another lady told me she's been doing meditation for many years and that it's so important to take care of your body and soul as well as your environment. She also told me she used to live in Mexico City in a community with 500+ people and only 8 people regularly participated in recycling. I am trying to figure out what to think about the fact that the employees seem to think Mexico is especially guilty in its lack of care, culturally, for the environment. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure it's that unique. The 5 employees at this center do SO MUCH work. They have so much tedious separation of products to do that they hardly have time for maintaining logistics of the organization. They also like to go to schools and, occasionally, to other states around Mexico to promote appropriate recycling separation practices (sidenote- I had no idea there were so many types of clear plastic bags). Anyway, I am out of shape for sure, because my back hurts and I had to take many breaks from sorting today. I would love to help them with the education piece. But there is literally so much tedious work to do that we have to wait to get things cleared out so we can even start to think about building an office from which to organize this work. We'll see which way the wind blows from here!

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