comunidad para baja california

All three components of Comunidad were at work over the Halloween weekend this year.  Salud (Health) was represented by our quarterly dental clinic, where we treated over 100 tribal members.  Our Infrastructura group was out at the local orphanage sheetrocking the dental clinic we’ve been constructing over the past year.  And the Escuela-a-Escuela program continued with the distribution of scholarships to over 125 tribal students.

October 31 was a long day for the tribal students.  They woke up early to meet the bus that Comunidad chartered for the day.  For the next two hours they traveled from their tribal communities to the Museo Historico Regional in Ensenada for the annual Beca (scholarship) program.  The program began with the lighting of a sage bundle and a blessing from Leonor Paulo, one of the tribal elders.  After a few words from Tom Hogan, President of Comunidad, Armandina Gonzales, head of all the Nativo schools, gave a speech (in PaiPai and Spanish) about the importance of education to both the students and their tribes.  The students then presented their paperwork to representatives of Comunidad and CUNA (the Institute for Native Cultures) and received their scholarships for the year.

The students and their families then boarded the busses and crossed Ensenada to the dental clinic.  Co-sponsored by Comunidad and the NorCal Rotary Club, the bi-annual dental clinic is conducted in a clinic donated by 1000 Smiles.  Over the weekend the group of three dentists (later joined by two Mexican dentists), two hygienists and a score of translators and volunteers treated over 100 Nativos for everything from simple extractions to complicated root work.

With evening falling, the Nativo children were treated to an event that they wouldn’t see back in their tribes.  Mexican families have recently embraced Halloween as a holiday, with the same costumes and door-to-door activities as in the US.  So the tribal children who were finished with their dental work joined some volunteers in trolling the neighborhood around the clinic for candy.

South of Ensenada, in the little town of Zorrillo, Bill Rush, Comunidad’s Director of Infrastructura, led a group of US construction professionals in tiling and sheetrocking the small dental clinic at Casa Hogar, a local orphanage that Comunidad has been supporting for the past eight years.  It’s amazing the progress the orphanage has seen over that time, partly from Comunidad’s efforts but mostly due to the dedication of two men, George Warf (who works with a California-based church) and Larry Tabor, Comunidad’s head dentist.  Over the past eight years this group has turned Casa Hogar’s dirt floors to cement, installed toilets and showers, and brought in trailers to house the staff.  All of this, though, pales in comparison to the current project:  a two-story school (with the aforementioned dental clinic) and a vocational school next door.

Over a hundred Nativos treated; 135 students guaranteed another year of schooling; a dental clinic receiving walls and a floor.  All in all, Comunidad’s most productive weekend yet.

To join the next Comunidad trip or to sponsor a student through the Beca program please contact Tom Hogan at thogan@bajacomunidad.org or 408-355-0108.

It was a scene reminiscent of an old winery, but instead of stomping grapes, the five Los Gatos children were stomping straw into mud. The occasion was an adobe brick-making workshop sponsored by the PaiPai tribe of Santa Catarina. The children, joined by their new tribal friends, were up to their knees in a mudpit created by a natural spring. Their job was to mix in the straw, then shovel the adobe into wheelbarrows and transport it over to the area where it was poured into brick forms.

The occasion was Day Two of Camp Comunidad, a program that brings together Northern California families with the leaders, elders and children of the PaiPai and Kumeyaay tribes. Organized by Pamela Pearson, Director of Comunidad’s Escuela program, the camp is a combination of cultural exchange and ecotourism. “The goal of Camp Comunidad is dual,” she explained. “To bring together the two cultures in an educational manner that shows our American kids how another culture lives, and to help the tribes create ecotourism programs that allow them to earn a living while preserving their culture.”

The program started the evening of July 12, as the families all arrived at the San Nicolas Hotel. After a swim in the Olympic-size pool, the families headed down to Chapultepec, where they stuffed themselves as Poblano’s, Comunidad’s favorite taqueria. The families then bought a round of fireworks and headed down to the beach, where the parents treated the kids to an hour-long amateur firework display.

Day One was spent at San Antonio Necua, a Kumeyaay tribe. After a ceremonial greeting by the tribe’s shaman, the kids and parents headed out on a nature and archeology hike, where they saw a variety of fauna used for medicines, as well as a centuries-old grinding site, a huge stone table dotted by holes, with pestles nearby. The kids then headed back through the animal graveyard (each child was allowed to take a small bone back with them) to the lunch area, where they were served a traditional meal by the tribal parents. “The Shaman led nature hike really opened my eyes,” said Stacey Geiken, one of the parents. “What appeared to be a dry river bed, turned out to be a veritable pharmacy. The Shaman showed us medicinal herbs and plants and described how they could be prepared to cure various ills.”

After lunch, as the parents helped clean up, the kids—both Californian and tribal—headed off to a variety of games: Frisbee, baseball, and a spirited game of soccer. At the sound of a bell, the tribal children led their Californian friends back to the crafts area, where everyone learned the weaving techniques of the Kumeyaay, taught by tribal artisans. Every participant worked with willow to create a tightly-woven medallion. “It was calming and rewarding to try and weave a medallion of my own, but since I wanted to actually wear it,” said Patti van der Burg. “I was relieved there were some for sale by the local artisans!”

When the crafts were over, the tribal children and elders, now dressed in traditional garb, performed a number of tribal dances, with the Comunidad kids and parents joining in. Then it was on to the bus and back to Ensenada.

Day Two was a longer drive out to the remote tribe of Santa Catarina. The exposed, harsh landscape is normally in the low 100’s during July, but some rare cloud cover kept the temperatures in the 80s. The first stop for the campers was Teresa Castro’s pottery workshop. Castro, a renowned Pai Pai potter, had set up stations for each participant, along with examples of her highly-acclaimed pottery, which uses traditional hand-made and unique firing techniques. The campers made either bowls or animal figurines, which they brought home with them. They then headed over to the adobe pits, where they built bricks for upcoming tribal construction projects. “It was cool to see how they used to make the bricks that we see when we visit the missions,” said Riley Friar, a sixth-grader at Fisher Middle School. “But this wasn’t history—this was real life.”

Lunch was posole and tortillas made by the Comunidad children, with direction from the tribal cooks. Afterward the group headed over to the tribal school, where they heard a fascinating presentation on the history of the PaiPai language and the tribe’s attempts to preserve it. They then played sports with the tribal children until it was time to get on the bus and head back to Ensenada.

On the way back the kids all completed their “Seek and Find” booklets, small exercises generated by Pam Pearson and Horacio Moncada, Comunidad’s Ensenada-based employee. Each page gave the kids a chance to either draw or write something they had learned in the past two days, with the kids encouraged to work in groups to come up with the answers. A completed booklet was rewarded with a much-prized Comunidad baseball cap, which Pam handed out at the farewell dinner.

Overall, the trip was a great success. The tribal leaders and Pam, with input from the participants, are already planning the next trip. Plans call for two school-based Camps, with the possibility of offering Camp Comunidad as a team-building exercise for businesses and organizations.

Perhaps the best evidence of how successful the trip was came from Anya van der Burg, who asked her parents on the way home: “We’re doing this again next summer, right?”

Two massive trailers filled with desks, chairs, tables and bookcases rolled out of Blossom Hill School in Los Gatos on July 6, headed for Mexicali. Donated by the Los Gatos Unified School District, the furniture will part of a complete refurbishment of the Nativo schools of Baja, with the remaining material going to the schools of Mexicali and Ensenada.

The project began in 2004, when the construction of new schools in Los Gatos began. Then Superintendent Mary Ann Park (now a Board member of Comunidad) approved the donation of the Blossom Hill furniture to Comunidad. The organization’s Director of Transportation, Bill Rush, took it from there. Working with Jim Silva’s LGUSD’s head of facilities and Karen Miller, principal of Blossom Hill, Bill organized a group of volunteers to disassemble, move, and load over 400 desks, 600 chairs and 75 tables. Led by super-volunteer Mike Lambert, the group worked for three days under a blazing sun. But on July 6 the trucks rolled to Mexicali, where they were met by Horacio Moncada, Comunidad’s sole Mexico-based employee, and Professora Lourdes Oliva, who facilitated the customs and distribution process for the Mexican government. The trucks were unloaded in 115 degree heat, with temperatures inside the trailers exceeding 130 degrees. But on Monday, July 9, they were transported to San Antonio Necua, the central distribution point for all the tribes.

As part of Comunidad’s focus on intercultural exchange, Blossom Hill students, under the direction of Pamela Pearson, Comunidad’s Escuela a Escuela (school to school) director, wrote letters in Spanish to their desks’ new owners. The letters will then be taped to the inside of the desks, to be opened in September when school resumes.

Special thanks go to Bill Rush for coordinating a complicated mix of schedules, legal restrictions, documents and groups of volunteers to pull this off. Also to the truckers who volunteered their services to transport the furniture and to all the volunteers who braved the heat to help on both ends of the loading process.

Photos of the new classroom furniture in place will be available on this website in the fall.

The weekend of January 28-30 saw a different type of trip for Comunidad, as Director of Transportation Bill Rush joined forces with members of CUNA and Aqualink to assess the water system of the village of Santa Caterina and how best to bring potable water to the villagers.

Santa Catarina is a village of 150 people spread over hundreds of acres at an elevation of nearly 4000 feet above sea level in the mountains 90 kilometers east of Ensenada. It has been without an operating water system for over six months, with members of the village being forced to travel to a small water catchment or a hand-dug well with buckets to meet their basic needs.

In October, Comunidad, aided by the generosity of a major donor, provided the necessary supplies and materials for reconstruction and repair of the community’s water mains, as well as additional supplies to bring the water supply to each residence in the village. Progress was slowed by the unusually difficult trenching and large boulder formations prevalent in the village, coupled with the breakdown of an increasingly unreliable pump. As Comunidad and Aqualink have looked into the different options and their costs, the villagers completed construction on all of the mains and laterals. The only remaining item is now to fill the storage tanks and test the system.

The water source for Santa Caterina is a small creek with a dam that allows water to pass into a concrete box which is then pumped a quarter of a mile away and up 100 feet vertically to a storage tank (pila). The water is then gravity-fed back into the village. The major challenge is that Catarina is five miles off the main road and is still without electricity. In the past they have used a solar pumping system which was unreliable and problematic. The current solution calls for the installation of a gasoline pump which would take approximately 2 hours per day to replenish the water in the tank. Comunidad will now purchase and install the pump, completing Phase 1 of this project. Once the delivery of the water is complete, Aqualink and Comunidad will turn their attention to the quality of the water, with options such as chlorination and reverse osmosis under consideration.

The next steps are to purchase the pump, weld and secure it, and testing the pipes, with the goal being running water to each house by March 1. Once the water is considered potable, Comunidad and Aqualink will turn their attention to the water systems of San Antonio Necua and La Huerta.

The snow began to fall just before we reached Santa Catarina. At first it was a dusting, but ten minutes later, we pulled the vans over so that the kids could play in the inch-deep snow. The wonder at the snow was tempered by the knowledge that the tribes we were on our way to visit lived in these conditions with no heat other than meager wood fires.

During the week of Thanksgiving a group of Comunidad board members and their families visited all ten tribal locations, distributing coats, blankets and clothes and meeting with the tribal elders to prioritize their needs for the coming year. The donated clothing and blankets were part of Comunidad’s Escuela-a-Escuela program, in which ten Bay Area schools each sponsor a tribal community, starting each year with a coat/blanket drive, then spending the rest of the year in educational and cultural exchanges.

The trip began Friday, November 19th, as a group of Comunidad volunteers met at Blossom Hill to empty Room 22, which over the past week had been filled with bags gathered from all the participating schools. Three carloads, one cargo carrier and a U-Haul carrier could not contain all the donated goods, with two pickup trucks carrying the overflow to Comunidad’s storage facility for use on future trips.

The groups took off on Saturday and met up with Javier Cesena, director of CUNA (the Institute for Indigenous Culture), who was our guide for the next three days. We then proceeded to San Miguel, to the spectacular hilltop house of Mike Wilken, the founder of CUNA, where we separated the donated materials into ten piles for the ten tribal communities that we would be visiting in the next few days.

On Monday our two teams concentrated on the southern tribes. Team A (Dave Cope and his daughter, Maddy; Pam Pearson and her daughters Maya and Rachel; Diane Manning, Eddie Kessler and their daughter Emily) headed to Santa Catarina and La Huerta, where they distributed their bags and met with tribal leaders. The Comunidad kids played with their indigenous counterparts and distributed the bags while their parents met with the tribal leaders, did updates on the tribal lists and planned for the coming year. The Huerta community was particularly impressive, with the entire school staying around to meet with us and present their list of priorities. The kitchen staff also presented a list of needs to help feed the schoolchildren-in all, a very impressive set of meetings.

Team B, consisting of Tom Hogan and Mike Wilken, headed further south, to the remote tribal communities of San Isidoro and Kiliwa. These tribes are different from the communities we’ve worked with so far, having left their tribal lands for economic reasons and struggling to maintain their identities in an assimilating environment. Tom and Mike met with Asuncion, the leader of San Isidoro, then with Elias, leader of Kiliwa. The difference in their needs were striking: San Isidoro, which is more assimilated, focused its list of needs on scholarships for their students. Elias, an activist leader for the Kiliwa tribe, whose language and culture is in danger of extinction in the next twenty years, focused on how to make a return to the Kiliwa tribal lands possible-a potable water system, a small clinic, and long-term planning for a school.

The day concluded with some pleasant business-the delivery of the third donated Comunidad van. Sonia Marques, head teacher for the Cucapah community, drove over to Valle de la Trinidad and received the keys and paperwork for the new van, which will be used as a school bus for the Cucapah schoolchildren.

The next day the two teams headed north. Diane and Pam visited the northern remote tribes of Neji and Pena Blanca, where they met with tribal representatives Josefine and Gladys (from Pena Blanca) and Norma (Neji). They discussed the needs of a geographically scattered populace that still needs the same educational, health and cultural support as their centralized counterparts.

The larger group visited San Antonio Necua and San Jose de la Zorra, distributing the clothing and blankets and meeting with the tribal leaders. In Necua the focus was on infrastructure and a new water system, as well as the opportunity to add computers to their educational culture with the advent of electricity. In Zorra we met with the new Maestra, who articulated the needs of the different levels of students, up to the six Preparatorio students who show up at a trailer every morning, despite the absence of a teacher, to get video downlinks from Mexico City.

The trip concluded Wednesdays morning with a visit to the offices of ISSESALUD, the government health department, where CUNA officials, Tom and Pam met with Director Macias to discuss the plans for extending the clinic at Santa Catarina. The director expressed his concerns about a building for so small and remote a population, but gave his blessings for a multi-purpose building next to the clinic. The group then adjourned to CUNA, where Tom met with Dolores, the representative for the Jamao tribe, to discuss how Comunidad can support scholarships for Jamao children.

This was the first time that Comunidad was able to meet with all ten tribes that we support. As could be expected, the differences of locale and centrality are overridden by the similarities-a concern for clean water, better living conditions and scholarships to enable their children to move past the Primario levels. The trip also expanded our already-strong working relationship with CUNA, with Javier helping Diane coordinate all elements of the trip and Mike accompanying Tom to the remote locations to make introductions and educate him about the needs of the disappearing tribes.

The trip wrapped up a strong first year for Comunidad. Based on everything we learned from these assessment trips, as well as from our regular Salud trips and first health fair, we will finalize our 2005 calendar and budget to fulfill our primary charter: to be driven by the needs of our clients.

The dilapidated basketball court was transformed by folding tables and colorful banners into six medical stations, as volunteers took blood pressures, tested for diabetes, dispensed vitamins, discussed women’s health issues and modeled proper dental hygiene. A few yards away, part of the 3-room schoolhouse had been converted into a dental clinic, with the line for treatment at the three bays spilling out onto the sidewalk. Next door, a room full of Nativo women—many of whom will not consult a male physician because of modesty—heard a lecture from Elizabeth Roman on contraception. The first annual Comunidad Health Fair had come to Santa Catarina.

Over the weekend of October 8-10 a group of 24 Comunidad volunteers flew or drove to Baja California, set up a fair with six medical stations, and educated or treated over 150 members of the local tribes, including Santa Catarina, Kiliwa, Cucapah, San Jose de la Zorra, San Antonio Necua and Pena Blanca. There were even some fun activities such as a giant pinata for the kids, hot lunch prepared by the women of Santa Catarina, and a raffle of food baskets to those with ‘passaportes’ attesting that they had visited every medical station.

The health fair served over 150 Nativos, while the dental clinic treated over 20 patients, as did the medical clinic, while over 50 patients received fluoride treatments. Bill Rush and Pam Pearson met with Santa Catarina elders to review progress of the water system that Comunidad is sponsoring, as well as plans for the clinic that will begin construction in the next quarter.

The trip concluded with a meeting between Comunidad and the members of the Tribal Council. Tom Hogan and Diane Manning presented Comunidad’s charter and activities to date, then listened to the tribes’ hierarchy of needs, both medical and educational. The session closed with the delivery of the latest donated van to the people of Cucapah, who will turn it into a school bus.

Both the tribal leaders and the Comunidad team view the weekend as a tremendous success. The tribal women, in particular, had high praise for both the fair and the seminar, asking us to return soon. And while everyone worked hard to pull it off, special recognition goes to Dr. Meg MacDonald for structuring the event and Diane Manning for serving as logistics coordinator.

Part of Comunidad’s charter is to improve the educational prospects of the tribal children we serve. For many of these children, formal education ends after the sixth grade, due to their inability to get to the secondarios, which are often a distance from their community. Now, due to Comunidad’s vehicle donation program and the generosity of three individuals, three vans are now in use in the communities, making a real difference in a number of lives.

The first donated van came from the Loper family of Los Gatos. Originally used to transport clothing, school supplies, blankets and shoes to the villages of San Jose de la Zorra, San Antonio Necua, and El Mayor Cucapah earlier this year, the van was then converted into a school bus for middle school students.

The next van came from Joy Ide-Cresci of San Francisco. Again, the van was used initially to transport clothing, blankets and medical supplies. It now remains in Ensenada, where it is used by the Comunidad medical and dental teams to access the remote tribal locations.

A third van, donated by Jim Carter of San Francisco, is headed to Santa Catarina loaded with a generator, clothing and blankets for a Health Fare in October. It will then be donated to the community of El Mayor Cucapah to be used as a school bus.

The vehicle donation program is in its infancy, but is already making a difference in the lives of the tribal children. This program, along with its scholarship counterpart, is turning higher education from a dream into a reality.

Three Comunidad members and their families traveled to Ensenada in late July for a gathering of the indigenous tribes of Baja and Southern California. Known as a “Kuri Kuri”, the event featured Native Singers, dancers and artisans from the Paipai, Kumiai, Kiliwa and Cucapa tribes.

Hosted by CUNA, the Ensenada-based Native Cultures Institute, the Kuri Kuri also featured a gathering of health professionals dedicated to assisting the indigenous. Comunidad had a speaking slot on the agenda, in which Diane Manning, Pam Pearson and Tom Hogan discussed the Nativos’ most pressing health needs and Comunidad’s plans in the areas of services trips, health fairs, vaccination programs and clinic construction. The Promotoras (tribal advocates) expressed the need for local clinics (to help with early diagnosis by Comunidad and Mexican doctors and preventive medicine) and an Ensenada or Ojos Negros-based facility to help recuperating patients and their families.

During the Kuri Kuri, Comunidad was recognized from the stage for its contributions to the indigenous community. Specific mention was made of our service trips, donated vehicles (to the tribes as school buses and to CUNA for general use), and plans to deliver potable water to all the tribes.In addition to the Kuri Kuri, the trip included a visit by Diane Manning, Pam Pearson and Bill Lanfri to Santa Catarina, where the three surveyed the site of a new clinic, assessed the status of the water system, and met with local artisans about participation in Comunidad-sponsored activities in the Bay Area.

One lesson learned: everyone who has ever experienced the long waits at the San Ysidro border crossing has wondered about the efficiency of the Otay Mesa alternative crossing. Well, we can quit wondering. Rerouted by the police to Otay, we had a two-hour wait without the benefit of all the street vendors that make the San Ysidro crossing such interesting theatre. So the lesson is: avoid Otay, and when rerouted, double back as quickly as possible and attempt the eastern onramps.