Helen and I returned to the
States last evening and I'm writing this email in a Best
Western Motel in Sonora, Texas. After going online and
reading some emails, it occurred to me that some of you are
wondering where we are. This email is to answer that
question and whet your appetite for more accounts of our
trip to Mexico and the children of Solidaridad.
We were concerned when we headed
to Solidaridad that we were going to find some problems with
the children and that the chicken business had died.
Instead, we found that the problems we had imagined were not
really problems. The breakfast program is still going well
and the chicken business seems to have been more asleep than
dead. I'll write later about a couple of people I want you
to meet.
The story with the chicken
business is that after we got it up and running in APRIL'S,
Enrique had a couple of problems that brought him to a
stand-still. The first was when the price he was paying for
the chickens went up and he wasn't prepared to raise the
price he was charging for the dressed chickens. This meant
that the women who butchered and prepared the chickens were
not making as much per chicken as they thought they would.
The second problem with the
chickens came when there was a disease that required all of
the chickens in the area to be destroyed and then for the
pens to be fumigated. The large pens at Enrique's supplier
were empty when we saw them a little over a week ago.
However, this problem is now over and chickens are again
coming into the area. Yesterday, when Helen and I were
riding a bus back to the border (for 10 hours) we observed
many trucks heading south loaded with chicken crates and
others heading north loaded with empty crates. I hope some
of them have made it to Enrique since when we left him he
had already taken orders for chickens that were to be
delivered today.
I'm looking forward to telling
you about a couple of people in Solidaridad who have had
their lives changed. This will happen after I get a chance
to download my pictures since I want you to be able to see
these wonderful people.
Frank Miller
