Cuernavaca Birds

Each morning I try to get up a little early to check out what birds might be in the yard. Here’s a few I’ve gotten so far:

Vermilion Flycatcher

Wilson’s Warbler

Black-headed Grosbeak

Gray Silky-Flycatchers

Curve-billed Thrasher

Cuernavaca – Day 5

Today we painted a couple of rooms at the LGBTQ church in Cuernavaca with some of the young men and women from this small community. After we were done painting we shared a meal and heard their stories. Being anything but heterosexual is not safe in Mexico. Think of the way things were 60 years ago for LGBTQ people in Canada. It’s worse here. It felt good to meet and work with these people and to show them that they are indeed loved and worthy of love. One of the young men commented that it was too bad that people from other countries would come and help them and accept them, but that people from their own country would not. They have a difficult road ahead, but they continue to reach out to others in the community who are not heterosexual and have nowhere to turn.

The painting crew

Cuernavaca – Day 4

In the morning we traveled to a poor rural community, Tlamacazapa, that is built on the side of a very steep hill.

One street in Tlamacazapa

The family we visited there makes beautiful palm baskets and thread bracelets to sell in the market for their living. Getting their wares to the market in the city can take most of their profits.

The bracelet I purchased

They do not have potable water in the community because their wells all contain arsenic. They live day to day. They have a very small breakfast (coffee and sugar cane), no lunch and then rice OR beans with tortillas for supper.

In the afternoon, we travelled 22 km to Taxco – a very wealthy city. Such a difference in such a short distance. The difference? Taxco has silver mining. The church there had walls covered with ornamentation covered in 24 carat gold! Considering the huge needs so close, it seemed obscene.