Day Three – Refried Beans

We got to sleep in today! Work only started at 7am so we had lots of time to get up and attempt to make refried beans. They turned out a little dry but hey, I was hungry enough at lunch to eat them anyways. We went to a beach in the view of a bunch of expensive houses where wealthy retirees stay. We began our job for the day: rock picking. We had to sort through rocks on the beach and pick out small smooth dark stones for landscaping purposes. A sack of these rocks would go for 10 pesos and at the end of of our mind-numbing, monotonous day we had about 125 pesos worth of rocks gathered. Only 125 pesos between 6 people for a whole day; so we aren’t very good at it. We were told that those that do this for a living can collect 10-20 bags of rocks per day. This does not mean that they would be paid for these everyday. For example right now there is no market for the rocks so no one if buying the bags of rocks they collect. They can work all day and get paid LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute)ly nothing. We were told that rock-picking is considered by some locals to be a good job because it is not so hard on the body and you work for yourself. But I’m glad I don’t have to do that all day for the rest of my life.At the end of our day spent collecting and throwing rocks we gathered a bunch of drift wood along the beach to burn and went home to make supper. We enjoyed the generosity of neighbors who brought us a bag of donuts. We used our leftover beans to make a soup and even had crackers with it.  In the end we had too much soup to eat so we shared it with other neighbors – that’s what you do here, share with one another what you have to offer. After a short visit with a few of the Hero Holiday participants that dropped by we went to bed with the sun.Written by Colin McWhae, a School of Leadership student, and Rose Friesen, School of Leadership Mexico Facilitator