Day Two – The Shack Experience – ‘Whole New World’

It’s a whole new world in Mexico when you wake up at 5am. There are people walking to work after cooking breakfast and lunch for their families. There are buses driving up and down the streets to pick up the workers and take them to the fields. Who knew this was all going on while we are usually cozy in our beds? But today the students joined the workers waiting for transportation to the tomato fields.By the end of the day we didn’t even recognize our own hands. Stained purple from the twine we used to tie up tomato plants and green from the leaves. We worked from sunrise until the middle of the afternoon. Boring, repetitive work as we bent over the plants and tied twine to posts to hold up the tomato plants.We were fortunate to be able to talk to each other the whole time so that was nice. All the time together these past couple days has actually been really fun. We’ve all had lots of nice chats and it’s nice having the time away from the internet. I really haven’t been missing it at all! Sleeping in the shack last night was warm. I didn’t see any bugs so I’m just gonna pretend there weren’t any.  I cannot believe people live like this for their entire lives!  A man we met today in the field had been working there for 12 years on 165 pesos (14 dollars) a day and a ranch before that for 20 years for 110 pesos (9 dollars) a day. Day in and day out for 32 years….and I console myself knowing this is over in a week. This is hard work – manageable for a week but hard. I know this is the point but I really am even more amazed that people go through their lives like this.2010 SOL Student living in ‘The Shack’