Our Mexican Princess!

A few weeks ago we (the School of Leadership students) began a special project for our Mexican Princess – Jessica. Jessica is eight years old and has cancer. When asked in the summer if you could wish for anything what would you wish for, she said a Barbie playhouse. Jessica needs a place indoors to play because of her cancer. So our plan is to build an addition onto her house and put a Barbie playhouse in it. We spent the first day and a half digging out a hole to make the floor level with the rest of the house. The ground was so hard to dig because it was clay and then there were tons of big rocks that we had to dig out. We were finally able to pour the concrete foundation. The next day we started to build the walls and roof. Jessica’s mother made us ceviche for lunch which is soy and fish and veggies with lots of lime on a tostado. It was delicious! The next day we painted the inside of the addition purple and the outside blue.It took almost a month but finally we acquired a three-foot doll house and a Barbie camping caravan. A family from Canada that heard of Jessica had some Barbie dolls sent down to Mexico for her. On Sunday we went to Jessica’s house and delivered her wish. We got her and her brother to close their eyes. When we told them they could open them Jessica was so overwhelmed that she didn’t know what to do. After a couple minutes of coaxing, Jessica opened up a Barbie. After that we set about to assemble the doll house and caravan. The guys spent almost an hour putting together the 3-story dollhouse. Octavio, Jessica’s older brother, tried to pretend that he wasn’t interested in the doll house but didn’t succeed and by the end he was helping set it up with us. He was just really happy that his sister got a doll house. We also brought over a brand new Tonka truck for Octavio to play with. Getting to know this family and seeing the joy on their faces as they played with their new and old toys made all the hard work digging in the hard clay well worth it. We left with tears in our eyes, happy that we met this family and could help make a small part of their dreams come true.

Zoe Bigaukus, a School of Leadership Student living in Mexico