Dear Diary,
My mom, younger brother, and i came to visit my grandparents who live in Mexicali, B.C, Mexico.
We are staying over the night and we will depart tomorrow night. My grandparents live in a deserted village with a dearth of green nature in the outskirts of Mexicali. Being here brings back both painful and happy memories. The sight of the dilapidated houses reminds me of the abject poverty i used to live in. Humble villagers shambling through the unpaved roads, barefoot and dressed in ragged clothes in the stifling hot afternoons with a few cents in their pockets. Some houses have been razed to the ground and only debris remain where they used to stand. Most villagers work in factories for meager salaries they can't manage to sustain their families with. There are poor old wizened people who have been abandoned by their families and now live alone in squalid huts with no clean water and electricity. Tears are now spilling over my cereal as i recall the tragic death of an old shrunken man three years ago. When i barely knew him and have heard rumors his family had forsaken him, i always smiled at him and waved my arm in the air in greeting when i walked past his shack after school where he used to sit on a stool outside in the sultry afternoons. Then, one day i didn't see him and i felt apprehension rising within me. I always knew since i saw him the first time his death was imminent but it struck me nobody had realized he was dead until one week later. Someone who lived nearby took her dog for a stroll with her in an unusually balmy night and when passing by the old man's hut, an overpowering stench similar to the one of a decaying body filled her nostrils. In summer, the old man used to sleep with the only window of its clustered suffocating room open. So one night while he was asleep his heart stopped beating and he died instantly. But i have always thought the poor man whose name i didn't know then, had been a victim of squalor, poverty, and solitude. His name was Francisco, a poor man who had been shunned from society because of his mental impairment and who died without love and compassion. There are so many life stories of unfairness and cruelty shadowing this ghostly village i would never finish writing about all of them.
So many people who have been fettered to a life of economic and emotional misery because of Mexico's injustice and indifference towards the poor and the disabled. Poor people who are confined to live a joyless and strenuous existence with their knowledge their situations will never improve. My childhood best friends who I loved like sisters are mothers and wives of older men with ex-wives and children. These girls are just seventeen like me but the difference between us is they didn't have a choice but marrying men in an attempt to escape poverty. It turned out the poverty exacerbated and abuse and violence came with it.
I was one of the lucky girls who lived in an elegant two-floor house and wore good clothing. Some people also commented on my looks, pointing out at my white complexion and slim shape. While living here, I often felt threatened by the single young men who leered at me in the streets. Their prurient curiosity and pervasive poverty were the reasons why my family and I fled. My father forbade me from going outside without my mother or him because of the feeling of impending danger. Sometimes when i dwell over the tragic fate of my friends, i feel guilty for not having ended up like them and escaping this wretched village unscathed. Tomorrow night i will be at home, feeling safe and confident i am leading to the right path, whereas, all these poor people living here will be either guzzling greedily at the chunks of bread they will manage to scrounge up or trying to ignore the rattling sound of their empty stomachs.*