Great Stuff Happening at KBI

After attempting to RIDE HIS BIKE across the border, Pablo has returned to Nogales with a new deportation ticket and a fresh fifteen days in the comedor. He decided to attempt to return to Pheonix because he still has a lot of things there. I am quite happy to see him...


Miguel is from Nicaragua. He is the first migrant I have met from there. I spent three weeks in Granada, Nicaragua two years ago and we talked for a long time about his country, the food, the music... Miguel however left his country because he is gay and he told us that not only his town, but his family harassed him simply because he did not fit the typical Latin American, machismo, culture. He left the comedor to cross a few days ago. I sincerely hope he is safe.

Father Ken Gavin S.J. director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, an organization that strongly supports the Kino Border Initiative, made a visit to the comedor. He is headed to work in Rome in a week and wanted to make a trip here. I have had the pleasure to spent an afternoon and morning meeting with him and talking about JRS and just a lot of good stuff. Because of him (and Father Maldari... thank ya!) I am here in Nogales. He connected me with the director of KBI and got me all started. The director of development of JRS, Cindy Rice, joined him for teh trip as well. They are interested in using teh bulletin written by the migrants in their website and in their fundraising efforts. I am happy to help. Anyway, I couldn't thank Father Gavin enough for putting me in touch with KBI...

Well I got a new bike. My old one was failing on me. Badly. Brakes stopped working, back tire popped, and the front valve got sucked into the tire so I could not longer put air in the front tire. I walked it to a market and managed to sell it for $250 pesos (roughly $22 dollars). On my walk back to the apartment I walked past a nice looking bike that was locked up in front of a jewlery store. I looked at it for a sec then kept walking. About a half block away a man ran up to me panting and asked if I wanted to buy the bike. After taking it for a spin I coughed up the $300 pesos a rode happily on my way.


Up until October 1st the Mexican government had a program for sending migrants that lived South of Mexico City back home. They would simply fly them to DF and then services in DF would take care of them from there. However that program is over. Now all of the deported are sent to border towns regardless of where their home may be in Mexico. That means our numbers have seen a huge increase. We are serving well over 100 every breakfast. (We served 137 the other day)


No longer Se Vende!

Thanks to a nice grant we got and the work of Adolofo and Erin (two other volunteers) we have purchased a small building arcross the street from the comedor. It is going to serve as a medical clinic for the deported. We are hoping to keep it open five days a week for roughly 4 hours a day. It needed some serious cleaning though.

7th Edition of our newsletter:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/56664422/upc-10-5