ENCOUNTER WITH THE WILD SIDE

I know Pedrigal and it’s a dangerous barrio; full of drugs and wild teens. I drove off the main road in Pedrigal onto a winding narrow dead-end road. Sections of the road were thick with mud, I had to negotiate around some old tires and a dog or two. While I slowly drove down the road, I noted up to the left, a couple of older teens looking at us from the top of the main road, soon a few more joined them. Then all of them clambered down the dirt wall surrounding my car. It was one of those nervous moments.

An old man in gang-land!

I opened the window ... one of the guys came up with a big smile and said "Hi von!. How are you doing?"

Whew!

They just wanted to say "Hi," and said I used to shower them when they were kids. In our conversation I found they were returning from working at the Tijuana dump some twenty miles away; where they collect aluminum, copper, glass, cardboard, whatever. They had been up since 4:30am and were back in the late afternoon. Sweating 10 hours in their world of trash; only to make a few pesos ... not enough to live on. (I had more than $500. on me, no one was out to get me.)

Now I usually have some candy bars, cola or popcorn in my car for such occasions, this time I was clean out of everything.

I remembered I had one of my simple game boards for kids to play and earn small chocolates.

Ah an Idea!

I opened the back of the SUV and showed them the game, and how to play it ... however instead of chocolates, I told them I would give dollars to the winners. Big wide smiles!

Boy, they got into it!

About seven or eight dollars later ... they all thanked me ... they had to leave. One young man showed me a photo of his little daughter and asked me if I could get him a tarp, as his roof leaked.

Overall, a nice afternoon encounter with the wild side of Pedrigal.

A big thanks to all of you who pray for me!