The hacienda has been sponsoring a Wheelchair sports camp for the last bunch of years. I’m not sure how many it’s been, but it is always in Spring, when the corn is coming up through the ground, making the broken, burnt floor of the earth into a living green. I actually suddenly got bizarrely homesick, and I think it was from all the green.
Oh, but the camp mostly consists of the great Richard St. Denis, the head sports guy for Mobility Project worldwide coming down and kicking these kids around. Richard is a big rugged man who treats everyone the same and doesn’t take slacking off or bowing out from anyone. When the A team is on the floor playing basketball he crashes into them, plays hard, and turns up the intensity. When they do relays with the people who can maneuver their chair with only one hand, or need someone to push their chair, are on the floor, Richard makes them all run the whole length, cheering them on. Kike often draws him into his notebook as Johnny Bravo or Popeye in a wheelchair. Adalid calls him the most “valiant” man she has ever known. I think that is a great description.
The first day the kids get there, they get the usual name tags and candy and are running around the property. There are maybe 20 to 40 invited, about half can move about at ease, maybe a quarter have partial movement, and the other quarter need constant attention. You would think the steep cement ramps, uneven stone surface basketball court and grassy fields would be a deterrent for wheelchair bound kids (I call them kids but they are people of all ages), but actually compared with their home situation or even most town’s (like San Felipe) poor excuse for pavement, it’s pretty manageable. They are each handed a piece of rubber “liga,” a rubber rope or band used for stretching and exercise (and slingshots). They circle up, still chatting, and stretch their torsos and arms, pulling on the liga. Most families come with them to drop them off. There are both old and new people in the group. An older man with only one leg, a little girl in a terribly beat-up wheelchair, maybe 10 or 12 other new people I don’t know. As well as the old faces from the tennis court.
Actually Richard had arrived a week early and we had an exclusive tennis camp with the better players. It was every day for four days, three hours a day. We would have had a fifth day, but we had a big meal instead. On the first day, Richard says he wants me to help out. He says they have asked if he can train me to help out. I tell him that I actually have been to the last couple of practices. He asks what I’ve been doing.
“Pretty much matching them up to play against each other, showing them how to serve. Whatever.”
“Ever you versus two of them?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. Here’s the first lesson: get in a wheelchair.”
“OK. But actually it goes faster if I can run around and get the balls and…”
“That doesn’t matter. Get in a wheelchair and stay there for the whole practice. Fall over if you fall over or lean over to get the balls. That is how you can teach them; you need to learn first.”
Sure. Why would they listen to someone who doesn’t want to see what it feels like, to see what it is actually like? You can’t teach tactic and strategy of normal tennis, and you don’t understand wheelchair tennis if you don’t get in the chair. They will only respect you if show them you are willing to play on the same plane.
The rules of wheelchair tennis are the same as normal tennis except you get two bounces instead of one. But the style of play is what makes this game very unique. It is a much more up and down game. Richard worked with them all week on forward movement to attack the ball and then back to the line. Once I got in a chair, I saw how immobile you are sitting in a chair that can’t strafe left and right. Rich taught them (us) about how if you attack forward, you can move forward left and forward right at a much higher speed. You hit it and turn and head back. You can’t push your chair straight back or you are going to flip. And you can’t charge the net (which I like to do normally) because sitting there you only cover as much ground as you have wingspan, which isn’t that much really. But if you start from the back, moving forward, you can pretty much get to any ball that is hit.
I did do some translating for him, so I felt like I helped out at least some. Richard speaks adequate Spanish, but you don’t realize how much specialized vocabulary you need until you actually get put in real life situations. Playing tennis or basketball, cooking or cleaning up, teaching math, watching a TV show about doctors, buying food you’ve never heard of. At school you can learn tons of vocab: verbs, colors, numbers, clothing, animals, whatever. But when do they teach you “put spin on the ball” or “charge the net?” How do you say “to the power of,” “dunk” or “rebound?”
So for those four days we worked on form, power, accuracy, and all other aspects of wheelchair tennis that you can fit in over a couple hours each day. There were visible gains made, which was awesome to see, but more importantly just a general rise in the level of confidence. Looking back on it, it really was the day that most of the guys there made the leap from trying to get the ball over the net to really understanding where they are, where they want to be, and probably most significantly how to get there. By the end of the four days Richard could no longer beat them easily. I guess, to quote one of my favorite movies, “students will rise to the level of expectations.”
Anyway, we finished the four days and went to Juan Manuel’s house for a big feast on the fifth day. About 20 of us, the team plus Juan Pablo’s sister and Adalid and a few other random family members who had also helped a couple days each. Manuel lives up by Kike, but on the main road, on a big hill. Five of us had a race in the wheelchairs, up the hill about 50 yards and back down. Kike’s two brothers Ivan and Alex, Juan Pablo, Kike and myself. The uphill push is incredible as your arms literally stop functioning. Your mind is telling them to let go and grab the wheel farther back and push it forward, but they won’t. They just sit there. Stupid arms! Go! Reaching the top I wasn’t far behind the other four guys, so I turned and just let myself fly down the hill. I was probably going 15 or 20 miles per hour when I realized I had no brakes and probably wasn’t going to make up ground anyway. I tried to grab onto the rims to no avail. I put down my feet and skidded half the traction off them before coming to a stop way past the finish line. I got out and pushed the chair back up. Richard looked at me and smiled.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, me to. It just felt like a bike, but I forgot I have no brakes.”
We ate a huge meal. We told stories. We laughed as people tried beer or pulque. The taboos broke down as normally reserved people laughed out loud and became “themselves.” I was so used to the artificial walls almost everyone keeps up while at the hacienda, it was amazing to see how people relaxed and enjoyed the time together. Sometimes I get the feeling that Kike, myself and Adalid are the only people I truly know. Everyone there became someone new to me that day, except normally extroverted Kike and polite, traditional Adalid. I think this was good. I love being there, watching people slowly come out of their shells and laugh out loud.
The hacienda makes people uncomfortable, although it will be difficult to explain. It is not like a community where everyone works together for the common good, as much as it wants to be. There is a bizarre social structure where expectations are unclear and how to achieve them is even more so. For example, there is a general expectation that you should work hard. Fine. But at the same time, the pay is miserable and a general mistrust of the people higher up is present in just about all parts. Constant gossip about who is making what, or what privileges someone else has, or people possibly stealing this or that, comes from all angles. Or another example: there is a general expectation that people should be saving money and improving their lives because of the job they have and the opportunities that are given to them. So some workers who stay too long are tried to be convinced that they should leave to start their own business. Or other workers who leave too soon or not when they are expected are hunted down and accused of treachery. You end up finding yourself watching carefully what words you choose for each person you talk to.
I should also mention that most people are connected through the hacienda; without the hacienda, there is no central connection between all the players. A few work there (like Leti and Kike), a few just live near there (like Juan Pablo), some use the hacienda for a connection (like Mario) but all end up at the yearly camp. A few years later when the hacienda wants to abandon the camp, we start to use Richard as our common connection. He never lives there, or near, but we all now use him as our common bond, a connection that transcends country, ability, language, and the hacienda.
The next day we are all in the hacienda, stretching. Everyone has picked out a bed, figured out where the bathrooms are, met most of the new people. Richard is asking the group, situated in a circle, who is missing, what they have been doing the last year, how life is going. Everyone takes their turn saying something, even the new people feel welcome within the group. People are given nicknames, or stories about other people are told in front of them. Jokes from the previous year come out. Everyone is laughing. It is the brightest morning I can remember in a long time.
There is one girl who is new. She is in a blue chair that has huge spokes and handles on the wheels, like the old captain’s wheels on a clipper ship. The chair is awkward and clunky. She is beautiful. She is calm and has a soft smile. She has a nametag on that says “Shomara.” Hey Kike. Who is she? He just tells me “someone new. Sounds like stripper’s name, doesn’t it? ‘Showme’ we can call her…” Don’t be mean. Where is she from? Shoulders shrug.
Relay races are first. I am assigned to help push those who cannot push their own wheelchair. Down and back. Easy. Shomara looks capable of handling her chair, but she appears to lack confidence. She has her hands folded laying on top of a blanket that is covering her legs. I introduce myself so that maybe she will feel a little less shy. She asks me to help her because she can’t move her chair well. Which I find incredibly hard to believe because she seems athletic enough, except that the chair does seem rather large and quite heavy. I help push her down and back and she gives little pushes on the wheels here and there. The large handles certainly do impede her ability to push the chair quickly; your hand gets totally whacked if you aren’t careful. I try to treat her like everyone else. To make her feel welcome, but not overdoing it like as if someone had awkwardly told me to make her feel welcome.
Next is basketball. They use the two ends of the court, one using the real basketball hoop, one with a large garbage can they have hauled out for a basket for those who can’t put enough acceleration on the ball to get it up to ten feet. Richard called me over.
Hey, can you help Shomara? How? Put her in my other chair. Look at her. She is fully functional, but that chair is killing her. She can’t get the right motion or momentum behind her shots. Just be careful. I think her legs have screws in them, so try not to move them very much.
He was right. As we moved her to the other chair, she held on to her legs and grimaced fiercely. But he was also right: the sports chair suddenly opened up a whole new world of possibilities for her. She tried it out slowly, but it was obvious she was going to improve quickly. Her shot suddenly reached the hoop. She went after loose balls with the others, throwing the blanket off her legs and forgetting about her handicap for one moment. It happened so fast, you could say it looked like a miracle. Maybe it was. And as she became more aggressive and enjoyed herself more, she became social and started making friends.
That day a group of about 30 Americans arrived. Actually, Adalid, Israel and myself went to the airport in Mexico City for them. My buddy Casey was also arriving that day to come hang out for a week, so it worked out just fine. Casey was arriving a little earlier, so we got there plenty early. As it worked out, six or seven Americans from the group arrived on the same plane as Casey, so we got their luggage and stacked it in the Suburban. There was a bus to take the people, but because the group was bringing a stack of wheelchairs along with their bags, we brought the big rig to hold the baggage. For an hour between groups, we broke out the wheelchairs and had wheelchair races around the airport. There were the predictable moments when someone fell and people everywhere scrambled to help us up. When we got up on our own strength people laughed or looked amazed or got angry. It was fun anyway.
We got back, took Adalid home, the group finding their rooms and beds at the hacienda, and Casey and I staked out a vacant room. We went and hung out in the kitchen with the girls, if nothing else to get a free meal. They make a lot of great meals there, but the orange chicken they make is the best. Some spaghetti Mexican style, bread, and orange chicken and we were set for the night.
The next day we got up and started with a little devotional. I was told that a group of students from Guadalajara was coming that day and would lead devotions the rest of the days. I was told good things about them, but hadn’t met any of them. We read a few passages from the Bible, welcomed the American group, got to know each other a little bit, and off to breakfast.
Stretching, and it was back to the court to play soccer. Soccer in wheelchairs is probably more akin to rugby or ultimate frisbee than soccer, but it is fun anyway. The people who could maneuver were the defense and forwards, or both. The ones who had a harder time but still wanted to participate were made the goalies, the goals being two chairs set up maybe four or five feet away from each other. The teams were set (Casey and I were given chairs and allowed to play), and the ball dropped. A standard kickball ball, you got two pushes in your chair and then had to pass it or shoot, either way a difficult task with the amount of people on the court at once. Strategy developed. Screens came into play. People knocked each other over and mercilessly attempted to continue play while Americans ran on the court to help whoever had been tossed out of their chair, making sure they were ok. It got cruel, but everyone was laughing. There were no mean spirits, except that Kike was intent on beating me. He refused to believe I could beat him at his game, as he called it. As a student of “sport”, I like thinking up strategies, plays, seeing how people play and finding their weak spots. How to pass behind your back and behind the wheelchair, instead of reaching for a loose ball moving your chair over it so the other person can’t reach it, trying to spin around oncoming screens, “out of the box” type of things. So even though my wheelchair experience was slim, I scored the last, winning goal off a rebound I saw coming, faking out the keeper. To Kike’s chagrin. But to everyone else laughing.
I don’t know why but at that moment I thought about the idea of having wheelchairs in grade school physical education. Why couldn’t a school department buy like thirty decent chairs and like maybe each week one school has them. The P.E. classes would have wheelchair races and play basketball and stuff like that. Or maybe a different class gets them each day, and they have to use them all day long. Or something like that. It seems like it would make a huge difference in the way people treat handicapped people.
Casey and I went and hung out the rest of the day, while the campers went to do “manualidades” as they called them, which were mostly arts and crafts projects. The Guadalajara group had arrived, I had been told, and were in charge of that. “Too many cooks in the kitchen” I thought, with a tinge of jealousy. Casey and I got out of there, if nothing else to avoid what would be maybe 35 campers and 40 people helping them out.
I had a friend who once worked at a wheelchair camp. They called it “handicamp.” Doesn’t that seem a little, maybe, non PC? I don’t know.
We got back for dinner, which was as good as the night before’s dinner. We helped in the kitchen washing dishes and helping to get ready for the next day’s breakfast. It was fun to hang out with the girls. All my girls, plus Judith and Rosalba, were there working. We finished up and headed out to where the three groups (campers, Americans, Guadalajarans) there were having a bonfire, singing songs and giggling. It was situated down in a little pit that had three big steps going down towards the center. Most of the wheelchair people had been loaded down to the grass below the stairs, closest to the fire. Everyone else was on the stairs. Most people had jackets on as it was a little cool, being March still. There we met the Guadalajara group which consisted of two Japanese, one boy one girl, one Korean guy, two fairly white Mexican boys, and three pretty girls. I was told the Korean is authentic Mexican, born of Koreans who came to Mexico. A Japanese girl, Hazuki, had been in Guadalajara since she was nine or ten years old. Three years later she would be Mrs. Richard St. Denis, and I would go stay at their house for a week. The two other boys were brothers, maybe 17 and 19 years old. Hector was the oldest, and was the one who explained most of this to me. I didn’t know if we had anything in common at first, but he had this great laugh and used it a lot, making you feel really funny. He would, one year later, hang around a week more after camp ended, rooming with Kike and I. He would stay because he liked and then dated one of the Las Rosas girls, Chelo (Consuelo) which would end a month later and make my life much more complicated as the “common friend.” The other Japanese kid, maybe my age, was Yoshi. He spoke little English and little Spanish, but was quite amusing and not shy at all. He was tall and lanky but besides that he was, let’s say, quite the stereotype. We sat down with Hector, sang some songs, listened to some songs in Mazahua sung by a couple campers, and broke out the marshmallows.
In the next hour I would have two flaming marshmallows shoved in my face by the kitchen girls, along with Hector and Casey and two Americans Paul and Andrew. We would get our revenge in the same way, but more in their hair. Buckets of water came out, people were screaming and running and falling over laughing. There were a lot of expressions of disbelief that anyone would shove a flaming marshmallow in the face of anyone else, three people were burned, but I guess it all ended ok. It was a little chaotic, but one of those moments I just have think about and it makes me laugh out loud.
I have maybe six or seven moments like this. Where I just have to think about it and it makes me laugh out loud or smile and lean my head back in wonderment. But it seems like these moments are hardest to explain, because no one will laugh out loud with you because they weren’t there to see it. One of those stories you tell laughing the whole time but feel stupid by the time it ends because the other person is just staring at you.
For the following day was planned a water park adventure. I had no idea of what to expect except that it was called Tepetongo, everyone and their mother was going, and they were bringing a huge fat lunch for all. It couldn’t go wrong. The group, which had about 60 people going in all, had rented two buses. For once there were other large males there, so I hardly had to do any of the grunt work. I mostly just translated for the bus drivers to the people throwing the wheelchairs under the bus and vice versa, to make it the most organized we could. We had to lift the wheelchair bound people up into the bus, which was out in front of the hacienda, and then store their chairs under the bus. The only person I got on was Leti, who was the first one ready. Being light, I just lifted her up and muscled my way up the steps, setting her down in a seat about half way back. As I turned to step out the door, my knee hit some knob at the front. I got off to see extra strength Paul in front of me with Mario hanging onto his back like a baby monkey on a mama. I laughed and he stepped up into the bus. The buses were parked on the lower part of the road in front of the hacienda, almost down to the gate in front of the church. As I jump out, I hear a muffled sound come from inside, and turn to see the bus start to roll down the hill. I jump and yell to the two drivers, and I run towards the door, not sure at all what I am going to do, but hit the brake is probably the correct action. I am sprinting forward and the bus driver shoves me to the side, jumps on, and pulls, later to my embarrassment, that same knob that I had hit on my way out. Ahh, the air brake. I see. Paul got down off the bus trembling.
“Dude, I thought that was it.” He’s laughing. I can hear Leti inside giggling like a crazywoman.
When we got to the water park, as the American group set down all their rules of what you could and couldn’t do and where you could and couldn’t go. People yelling at other people and everyone trying to be in charge. Casey and I got yelled at a couple times for “wandering off from the American group” to talk to Juan Pablo who I had not seen in a while. As if I wanted to be a part of their group. I almost missed the headcount (oh dear), and certainly there would have been tragic, or at least life threatening, consequences. I entered with my cynicism turned on full, expecting it to completely ruin my day.
When we finally got everyone counted up and actually got inside the gates, I searched out the chill people of the American group, hung with Kike and some of his friends who are also in wheelchairs, and looked around for what the park had to offer. Little Yoshi tagged along too (Norberto’s son).
The three of us, Casey, Yoshi and I, got our trunks on and went to see what there was. We first encountered a cement spiral staircase that lead up to two rides where, ones where you sit in an inner tube and go down. One looked pretty harmless: an open-air white tube that twists and turns its way down. The other was similar style, except solid black so you couldn’t see, and consisted of some harsher twists.
Now this is when I have to make a tough decision. I am, personally, in no way a shirt off kind of guy. Not even a tank top kind of guy. Not a “wear your shirt when you swim” kind of guy, but not a “let your torso dry before you put your shirt on” kind. But this is Mexico, and there are both guys in Speedos and guys in cut off jeans and shirts in the water; both ends of the spectrum. I don’t want to get burned, but I don’t want to look stupid in front of all the chicas.
It is a certain type of guy, that I am not, that can pull off the “bare chest all the time” play. And I mean the “no shirt walking around the mall” type. He needs to be decently tall, medium to fairly muscular build, and not too fat nor too skinny. He needs decent pecs and a moderately low waist, little or no chest hair and flat or broad shoulders. And plenty of self confidence. He needs to have had at least a good count of girls tell him he has a nice body. He lifts weights regularly, both in the “heavy/free weights room” but also the aerobics room where all the girls are. Being good at some sport also helps, as it gives you a regular excuse to go shirtless. It seems that being a jackass helps, or maybe it’s just a byproduct of some, but it is not necessary. Self confidence does not always take the jerk route; there are plenty of nice, shirtless guys. If you’re a shirts off guy, you commonly hang your shirt or towel out of the side of your pants, or over your shoulder.
My first girlfriend, a long time ago, wanted me to be this guy. We would talk about shaving my chest hair, or wearing different clothes. We would hang out with her shirtless friends, a year older than I, out on the lake. She was a two-piece bathing suit girl, and needed a shirtless guy. They had boats, barbeques, hot tubs, trampolines, girls in bikinis, attractive mothers, and Ford Explorers.
A step down from these men are what may appear to be level oners playing basketball shirtless. But there is a definite level down. This guy is a little too tall, short, skinny, fat, a little too much or too dark of body hair, acne, or simply for some reason lacks the self confidence that level 1 shirtless guys have. Or maybe he is just more cold blooded. He goes shirtless for pick-up basketball, beach volleyball, or anytime it is a nice day and he can see the water. Or if he is in charge of the barbeque. He usually has a girlfriend who gives them a little extra push of confidence. She strokes his chest in public and usually helps him groom himself. This can also be a guy who is much too large, but has a lot of self confidence, like a defensive lineman or a competition weight lifter.
The third and fourth levels are a far cry from one and two, and themselves similar to each other. The third is the guy who is too small, too big, too fat, but most commonly too skinny to allow him to be level two. Shirt off at the beach is acceptable, because everyone is and who cares. Shirt off at pick-up basketball is also acceptable, but he tries to get on, and is secretly happy if he makes the “shirts” team. Comments are usually made when the shirt comes off. Ribs can be seen clearly. Or a jiggling stomach. But you are in control of your shame.
This is similar to level four, but level four has, well, you get the idea.
Here is me: too much chest hair, extending to my shoulders and a little on my back. Too skinny, too tall, and legs to long. I am not proud of my body, but not ashamed either. If Adalid were here, shirt off, no questions asked. Normally I suck it up and get a little pink, but today I opt for the shirt on. I figure, who do I care about impressing, and why do I want to get sunburned? I am only joking anyway, and we are like at 10000 feet or something where the sun is going to kill me.
We climb up to the top of the tube slides. Yoshi and I start with the gentler looking one and Casey takes the blackness. We reach the bottom without incident, but Casey took a little while longer. He flew out laughing, but kind of a nervous laughter. “That was absolutely terrifying” he said. “You go down, you can’t see a thing, and you totally expect to just drill a kid. It was awful. I’m never doing it again.” We climb up again, and I take the Black Hole of Premature Death down and realize just how correct Casey is. And how old I’m getting. It’s difficult to explain the fear, but it was like it was a little too unknown. You hit these violent turns you can’t see coming and get your back totally whipped around. I am taller, and it feels like some turns are going to snap my body in half. Your arms rub against the non-wet part of the tube and burned. And you had this constant fear that maybe a little kid was somewhere in there and you were going to just drill him. Yoshi laughed at us, but we left that area anyway.
To the side of that ride was a pretty standard speed slide that starts at the top and dips down like 30 meters, with three or four bumps. You sit in a double tube with another person on a slide that ends in a straight stretch before the end which is about a one foot bump to hopefully stop whatever momentum you might carry upon reaching the end. We were skeptical of our ability to stop before the end, but ventured up to the top with our double tube anyway. Terror filled my heart as we slowly pushed our way off the edge and down the slope. All was calm until we reached the second to last bump, and the tube lifted completely off the slide, along with us, and luckily came down on the slide again. We hit the last bump and Casey put his feet down, pushing hard to make sure we didn’t reach the end (although he insists that we would have). Needless to say, that was enough of that ride, and we moved quickly on, lingering only to watch a moment if anyone else would reach the end of the ride.
The next deathtrap was called the “Velociraptor.” It was definitely the biggest, but nonetheless looked like it was engineered for small Mexicans and not two big Americans. It was another double tube ride, that wrapped around a few twists, which fed to a straight drop that threw you down and then up a 30 foot wall that tried to hold you in, and then back down, over a small hill and into the waiting pool. We walked up the endless stairs, and after a short wait nervously put our tube down and again gently pushed off as slowly as possible. We took the turns ok and suddenly launched down the steep decline. There was no water pool or anything to slow us down before we shot up the wall that we prayed would keep us. My stomach fell into my lap as Casey’s feet reached the top of the wall and I closed my eyes. We slowed just enough to cheat death yet again, and plummeted back down. We come down the hill backwards and over a small hill, one that sufficiently had slowed down the small Mexican children before us, did nothing to affect us and we careened over it into the waiting pool where we drilled the lady who was taking the tubes from riders, along with another bystander. Everyone, including us, was cracking up as we stood up out of the water. Casey said he was tired of testing the reaper, so we went and had lunch. Most people were smiling and I could hear them talking about us. And Casey’s not even that big.
After the fat lunch, prepared by the kitchen girls, that consisted of beef slabs, sausage, grilled onions, some great avocado salsa, and orange soda, we had some requests by my friends who wanted to go on the Velociraptor. So we carried them up and went down with them. I carried Kike, Felipe carried Richard, and Casey carried three tubes. It wasn’t nearly as scary going down with Kike, as he was fairly smaller than Casey. We urged some of the bigger Americans to go down together, but they said they saw when we had gone and didn’t trust it. Good call.
The other rides left, besides two wave pools, were the standard Death Drop and Speed Slide slides, but both non-innertube. The only catch was that they were completely unsupervised, and that instead of the slide coming to an end, they simply dropped you into a pool. That meant that when you went down, you hit the bottom like a stone being skipped. People would hit the bottom and come to violent halts, flipping and somersaulting and whatnot. It was hysterical to watch. Kids would dive headfirst, go upside-down on their back, on their knees, jump at the end, and other amazingly dangerous moves. Women with two piece swimsuits didn’t dare to go down. Probably a good idea.
We watched that for a while, hung out in the wave pools and chatted with anyone we ran into. It was all in all a good crazy time, but Casey and I had to get to Mexico City that night to meet our friends Collin and Bernice, so we went looking for Felipe to tell him we were leaving. We found him near the second slide that we went down, the one with the bumps and the double tube. We meandered on up and were about to tell him, when he pointed to the top of the ride. We looked up to see two fairly heavy Mexican guys on the tube about to go down. They pushed off strong and absolutely flew down the slide. They got down the bumps alive, hit the bottom, where the water did nothing to stop them at all. They skimmed over the water and, with eyes like plates, drilled the hump at the end of the ride, flew off the end of the slide, over the set of stairs that followed, and landed on the cement landing below, hitting into an ice cream cart. At that point I was on the ground, unable to breathe from laughing so hard. They both raised their arms in victory and climbed out alive. As I said earlier about the carnival in San Felipe, usually the thrill of an amusement park is that you feel like there is a chance of dying. But here, the thrill is you actually might.
We made it back from the airport that night fine with Collin and Bernice in tow. We crashed in the same room we picked out, stealing a couple mattresses and dragging them in.
The next two days were part fun and part annoying. The four of us would head out to see this or that, while the Americans worked. It created this kind of tension, like they thought we should be doing something too. We were too many to join in the wheelchair games, although we did watch quite a few. But there were already plenty of people to help out. We weren’t about to help them pour cement or paint old abandoned storerooms; my friends were on vacation. So I kind of bounced around between my friends, the kitchen, the campers and their games with the Guadalajara group, and the Americans. One thing that helped out a lot was that the Final Four was going on. Since in the Hac there is no communication with the outside world, I would run into town, print out the updated bracket, and have it back for the group of guys to see. There were about eight or nine guys who were interested, and it helped me make quick friends. My Zags lost in the second round to Arizona, which was generally considered the best game of that tournament. Actually, my dad taped the game for me like I asked, but the tape ended with 40 seconds to go in overtime. How brutal is that. Even though I knew the ending, and I finally watched it like 4 months after it happened, it still wasn’t believable how great that game was. Even if I didn’t see the final buzzer.
But the last night I stayed with the campers. They kicked everyone out of the chapel except for those who participated in the camp. It was mostly the wheelchair people, Hector, his mom, Richard, a couple kitchen girls, and me. Everyone looked kind of anxious, like there was something I didn’t know. Richard started by thanking everyone who had come, encouraging them to help others, and continue learning, and playing. He said he wanted to hear everyone’s reaction from the week and how it affected their lives. We went around the circle and each one got their five minutes or so. By the third person we were all crying. Most people had been given new wheelchairs and were thankful for that. Most gave thanks to each other for being welcoming and open to becoming friends. Many gave thanks to God, their family for having arranged things for them to be able to come. A few mentioned the strength they get from the camp every year, and how special it is for them. Mario gave thanks to his family who he loves and cares for and they work hard and help him out a lot. Shomara gave thanks to each person individually, thanking especially a couple kids who can hardly move for the inspiration that they gave her, the happiness she gets from seeing them smile. She was depressed coming to the camp but didn’t know how much it would change her life. I sat next to Kike which was a bad call because he told the story about how I have helped him so much in the last few months, and what our friendship means to him. I was next, but with so many tears of joy that I could hardly speak. I finally didn’t get anything out, and just listened their thankfulness.
After about three hours everyone had finished saying what they had to say, we had sung a couple songs in candlelight, prayed with each other, and given each other all hugs. It was a great moment. Maybe one of the best ever.
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