Day 5: Maquiladora, Gloria, homestays

Chamberlain Factory and Gloria, by Sarah Schreiber

On 5th day we all went to the Chamberlain maquiladora. This maquiladora is one of the nicest in Mexico. We were greeted at the lobby of the building and were given safety glasses and ear protection right away. Soon enough we were on our tour of the huge Chamberlain building, walking past hundreds of busy workers doing repetitive jobs to assemble garage door openers. Above our heads looked something like a small roller-coaster that traveled throughout the building delivering parts to different places. Most of us have never seen anything like this before and it was amazing to hear that these hard working people barely even make $10 a day.
After we were done with our tour of the Chamberlain building we were off to Gloria’s house in Nogales. We pulled up to the side of her house in our vans and everyone got out with a groan from being cramped in the van. We walked into her small and simple home and sat down whereever we could find a place. Some were still standing but Gloria and her husband insisted on having a chair for everyone before she started talking. Once we were all seated she began to talk and welcome us to her home and presented us with a feast for lunch which she woke up at 5 in the morning to make. Everyone ate as much as they could and even then there was still food left over. Once everyone was done eating she proceeded to tell us about her life, religious beliefs and life stories that made some people want to cry and broke out into powerful songs once or twice. She also showed us her trinkets that she has spread around the house that people have given her throughout the years of her life and told us the stories behind them. Eventually she taught us all how to make paper flowers. Some succeeded and made beautiful flowers, and some, maybe not so much, but everyone still had so much fun regardless. She was truly a beautiful persona and everyone enjoyed being with her that day.

Flower making, by Zoe Reichsman

Wyatt and I teamed up to make our paper flower. We both apparently have coordination problems or we just don’t know what flowers normally look like, because ours turned out not exactly looking like a flower at all. Paper kept falling out of our flower from various places. We convinced Emmy that ours was a “cool flower” because it was so unique.

As soon as Gloria saw the cool flower she shook her head and someone translated, “she doesn’t like it.” Gloria proceeded to delicately tear our flower apart before me and Wyatt’s eyes. Horrified, we exchanged glances and laughed. She ended up doing an entire (extremely beautiful and perfect) flower for us, which was exceedingly nice of her since we would probably be embarrassed to walk around with our ugly one.