Week 3 (Rachel)

Mexico seems like a lifetime ago. I have forgotten what it feels like to walk around the dusty colonia at night, the town alive with energy and music until the wee hours of the morning. I have forgotten that pulse that runs through the city, breathing vivacity into every corner of the sun scorched desert. I don’t hear that same rhythm now that I am back in Tucson. Just an hour away, it is troubling how these two places differ. It is troubling how much I have already forgotten. But I will never forget their faces.

We have been back in Tucson for a week now, our days filled with walks to the local coffee shop, working daily at our internships, grocery store runs and some therapeutic time with our missed laptops. Once back in the sanitized dormitory, there is little here to remind us of the place from which we have just returned.

Miguel and Alberto were such bright lights in the darkness that is Nogales. Such a violent city. Such precious children. Though their laughter is falling further into the recesses of my memory, growing fainter by the day, those niños still weigh heavily on my mind. They push me to continue on the tough days, the days when it seems as though nothing will ever change, the days when truly nothing seems to be on the horizon. I feel as though they will never leave me.

*Picture from José Castillo