KENNEDY, Sask. – It’s not the beach that draws David and Heather Mc-Millan back to Mexico each year.
Neither is it the shopping, the weather or relaxation.
It’s the people and more specifically the girls and women who need their help.
“It’s one way we can ease the suffering in one corner of the world,” David said.
The McMillans have been going to Mexico since Heather first went 10 years ago to help build an orphanage and a school. David went the next year to build a shelter for abused women.
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Their stories can be heartbreaking, such as those about the five-year-old girl at risk from a predatory uncle or the wife being publicly beaten by her “owner.”
But they can also be uplifting: the couple who accepted Canadian money to learn how to intervene when a husband beats his wife or the sisters who built their own rug-making business.
The McMillans told their stories last month at the 98th annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Women’s Institute in Whitewood.
Initially, the couple worked with organizations in northern Mexico near the American border. Many Mexican families from the south are lured north by the promise of jobs, but David said there are no jobs to be had.
The resulting poverty causes family breakdown, abuse and prostitution.
“There is a sadness of the work all along the northern border,” he said.
“You’re just easing the suffering. You’re not changing anything.”
The desire to make changes led the McMillans to ask where they should direct their efforts.
The families told them to go south to Oaxaca, from where the northern migrants had come.
And that is where they learned how they could really help.
They said it’s best to ask the Mexicans what they want, rather than showing up and building a school or distributing food.
“In our experience, we’re a lot more useful to them if we ask them, ‘what is it you’re trying to do,’ ” said David.
Most of their work deals with girls who face dead-end futures.
Girls are lucky to finish elementary school, David said. Rather, their destiny is to make tortillas and raise children.
The McMillans try to change that by giving them skills. They offer English, sewing and computer classes and teach them how to cut hair.
They have distributed blankets to old, blind and abandoned women.
They no longer go with a formal organization, preferring to do what the locals ask them to do.
Theirs is a mission built on faith, but they agree that not everyone has the same calling.
“It’s not for everybody,” David said. “And if you can’t go there, I would like you to ease a little of the suffering here.”
David, a teacher, and Heather, a nurse, had done similar work in New Guinea and India but returned to Canada to raise their two children.
David is from Kennedy, Sask., and Heather from Moose Jaw, Sask., but they spent much of their life in Ontario and returned to Saskatchewan four years ago.
They intended to spend six months of each year in Mexico, but taking care of David’s aging parents has limited that to just a month in each of the last two years.
As well, they now have grandchildren with whom to spend time.
Their advice for anyone who wants to help in Mexico is to travel there and ask what they can do.
“Find somebody – spend a week with us,” David said.
Although they don’t fundraise or formally publicize what they do, the McMillans will take donations.
For example, they spent $380 for a young woman’s caesarian section and paid for school uniforms and supplies for two young girls.
They paid $1,000 to help educate the couple that wants to intervene in marital abuse cases and helped them establish the legal framework to set up a non-profit association and board of directors so they can’t be sued.
Seminars for abused women are attracting participants, even though many are threatened if they attend.
“Sometimes it makes me angry that it’s still there,” Heather said of physical abuse she has witnessed first hand.
“If we can help just one person …”
They know they can’t help every girl and woman, and they know some are facing situations that will turn out badly. But they try to put that in perspective.
“You’re not the saviour of the world or Mexico,” David said.
To contact the McMillans, e-mail them at mexicomc@yahoo.ca.
