Ensenada
The transpeninsular Highway takes us right into the heart of downtown Ensenada. We arrive at lunchtime and everyone is hungry and needs to stretch. Near the traffic circle at the monument to Benito Juárez is a McDonalds. It is on our side of the road, and there is an easy-entry parking lot. More culture shock for the Higueras. They don't know what a McDonalds is, nor do they have a concept of "fast food." Again I ask myself, are we doing more harm than good? Ronald McDonald sits outside, sculpted of hard plastic, and the family wants to know why he is there. What is he for? How does one explain Ronald McDonald? Inside, the menu-pictures are self-evident. Burgers and fries and cokes of varying sizes. Everyone points to a picture and Kirk orders. Marisol has discovered the play room, full to the ceiling with its multi-colored jungle-jim of plastic crawl-thru tubes, swings, nets and slides, and she is in heaven. It is hard to get her to come and eat. There are Nintendo games and kids everywhere, laughing. The noise is almost unbearable and I wonder if Marisol can feel the vibrations from it. In the bathroom she recognizes the hand-drier and uses it. Nabor has bought her a soft swirled vanilla ice cream in a cone which she eats first. Then to the hamburger and French fries. She doesn't want to leave, but we motion we must check into a place to sleep, and we promise to come back.

With Kirk's FM3 visa, La Pinta hotel chain is very reasonable at $45/room a night, so we search for La Pinta Ensenada and come upon it by accident almost immediately, just one long block up from the malecón off Avenida López Mateos. I guess I should have expected that no one would be tired, except us of course. The family is excited and doesn't want to waste time in a room when they can be out seeing sights. While we set our luggage in our adjacent rooms, Marisol runs up and down the hotel stairs to the second and third floors. Of course! Stairs are new to her, and again it is I who is learning.

We walk with the dogs down to the malecón and along the harbor for a mile, stopping to watch a crane dredge the river-mouth. Luis is fascinated with the equipment. Further up as we walk north along the breakwater, docks line the harbor full of boats the likes of which Luis and Nabor have never seen: seiners and tour boats, large military ships and long-range fishing vessels. Kirk and I are in tennis shoes, but Marisol wears her pink plastic thongs. At the far end of the malecón, a hand-full of enormous California sea lions bark for food from the tourists, and men bark the prices of fish to feed them. Aggressive pelicans rob fish from the sea lions' mouths with moderate success. Kirk, Nabor and Luis duck into a closing fish market behind us, and Nabor return with the news for Delia that yellowtail sells for 25 pesos a kilo. Nabor's patrón pays him 3! Luis realizes that somewhere along the line there is more than an eight-fold mark-up on the price of fish.

The sky turns red and the sun sets while we are enjoying the malecón. Again Marisol doesn't want to leave, but it has gotten dark, and it is time to walk back to La Pinta. Crossing the exceptionally wide Boulevard Costero, we get only to the median before the pedestrian light changes and we are forced to stay sandwiched between speeding cars in either direction, some with lights on, others not. I am uncomfortable and silently hope that no one passing is a drunk driver. At the hotel, we rest for about a half an hour before venturing out to dinner. Delia quietly says she and Marisol are not coming, they are not hungry. When I press her, it is because she doesn't want to walk in traffic again with Marisol. She is afraid. We all get in the car, leaving the dogs to guard our room, and drive to a Domino's Pizza nearby. Once again, the Higueras are introduced to new food. I laugh as Kirk tells them a pizza is like a large round tortilla made of thin bread, covered with tomato sauce and anything on top they want. Meat, all meat is their choice. Kirk and I split a vegetarian pizza and occurs to me that this is probably the first day of Marisol's life she hasn't eaten a tortilla: French toast at breakfast, McDonalds for lunch, and now pizza! Back at the hotel, Marisol slips into our room, turns on the television, and climbs into bed with Loreto. But tonight she falls asleep before we do, and Kirk slips over and turns off the television.

Friday, January 4, 2002 Today is our appointment at Rancho Sordo Mudo and the family is visibly apprehensive. At breakfast in La Pinta restaurant, Marisol is keyed-up and doesn't want to eat. She wants another ice cream cone from McDonalds. Nabor hands her their room key and signs she can go back and watch television while we eat. I get an order of French Toast to go for her later in the car. The laugh is on us, for when we return to the rooms, of course Marisol cannot hear us knocking as she watches television in silence. The door is locked and she has the key inside. The hotel maintenance man comes to our rescue with a master key and lets us in.

The drive out of Ensenada on Highway 3 is surprisingly beautiful. The farther away we are from Ensenada, the cleaner the countryside. Soon we are passing vast wineries in familiar oak woodlands and I am reminded of the Santa Ynez Valley north of Santa Barbara. We are in the lovely Valle de Guadalupe, less than an hour's drive out of the city. To our right on a north-facing mountain slope we come to letters larger than Hollywood -DOMECQ. Along the base of the slope is a private pista or dirt airstrip. Pedro Domecq is a very popular brandy throughout Mexico. It is here on a loma on the edge of the pavement a sign announces Rancho Sordo Mudo to the left. We follow the sign's directions up an unassuming dirt lane towards a beautiful grove of ancient olive trees. A sign instructs us to HONK our arrival, and Kirk does so, but nothing happens and no one appears, so we pull ahead to a cluster of buildings and park. Office to the right. An attractive middle-aged American woman steps outside and introduces herself as Ruth, the school's administrative secretary. Ruth has worked at the school for three years and shares a modest office building with Lucas Everett, the school's pastor/director. She call's Lucas at his house to tell him we have arrived. Kenny, a portly thin-haired man in his forties, appears and offers to show us all around. He explains he is a volunteer at the school, and he likes to spend his spare time doing construction and odd jobs. His kind face and soft manner belie his apparent physical capabilities. As we walk through the school grounds on cement paths lined with hand-set stone walls, several boys silently stare at us from a building on the slope to our left. Kenny explains it is the boys' dormitory. We pass a young man he introduces as Omar. Omar, a Rancho Sordo Mudo graduate, is visiting for the day. He has been awarded a full four-year scholarship to a college in the United States. Kirk and I are very impressed. Kenny stops at the third building on our right which is a classroom, and when he opens the door with Marisol in tow, we all observe a small miracle unfold - Marisol, for the first time in her life, sees other deaf children. Not just one, but more than a dozen of them.

Boys and girls are sitting in a multi-colored classroom surrounded by posters of fruits and vegetables of food groups and parts of the human body, the types of visuals we all remember from our own childhood school days. It takes a minute for Marisol to register that no one can hear, and they are all just like she is! The teacher, Gabriela, signs us welcome and invites us in. Several of the children raise their hands to ask questions, and Marisol watches in fascination as arms and wrists and hands are manipulated back and forth in conversation. The students sign questions to Marisol, who may or may not be understanding any of what they are signing. She watches and smiles. And smiles even bigger. It is hard to leave the room to continue our tour.

The next building along the path is the girls' dormitory where we are introduced to Robin, a sandy-haired young gringa in her early thirties. She is one of the niñeras for the girls, and sleeps in the room with them. The room is equipped with eight sets of bunk beds, each mattress draped with a beautifully hand-stitched multi-colored quilt. Robin tells us it took a volunteer two years to make all of the quilts. The dorm sleeps fifteen students and one hearing adult niñera, hence the room is at capacity. Robin explains each girl has private closet space and a cabinet for personal items. We thank her for her time and continue along the path and down some cement stairs to a gymnasium, complete with basketball court. Inside, Marisol opens the closet doors and door to an adjacent room. She wants to see everything. Retracing our steps we pass the classroom and enter the comedor where all meals are served. It is immaculately clean and orderly, set up cafeteria-style. A comfortably furnished sala with over-stuffed chairs and sofas is adjacent, where no food is allowed. Outside we meet the school's director, Lucas Everett, who has walked down the hill from the house he shares with his deaf Mexican wife and two sons, one of whom is but a few months old. They met here at school he explains. Lucas is as tall as Kirk, handsome and thin with a large smile and firm handshake.

Lucas leads us into his office which is lined with book shelves and dozens of photos of students. I am surprised to see one shelf stacked with CDs. American-born Lucas wears hearing aids, signs fluently and speaks perfect Spanish. He explains his parents were introduced to the problems of the deaf when he lost 85% of his hearing from rheumatic fever at age five. As his parents interest grew they learned sign language and his mother became an interpreter and teacher. Thirty-five years ago during a trip to visit missionaries in Mexico they learned there was nothing being done to fill the needs of deaf children, and they were inspired. The Everetts sold their home and neon sign manufacturing business in North Carolina and soon developed Rancho Sordo Mudo on 500 acres of raw land they bought here the Valle de Guadalupe.
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