Profiling Tepehua – June 2020

Profiling Tepehua

By Moonyeen King
President of the Board for Tepehua
moonie1935@yahoo.com

tepehua june2020

From Lake Side to the Barrios there have been ‘ordinary people doing extraordinary things’!

This author is carrying a few years, and through that time has been through two wars, and one Martial Law uprising…and a few pandemics in-between.  Every time, ordinary people rose to the occasion with extraordinary courage and compassion. And so it is here.  From the front-line care givers, to those spurred into action to feed the hungry and get potable water to the poor.

The women of Tepehua have been no less extraordinary.  Women who face poverty every day now face a different beast – they face hunger. But with determination, they feed and protect their families and those around them.

Large food companies in Guadalajara donated a food warehouse of beans, rice, sugar, salt, lentils and other miscellaneous foods to the Tepehua Center, and others at Lake Side have set up food banks and obtained private donations of food and money to feed the hungry, the drive was on.

The women of Tepehua spent 6 hour shifts every day packing up dispensers, giving out the dispensers every week armed with masks and gloves…and people kept coming out looking for help.  All pandemics create other problems just as difficult as the disease itself, like malnutrition which causes weak immune systems making people vulnerable to disease. A nasty cycle of events.  Especially at risk are those in their pregnancy or who have just had an infant. Most at risk are the teenagers whose young bodies aren’t ready for a baby and the many premature infants born with no incubators. Or the old and shut-ins who have no idea where to turn for help. Monies donated are their life line, supplying basics and nutritional foods, supplying the special needs of the mother and infant. All people are vulnerable in poverty.

The Tepehua Free Medical Clinic has stayed open, and we are pleased to report no more patients than usual and certainly no victims to the pandemic.

By the time this goes to print the Lake Side area will be opening up, children going back to school in the last semester of the year, Village bells and fireworks have begun to wake up the village again around seven a.m., and it is as tho’ the world is waking up from a sleep.  This author urges you to maintain vigilance and keep to distancing as much as possible, avoid crowds and wear masks, this pandemic is not over…it will have to wear itself out. 

The Tepehua Team thanks all those extraordinary people for the chance they took to ease the burden of others.  Thank you all for the donations, and to those who donated monies to keep the little Tepehua Treasures nickle and dime store from going belly up by paying three months rent for them.

Extraordinary times. Extraordinary people.

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