Here is my second attempt at our personal essay. I'm hoping I did a better job of showing rather than telling, let me know what you think. You can find my outline and desired publication under the comments section.
"Please," she begged, "you need to start becoming motivated by something larger than yourself." It was not the first time my mother had given me this lecture, but that did not increase the attention I paid to her. This time it came as my family filed out of our lavished church, a towering building with an ornate green-tiled roof and gold trim that gleamed in the bright desert sun. I stood on the steps craning my gaze to investigate the cause of a billowing plume of smoke rising from amongst the dirt roads and tiny houses across the river.
Inside we had just heard about the newest opportunity to help our 'brothers and sisters' in need across the border. My mother gleamed with excitement as our pastor, father Rick, explained the details of a volunteer day at one of our local missions. I had blocked out as much as I could, pondering which video game I would vegetate in front of once back at home.
My hometown of El Paso, Texas is a city that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border and bottlenecks between the Franklin Mountains and the Juarez Mountains. This is a land marked by dichotomies. Throughout my teens the most stark of these dichotomies came in the fact that El Paso was one of the top five safest cities with a population over 500,000 in the country, while across the Rio Grande (which, that far south is so dry most of the year it's hardly accurate to call it Rio much less Grande) Juarez was frequently referred to as the most dangerous city in the world outside of war zones.
When the crime rate in Juarez first started creating national attention there were few signs that Juarez would soon be the most dangerous city in the world. My own family frequented Juarez to visit Gaby, my godmother, during her decadent ranch-parties. Gaby's parties brought together diverse groups of people but their demeanors remained calm and conversation seldom strayed from congenial topics.
Later, as I began to learn more and more about differences between populations in classes like Geography and World History and I was introduced to the concept of a third-world country, I was still no closer to understanding what about Juarez made it 'third-world' as opposed to the 'developed world' that lay a stone's-throw away in El Paso. The visits to Gaby continued and the signs remained hidden even though the crime-rate increased and Juarez came ever-closer to garnering its morbid record.
In 9th grade I ventured over the river without my family for the first time. On a scorching-hot day my friend Tomas and I scurried over the 'puente-libre' and where Santa Fe avenue met Juarez avenue we ducked into the dim-lit Kentucky Club. The cold air instantly refreshed us as we shuffled into a bright-red booth and surveyed the smoky, crowded room, mariachi music drifiting in from the kitchen.
I struck up conversation about the famous writers who had frequented this bar. Tomas wasn't much of a reader. Names like Kerouac or Hemingway didn't mean much to him. His order of business was getting drunk, so I obliged.
On the way home, as we passed the corner of Juarez and Santa Fe I ignored the small dirt roads of the colonias to my left. Walking back over the bridge my eyes drifted towards the north-east, to the sub-division where my parents now slept, settled in the foothills of the mountains a short two-miles away. My mind wandered to my parents. I was more focused on weather or not I would be grounded for missing curfew than reveling in my new-found independence.
During my Junior year of High School several student-groups at my small, catholic high school had fundraiser to allow for 25 students to participate in 'Casas por Cristo' - a non-profit organization based in Juarez that builds small, two-room homes for families in need living in the extreme poverty of the 'colonias' or small shanty towns that dot the outskirts of Juarez. My mother's demand that I start volunteering still fresh in my mind, I signed up reluctantly.
The next day, just over the bridge our van made a sharp turn at Juarez and Santa Fe and onto dirt roads that made our journey more like a ride on a bronco in the rodeo than a twelve-passenger van. Twenty minutes later we arrived at an empty lot in between two houses that seemed more like haphazard heaps of wood scraps, cardboard, and battered tarps than homes. Looking around I found myself lost despite the fact that our sub-division was still in clear view at the foothills of the Franklins to the north-east.
Throughout the week my classmates and I poured concrete, built a house-frame, installed electricity, put up dry-wall, insulated, and even had time to decorate the new home of the seven-person (and soon to be eight-person) Gonzalez family. Day by day a certain disdain grew inside me whenever I found my eyes drifting towards the shiny rooftops of the mansions which littered our sub-division.
Once the walls of the house were up I immediately became concerned. I continually tried imagining what seven bodies would look like crammed inside this tiny home, marching my friends in and out to have a firm example. Juan, our stock young guide, reassured me that this was far superior to what the Gonzalez family had now. I wasn't convinced but the house was almost done and would have to do.
Soon, I found myself not wanting to leave at the end of the day. As the sun began to dwindle over the dusty streets I was strangely drawn to the place that many were working so hard to leave or improve. We were beginning to make friends with the neighborhood boys and our ride home every night was a bitter reminder that they would soon be but distant memories.
Returning home at night, covered from head to toe in dirt, I was confronted with trivial issues. "Your getting the couch dirty, go take a shower, your filthy," my mother would exclaim, chasing me into the bathroom. Five minutes later a banging would come at the door as my sister would whine, "Patrick, you've been in there forever. I have an important date. Patrick!" Her booming shouts were hopeless, my mind was fixed back at the Gonzalez'.
At the end of the week I watched in amazement as a young couple raising three children, a nephew, and a younger sister arrived on a foggy April morning, tears streaming down their faces, to see their new home. My fears that what we had built would certainly be inadequate for such a big family were washed away as I received heart-felt hugs accompanied by sobs of gratitude from each and every member of the family.
After unveiling the house we gathered down the street to pray in front of the neighborhood's modest adobe-roof home. We prayed for an end to poverty and to the violence that ravaged Juarez. I would no longer ignore the opportunities father Rick presented in mass, I resolved.
On the ride home it wasn't the thought of my mother's looming punishment for not cleaning my room that filled my mind, it was the image of the crying Gonzalez family.
As we crested the apex of the bridge I had crossed so many times before, my eyes were no longer focused on the mansions that surrounded my own home. Rather, my eyes were pressed up against the window, my gaze focused on the dirt roads to the south-west.
