How fishing brings two countries together

ENSENADA — A boy in a red sweatshirt greets the visitors shyly, then shows off, twirling a purple Hula-Hoop.

Other children steal peeks from inside the orphanage, an unpainted two-story building well beyond town, in a dusty hamlet called El Porvenir.

Then there is Mayra Lopez, 14, hunched in a green plastic chair, only mildly curious about the presence of so many strangers.

They mean well, sure, but to a child abandoned for 10 years, are their hugs and handshakes really worth all the excitement?

Apparently, it’s a matter of perspective.

The visitors drove from Ensenada as part of a Rotary Club program called Fish Across the Border, which distributes blankets and food baskets to outlying communities.

Bob Fletcher, a San Diego Rotarian who also presides over the Sportfishing Assn. of California (SAC), started the program 14 years ago to express appreciation to the Mexican people on behalf of the San Diego long-range fleet, which fishes off Baja California.

Clubs from as far north as Montebello and as far west as Avalon are also involved, with the Ensenada Rotarians serving as hosts.

Money is pooled to provide blankets, flour, cornmeal, cereal and other staples. Fletcher adds a SAC donation of canned tuna, caught by anglers aboard boats out of Fisherman’s Landing.

This, then, is no ordinary fishing story, but a tale of how, for one Saturday each January, that seemingly inconsequential amount of processed fish -- 10,000 cans this year -- unites people toward a common cause, helps provide relief for the needy and, for all involved, a gargantuan dose of perspective.

“If you’ve had a nice life and have a little time or a little money and you don’t do it, then you’re being selfish,” says Fletcher, who also sits on various fisheries committees in the United States. “You should contribute, and that’s why this has been such a rewarding trip for me, year after year.”

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On this bright and blustery morning, several caravans, their truck beds brimming with baskets, part ways and head for the hills.

Fletcher and his wife, Anne, Linda Blakley and Gayle Gould stop first at Albergue San Vicente, a halfway house run by Adelia Contini.

Clothing and other items are dropped off before Contini leads a tour, explaining that this downtown facility serves as a shelter mostly for migrant workers down on their luck.

Many are forging toward the U.S. Some are deportees, seeking local employment in farms or within the community.

There are 30 beds for men, 30 for the infirm, 12 rooms for women, a kitchen, pharmacy, doctor’s office and dental chair. Guests are selected by social workers and allowed only a three-day stay.

“They are here only to sleep and eat,” Contini says, explaining that from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. they must look for work. She then adds with a smile that many have found “good positions” and often return simply to say hello.

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El Porvenir, a tiny community near the town of Francisco Zarco on the highway connecting Ensenada to Tecate, is the site of the region’s newest orphanage.

El Faro II is a work in progress, in need of paint and with various projects -- water tanks, septic tanks, etc. -- planned or in progress, funded by church groups and Rotary clubs.

Also works in progress are the 28 girls and eight boys living here. Some were abused by their parents. Some were taken from drug-addict fathers or prostitute mothers.

One, a 16-year-old called Brenda, was abandoned as an infant. Remarkably, she cheerily goes about her chores.

Lopez, who was abandoned when she was 4, can manage only a faint smile.

The eighth-grader is mature beyond her years, though, and determined to gain her independence, saying, in perfect English, that she plans on becoming a beautician.

Guadalupe Cosio, the personable matron, calls the efforts of the Rotarians “a great blessing” made possible “by faith and the merit of God.”

To which Gould, who is not deeply religious, whispers to her friends, “There must be a God to have put someone like her on this earth.”

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Eight-hundred baskets and blankets. It is a minuscule drop in the vast ocean, considering the scope of poverty in these outlying areas.

“Could you live with an income of $15 a week? Or no income?” asks Carlos Perez Fierro, president of the Ensenada Rotary Club.

“Some of these people try to live like that.”

Many families share one tiny dwelling. Some have tin walls and dirt floors. Some borrow electricity from neighbors. Others go without power. Children are undernourished and family dogs are almost skin and bones.

So, for recipients, perhaps this is not so minuscule a drop, coming during a bone-chilling time of year when unemployment is at its peak.

The Rotarians have also built homes and schools and, as part of Fish Across the Border, this spring will treat poor children to a fishing trip on Ensenada Bay.

On this day, however, the only fishing is for willing takers far beyond El Porvenir, at the Kumiai reservation in San Jose de la Zorra.

The widely dispersed ranchland community seems eerily deserted and an hour passes before Chief Andres Vega is summoned to spread the word of visitors bearing gifts.

Dogs arrive and voraciously gobble biscuits tossed by the group. People materialize in the shadows of oak trees.

They don’t appear destitute and Vega explains that the tribe is subsidized for maintaining the washboard road bisecting the village, but adds that only 30 of 200 inhabitants have jobs off the reservation, and only two attend high school.

“All’s well that ends well,” Fletcher says after another hour passes, as the last of the goods are donated.

And it becomes clear immediately that this, too, is a matter of perspective.

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