Lunch with Bob

Today I had lunch with Bob, an octogenarian who is driving from here in Wisconsin where we are both part of the annual Friends (Quakers) General Conference down to Sonora, Mexico to visit old friends. He and his wife will be driving and camping along the way because the car rental is using up their entire budget. So they have the van outfitted with a mattress and will be stopping at campgrounds along the way.

Bob has stayed in touch with friends in Mexico ever since he went to a Quaker workcamp in Tlaxcala in 1951. He spent a few years working in different villages and periodically returned to Mexico over his many years to work on service projects or participate in human rights delegations.

Bob told me the story of accompanying the Guatemalan refugees who had fled to southern Mexico during the war and were finally able to return to their country in the early 90s. Bob went down as part of a delegation of international observers to travel with them on the journey to help ensure they were not harrassed and to draw international attention to their experience. A hundred buses and vehicles full of Guatemalans, mostly indigenous people, passed along the roads from southern Mexico across the border and back to Guatemala City. As Bob described his experience to me his voice became tight and his eyes welled up.

"All along the way," he said, "on nearly every road, people came out and stood along the side of the road, with candles."

He described a church in Guatemala City that welcomed the returnees with barrels of coffee and blankets and clothes laid out neatly in the chapel, filling the floor and the halls with simple hospitality for the weary travellers. "I saw it and thought, this is what a church is suppose to look like."

As Bob told me his story I noticed his wrinkled eyes, his hearing aid, his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and fly fishing hat. If you met him on the street, you would have no idea the remarkable spirit and life that lay within this man. But then perhaps that is the case with all of us.

Anyway, thanks, Bob. That was the best lunchtime discussion I've had in a long time.