A girl named Lety

Friday, March 19th, 2010

About six years ago the Quest group met with a young Mexican woman named Lety. She could not read, write or speak English but was still said to be wise beyond her years. One of the staff members at Loyalist College was taken away with this girl’s talent and potential and offered to sponsor her to go to school.

When Gary spoke to Lety about this opportunity and asked her, “Where do you want to go to school?” He thought she would have picked somewhere nearby, Cuernavaca, Mexico City, but no Lety replied, “I want to go to Loyalist College, I want to come to Canada!”

To Gary’s surprise he relayed the message to the sponsor and without hesitation she agreed and soon after Lety was on a plane to Canada. Today we met with Lety’s father, walking up and down the beaches hands filled with homemade basked and bags of material to make jewellery. We sat and spoke with him for a while.

Thinking of his daughter I can only imagine the shock of this young woman as she flew into Pierson Airport, took the 401 to Belleville and pulled into the driveway of the house she would call home for the next six months. For us Northerners coming to Mexico is a shock, seeing the conditions people live in and the way of life down here is eye opening. Not because we didn’t know it was happening but more because we’d never seen it with our own eyes. For Lety, this young Mexican woman who could not read, write or speak English, she was actually learning about things for the very first time and seeing them for herself; a washing machine, a dishwasher, a flushing toilet, running water, a shower, a bath, linens for your bed, water fountains at the school. It was all so unknown to her, so foreign.

Gary told us a story about Lety and how one day she was walking down the hall and saw a water fountain.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“That’s a water fountain,” Gary explained. “You turn this and water comes out for you to drink.”

“Who do I pay?” Lety asked.

“Nobody, it’s free,” Gary said.

“Your president must be very wealthy and very kind to let you have drinking water for free,” Lety said.

Another story was when Lety was going to take her first shower. She was shown how to turn it on and when she did she started screaming.

“All the water is going to go into your kitchen! It’s all going through that hole in the floor to the kitchen!”

Lety had never seen indoor plumbing, or plumbing and running water of any kind. She didn’t understand how one household could have their own well and how the water wasn’t going to end up on the floor in the room below. These were things Lety was shown and taught.

Goes to show you some of the things we take for granted.