Today is a day to try to relax; the only thing we had to do today was pick up my medical exams from yesterday. Another opportunity to stand in more lines and … wait, medical exams and x-rays in hand and we’re off to the super market to try to buy some food and again try to enjoy what is otherwise a horrible trip. There is absolutely nothing to see or do in Juarez but there are great super markets with delicious and amazing food all at super low prices. Dad and I bough a shrimp cocktail that at home (in the US) would normally run us about $12, in Juarez it was twice as big and 32 pesos or about $3 US dollars. We ate like kings in what otherwise is a very subservient situation. We drive back to the hotel and as we stop at a red light a man offers to sell us today’s news paper. The headline reads “12 dead Tuesday and counting”. It was the total from yesterday’s killings, while I was being poked, prodded and finger printed 12 people where dying right down the street and the article was clear to mention that those were only the bodies they found, leaving to imagine that there could be others who they just hadn’t found yet. Four of the deaths were to young people under 20 who were playing soccer when a gun man came up to one of the young men and shot him in the face, witnesses say the man looked at the boy and said he had shot the wrong guy. Rather than fleeing he began to shoot witnesses. The news paper is a reminder of what everyone already knows…NO ONE should have to live like this. They say Mexico is not a war zone, so why does it feel like it? We’re back to the hotel in no time, Juarez is a booming city between 8 am and 5 pm but after that nothing good happens and otherwise packed supermarkets are left empty. Back at the hotel room, sun still shining and barbed wire beaming we watch as the rain begins to fall. Rain, is supposed to wash all the ugly away but in Juarez it only makes things worst. No rest for us tonight, who can sleep knowing that tomorrow, is dooms day.
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