In The Mexican Mountains — The North Star Project Reports, sponsored by The Middle Ground Journal. By Jennifer Battcher

In The Mexican Mountains — The North Star Project Reports, sponsored by The Middle Ground Journal. By Jennifer Battcher

I spent two weeks traveling in Mexico with a group on a service learning trip. One day, we visited a family of artisans in their home in the mountains. Their house was one room and the walls were made of branches. The floor was dirt. It was one in the afternoon and the family was just finishing their first and only meal of the day – tomatoes and lettuce. It was very important to them that they provided enough places to sit for all of their guests and, as I sat down on the bed in the corner, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if there were bugs in the mattress. The father of the family knelt on the dirt floor and wove palm branches as he spoke to us about…