Iztaccihuatal: On the Way

         

          The next day we drove to the city of Toluca which was so covered in security it seemed like a Policía Federal ice cream social. This was due to the Bicentennial Birthday of México and the 100^th Anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. There were a number of upcoming events in the city which required heavy security. We spent that night in Toluca and the next day headed to Iztaccihuatal. We spent the night at the Alsamony Hut at the base of Izta. After the clients ate dinner and headed to bed we sat around swapping stories and jokes. One of my favorite stories came from BW who worked at a youth camp in Southern México during the summer. There were a number of problems with the general layout of the camp including the fact that the bathrooms were about 15 minutes walking from the dining hall and were located right next to a major road. One night the cooks made a meaty chili from some apparently questionable ingredients. Less than twenty minutes after eating the chili the children were running from the dining hall desperately trying to make it to the toilets which couldn’t handle the numbers or the quantity and quickly began to overflow. The campers began stopping en route to the toilets and dropping their pants wherever they could. The effect of this was that other campers began vomiting as well. Like a scene from a movie there they were, 65 young campers with explosive diarrhea and uncontrollable vomiting spells sprinting to the port-a-potties which were already overflowing. The camp counselors and directors had a meeting after that about what went wrong which included five “porques” or “whys” for the camper’s unfortunate night. If only I had known that my next trip would end with me thinking of my own “porques.”