POVERTY, GANGS AND CRIMES SURROUND KIDS IN BARRIO

We saw the environment change before our eyes as we rode across the U.S./Mexican border in the back of Mickey Chapman's beat-up pickup truck.

We were heading from Nogales, Ariz., to Nogales, Sonora, in Mexico.

The population difference was evident - the Arizona city has 25,000 residents; Mexico's Nogales has eight times as many people.

Nogales, Ariz., is filled with houses, strip malls, restaurants and paved roads. In other words, everything we were used to.

In Nogales, Sonora, kids were everywhere. Traffic lined the streets. Noise and activity increased. The houses and stores were smaller. Just about all the roads were dirt except for the main street with the activity limited there.

Mickey Chapman was driving us. She's co-director of Habitat for Humanities in Nogales, Sonora. Mickey was taking us across the Mexican border in her beat-up pickup truck.

Habitat's mission

In 1993, Chapman and her husband, Brian Courts, took over the Nogales office of Habitat for Humanity. Habitat builds houses for families living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods and has been in the area since 1990.

In Nogales, Sonora, we saw houses constructed from discarded materials, including the undersides of cars. Tires served as walls and steps. Plywood and cardboard also protected families from the elements.

For most of these families, yards, lawns and privacy don't exist. Instead, they share their lives with their neighbors. Driving up into the barrios (which is a district or suburb of the city) we could see washing machines, powered by a line strung to homes, through the openings in the structures.

Small houses sit on plots approximately 30 feet by 70 feet, and houses have only three to four rooms and house five to six people.

Habitat houses' walls are made entirely of concrete blocks, with drywalled ceilings and tin roofs.

Building a home with Habitat's help requires a piece of land and a commitment of 200 hours. Buying land is difficult, because in this barrio a single Mexican landowner dominates property ownership.

The day of our visit, we saw two men building a house. They've made a deal to work alternating Saturdays and Sundays, figuring that the first day of work they have more energy.

In exchange for materials, training and a durable structure, families pay Habitat an average of $23 a month for eight years. According to Chapman, workers in Nogales make $60 a week in U.S.-owned factories. Chapman noted that by comparison, Habitat rents a 12-by-12-foot space for about $100 a month.

Before we arrived at the barrios, Chapman sent out a message to all neighborhood kids who were interested in talking with us. We talked with eight kids, who either live in a Habitat house or in the neighborhood.

Despite our language difference, the kids were surprisingly friendly and willing to share their stories with the help of a translator. They gave us a tour of the neighborhood and pointed out several well-known sights - the houses of the gang leaders and drug lords.

Wearing mismatched clothes, slightly on the dirty side, their clothes either clung or hung, but were never the correct size.

It was hard to get one-on-one conversation with kids because of all the distractions. Dogs fought and licked the tape recorders, toddlers waddled around, kids jumped outside the windows and our interviewees had trouble focusing on us.

But when they did focus, here's what they had to say.

Kids in Nogales attend school regularly, and say gang violence is frequent. Gangs often fight, break windows and vandalize schools after hours.

Nogales needs more police protection and should put police in schools, kids say.

If they were in charge of police protection, they would catch all the criminals and get the gang members out of the neighborhoods.

These Mexican children believe police do what they can, but they can't do anything. And there's also corruption within the department. The gang members, while in custody, just pay officers to be freed.

Gangs often fight in the barrios, too. One gang fires from the top of the hill and the other from the bottom of the hill. The police come, take gang members away, but by the next day they return to their neighborhood.

For these kids, a perfect world would not include weapons, drugs, gangs or violence.

Death in the desert

For two of these boys, drug running killed their older brother. Last winter while smuggling drugs, he died from exposure. The lure of $800 convinced him to join his friends running the border, even though he was ill from hepatitis.

When he became too sick to continue, his "friends" left him in a deserted area. Snow forced him to move, so when his friends returned, they couldn't find him. His death, at 18, was devastating to his younger brothers, who viewed him as their role model.

If these neighborhood kids were running Nogales, they would build houses for citizens, install electricity, cable television and street lights, and catch gang members and drug addicts.

Because these kids have seen the U.S. side, they know of the contrast between the two Nogales - Arizona has little trash and not as much violence. There are more traffic lights and you don't need police directing traffic.

Although these kids are living in poor situations, they still have goals and expectations of themselves. One boy longs to be a football player, and two others want to be doctors.

EDITED BY: Erica Bellamy, 13.