Our Friend Kenia

In 2000, we wanted a new place to vacation during February break.  I was newly home from a year’s leave of absence that gave me the opportunity to travel for an entire school year.  We chose a package out of Montreal that brought us to the Pacific west coast of Mexico, to a place  neither of us had been to—Ixtapa,  We spent the first day in this rather artificial beach town then moved on the Ixtapa’s neighboring city—Zihuatenejo.  Well…we never left.  We’d travel by bus every day to Z’s beaches and only return late at night after gorging ourselves on pozole—a hominy/pork stew famous in the state of Guerrero.

That year we took a tour-a cheesy affair that brought us to a few neighboring villages as well as the stunning, 10 kilometer long stretch of beach known as Playa Larga. We were hooked.

The next year, we simply booked the flight and picked up a hotel in Zihua, and on the first Monday there hired a taxi to bring us to the beach.  When we disembarked, nothing was familiar.  What we soon realized, was that the driver had brought us to the northern end of the beach.  All of this was fine by us, because it was even less developed than the southern side, which we’d been to the winter before.

We explored a bit, then settled into a small restaurant at the junction of the dirt road running along the beach and he asphalt road that we’d taken from the federal highway.  It was then that we me Armando, the young and pleasant owner of the restaurant.  Later in the day we met his wife Kenia, and their young, school age son, Arturo.

That was the beginning of a friendship that spanned eleven years.  In Playa Larga, we’d found our Pacific shangrila, and in Armando and Kenia and their restaurant, Quatro Hermanos, we’d found safe harbor.  We returned several times that week.  We’d start our day there, chatting with either Armando or Kenia, then hike a quarter mile down the beach and spend the day.  By late afternoon we’d be back, drinking beers or sodas and often staying for dinner.

The following year we were back in Zihua.  This had become a wonderful habit and we looked forward to our week on the Pacific—summer in winter.  And each day we’d take a local bus to the road that would bring us to the beach.  We’d walk the three kilometers down a twisty road that brought us past coconut groves and mango orchards.  Always, we’d use Armando and Kenia’s restaurant as our base, and each Thursday we’d be first in line to dine on Kenia’s pozole.

Over the years we met brothers, sisters, parents and friends of the couple and we watched Arturo grow into a teenager.  We felt as if we’d become part of a large, extended family.  And over the years, our contacts in Zihua grew.  We met Mark and Roy from Iowa who introduced us to Fitz and Marge of Maine who introduced us to Linda and Donna of Minneapolis. In August there’d be a Zihua reunion in Maine at Linda’s home on the ocean in Boothbay.

Each February, and sometimes in the summer, we’d return.  Zihua, our days on Playa Larga, and our new friends evolved into a comfortable rut.  Each year Armando and Kenia remembered us.  Of course, we came with a quart of maple syrup.  They, in return, graciously opened their hearts, and their restaurant, to us.  We’d linger on in the evening  to eat pozole or Kenia’s fabulous fresh fish, cooked in local vegetables and served with white rice.  We’d sit in front of the open air restaurant, facing the wild Pacific, always on the lookout for grey whales who swam these waters in the winter.  After the sun set, we’d catch a collectivo back to the main highway and ultimately make it back to our hotel after dark.

We always assume that things are going to go on forever as they always are.

In the late afternoon of December 3, 2011, Kenia left the restaurant.  She was ambushed by four men who demanded the money from the day’s receipts.  When she resisted, they killed her.  Employees who came out when they heard shots, were pistol whipped and told to lie face down on the dirt road.  The men escaped and drove the three miles to the main highway where they picked up another vehicle. 

Kenia, our sweet, kind and friendly friend, left behind Armando, her son Arturo and a host of international visitors who’d spend hours at their friendly beach restaurant.

Sadly, Kenia was one of the hundred on average who will be killed this month in the state of Guerrero Until this, the victims in the violence that has beset Mexico for years, were in the abstract—the countless bodies printed on the front pages of Mexico’s disgusting yellow journalistic press.  But now violence has a face in the name of our friend Kenia. 

It has left all of us reeling, feeling immense sorrow for the loss of her life and the hole it will leave in the lives of her family.  It has also left us afraid.  Afraid to return to Zihua, afraid to walk the lovely three kilometer road from the main highway to Playa Larga, afraid to venture too far away from the beach restaurants.

Senseless.  It’s a word that’s often attached to deaths like this.  You don’t think of it much until it affects you personally.  How much money did these men take off with?  It was a Saturday, in shoulder season.  The restaurant closes early because it’s only open during daylight hours.  Five hundred dollars?  And then divide it four ways.  Five hundred dollars for a life that cannot be replaced?  A life that will be missed for the entire life span of each family member.

Such a senseless act of selfishness.