A Food Oasis in a Tijuana Shantytown : Poverty: Bill Roley of Laguna Beach helps abandoned children grow a garden of hope at their shelter.

Just south of the international border lies an improbable oasis for abandoned children. In this six-acre haven are redolent edible gardens teeming with mint, rosemary, cilantro, cauliflower, and mango and orange trees, among other flora.

The beauty and aroma clash absurdly with the horrid smell of burning refuse rising from the shantytown just below, a barren place that a travel-weary Mother Teresa once observed had poverty she had “never seen anywhere else.”

The Aldeas Infantiles shelter, one of the few green spots in this parched city of about 2 million people, is partly the creation of Bill Roley of Laguna Beach. He is an anthropologist, horticulturist and all-around ecologically and environmentally correct dynamo who prizes compost as much as he does the looks and life-giving quality of plants.

In this “museum of food,” as Roley calls the shelter, he has turned loose his imagination, considerable green-thumb knowledge and academic experience to create what he hopes is a living model for a city beset by poverty and overpopulation.

Roley, the 46-year-old son of a Marine Corps colonel, is teaching the shelter’s 22 children to become self-sufficient, to recycle nearly everything, and to teach others the value of seeds and soil.

“The idea is that they’re responsible for the waste that comes out of their house and their kitchen; that they need to recycle it into compost,” he said. “They’re responsible for the chores around the kitchen, which has earth gardens that can be used (to grow) medicinal or culinary plants.”

Victims of a “ruptured society,” as Roley described them, the children living at the shelter are the products of broken homes, of adolescent mothers or abusive parents who abandoned them or were forced to give them up.

And here, in the rows of romaine and baby lettuce, parsnips and peppers, is where Roley believes their recovery lies, where hope is nurtured and their futures are forged.

“We’re going to teach the children not only how to be emotionally strong, we’re going to teach them how to be ecologically and environmentally strong,” said Roley, who belongs to several ecological and educational organizations involved in the project.

Ultimately, he said, the gardens will yield enough produce that the children will be able to establish a small store to sell the excess to the public. He said the shelter, shaded and protected from the elements by its greenery, will be more self-sufficient and less dependent on outside food sources and energy.

Alfonso Pulido, president of the foundation that runs the shelter, said the experiment is opening eyes in Mexico.

“The shelter is a reality that must be shown to be believed,” he said. “Once it was nothing more than a barren hill with buildings where nothing could grow. Now it is a miracle, an example of how the methods applied can work here.”

Roley earned his doctorate in anthropology at UC Irvine in 1976. He teaches environmental planning at Cal State Fullerton and ecological survival at the Center for Regenerative Studies at Cal Poly Pomona.

Two years ago, Roley and his occasional business partner and ecological soul-mate, Scott Murray, were approached by the SOS Kinderdorf International Foundation. The organization--which has created about 1,100 children’s shelters throughout the world--asked Murray and Roley to help beautify a new shelter in Tijuana for a $25,000 fee.

Kinderdorf wanted to use the ecological techniques developed by Roley and his Permaculture Institute of Southern California to design drainage channels, ecological landscaping, as well as six more houses to complement the seven existing homes.

When Roley and Murray first arrived at the site, they knew the job was not going to be easy. The foundations of the two-story homes had been damaged by rain. Moreover, tons of construction debris had been dumped at the edge of the property, creating a porous slope upon which rain had carved five-foot wide crevices, a clear sign of erosion.

The two Americans also realized that the site, about a mile uphill from Tijuana’s Central Bus Depot, was particularly vulnerable to the wind as well as the noise created by the heavy traffic moving toward Otay Mesa.

Eventually, the project turned into a labor of love for the two Americans. By their own account, their fee would, over the two years, work out to the equivalent of $1.50 an hour.

“The job mushroomed into a much larger job than we had committed to,” said Roley.

Nonetheless, the men found a few allies, including the Morelos State Park nursery as well as nurseries in Orange County, which donated several hundred trees. Tijuana’s Caliente Racetrack donated several hundred tons of compost from its stalls.

Roley and Murray designed an intricate water harvesting system, reconditioned the soil, including the eroded slope, and planted citrus, olive, fig, banana, mango, palm and acacia trees, bougainvillea, vines, and a myriad of edible and medicinal plants.

They also established contact with an organization that was creating an eco-park near the shelter using recently developed water-treatment techniques. These ultimately may be used to create a permanent source of water for the shelter.

In addition, they have helped create an environmental school at the site that is becoming a model for schools throughout the region, according to Roley and local officials.

“The school is becoming a magnet for environmental awareness. The ecological classroom is seen as a model for some of the things (Tijuanans) would like to do, things we have done here,” Roley said.

Murray, who once ran a farm in Mexico that produced out-of-season fruits and vegetables for U.S. restaurants--said that he and Roley were simply drawing on old techniques that they believe should be adopted by the city of Tijuana.

“We’re on the cutting edge of a 10,000-year-old technology,” said Murray, who, during his college days at UC Santa Cruz back in the early 1970s, was one of the first to promote the idea of agro-ecology.

“We’re the pioneers of the sustainable future where things don’t get progressively worse, they get better and better,” he said. “We’ve tried to build something here that 20 years from now will be financially sustainable. We’ve established a system that will get better and better.”

Although 22 children are housed at the shelter, about 100 more are expected within the next couple of years, said shelter director Guillermo Arriaga. It all depends on how fast the “dynamic duo”--as Roley and Murray are called by their Mexican partners--can gather volunteers and donations to finish the rest of the buildings and landscaping.

Benito Espinoza Montalbo, a 9-year-old boy whose short stature and slight build belie his age, is among the smallest helpers. During a recent visit by the San Diego-based People for Trees organization, Benito was the first to volunteer in the planting of several trees brought by the group.

His story is not unlike the others’ here. Abandoned by abusive parents two years ago in the town of Tehuacan, Puebla, he and his sister Liliana, 13, were picked up by Kinderdorf’s Aldeas Infantiles in Mexico City.

Benito said his parents “would beat us up with a (cord) or whatever else” they could find. He said he liked planting trees, the smell of the flowers he grows and the people who take care of him at the shelter.

Still, Benito cannot forget his mother.

“I would like to see her again; grow a flower and give it to her,” he said.

The aim of the Kinderdorf organization, created after World War II in Austria, is to raise not only single children, but to keep siblings together in a family atmosphere, according to Arriaga. Children like Benito and Liliana will stay together in the shelter until they reach maturity, he said.