This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Back in the 1980s, Kyoki Skinner was a reporter with a newspaper called the Arizona

Republic. He covered the drug trade and the border and he spent a lot of time in different parts of Mexico.

But he was getting tired of traveling and of being a stranger in every place he went.

He wanted to actually settle down in Mexico and to make a life.

That's when I thought about, well, I'd like to be part of a community in Mexico.

If I lived here and knew what was going on here, I could probably file some pretty good stories.

So Kyoki moved to Agua Prieta, a town right on the border where he'd done some reporting before.

Aga Prieta sits just across the line from Douglas, Arizona. The two cities are contiguous.

One urban area that spans the border. Divided by a towering rust-colored metal wall,

a steep concrete ditch, a line of concertina wire, and a mesh fence.

And Kyoki did what he'd set out to do. He settled down and made a life there.

That's our own Delaney Hall.

He built a house, married a Mexican woman,

continued mastering the slangy Spanish of Northern Mexico,

and ended up having five kids. Awapietta became his home.

And the thing I liked about I waprita,

it wasn't tourism oriented at all.

It was a very Mexican community,

and I was very intrigued by the town for that reason.

Kyoki ended up scaling back his full-time reporting job so he could open a smoothie shop and juice bar.

What better way to get to know this city than to have a business here where people will come in and hang out and talk?

...