Update from the Border: How's life?, VOL IV

To Those Good Folks With Whom I Like To Exchange Stories, share ideas, and mutually engage in real work, visit and generally keep up to date:

This past summer, I started talking with Travis, a twelve-year-old at our neighborhood block party. He lives just down the street from me. I'd been speaking with loads of adults from the neighborhood. Having seen me grow up over the years-- they didn't necessarily know my name, but they knew or knew of me because I'd had a garden in my front yard since I was eight-- they all wanted to know how I was doing. Seemed like everyone wanted a two minute summation of my life. I was worn down by the time I started talking with Travis.

"Whew, Travis," I said. "I'm wiped out. All these folks keep asking me the hardest question in the world." "Yeah? What's that?" he asked. "Oh. You know. Some form of 'How's it going? What have you been up to? How are you? What's new? How's life?'" I responded. The problem is, what folks actually mean when they ask these questions is: "It's good to see you." But I always get sidetracked by the question mark at the end, and so I try to give them an answer. All those, "How's life's" will ware you out.

"Oh, that's-" he looked down, squinted his eyebrows in dismissal. He shook his head and looked up at me smiling. "That's not a hard question. Here's what you say. Just tell them: 'Well. Hm. My family and I all ate three meals yesterday and had a couple of snacks. Each one of us got around eight hours sleep, and," he added with gusto: "And, we crapped two times. Life is good.'" The kid's right. My life is great.

~ ~ ~

In 2004, the spring of my senior year in high school, I worked in a Mexican Restaurant. The first day of work, "the guys" (the servers) assembled at the host stand-- where the cash registers were also at-- to roll silverware into napkins. I was a host. They asked me, "Tienes hermanas?" Do you have any sisters? When I told them I did, they all began smiling. "Si guey?" (pronounced like the english word "weigh.") Really? They asked me. They asked me if I had a picture of Kelley or Karen, my sisters, in my wallet. No, I told them. "No guey? No? No?!" Really? Common? Really?

The second day, they began calling me, "Cunado," brother-in-law. Everyday, they asked me for a "foto." "Que Pasa, guey. When you going to bring me a foto guey?" "Watch out man. I've got this big tray, guey. Move over guey. You have a foto guey?" "Que Pasa piche guey? Que vas hacer este noche guey? Muevete guey." What's up, guey. What are you going to do tonigh, man? Get out of my way, man. "When you going to bring me a foto of my spouse, man?" And on it went.

As it turned out, they taught me all the bad words without my knowing it. "Guey," they used like like folks say, "man" or like how California surfers use "Dude." It's a filler word, a word of affection. Imagine the teenage males in your life talking about "my boys." It's kind of like that, or at least, they used it like that. They told me it meant "Man." "Guey" actually means "castrated bull." "Hey nutless. How's it going nutless? Yeah? Eunich. Watch out, Eunich. Get out of my way, no-balls." But I didn't know it, so I blundered through spanglish throwing profanities around like a sailor. I guess I should have figured things out when they kept insisting that I not speak spanish when there were spanish patrons in the restaurant.

I didn't figure it out until I visited church friends in Puerto Rico. Another thing I learned: Don't say, "I want meat!" with gusto in Puerto Rico. It doesn't quite carry the literal translation. I'll leave that for you to chew on.

~ ~ ~

So, this story about my days in the Mexican Restaurant, La Fiesta, back in Tallahassee-- I told to a handful of guys gathered in a Casa de huespedes. Literally translated, it means, "House of Guests." Casa de Huespedes are all over Altar, Sonora- just a few miles from the Border. It's fancy name for an expensive homeless shelter. Homeless shelter by design; expensive by price. The bunks are made of wood framing and plywood. Matresses? Forget it. Count your lucky stars there's quarter inch carpet padding your backside. The cielings were 8-10 feet up. Bunks: there were four to six beds vertically, stacked like sardines.

The Casas de Huespedes of Altar, Sonora are the last resting point in Mexico for the Migrants on their journey north to the states. The Coyotes, human smugglers, recruit clients telling them their walk through the desert will only last "Five, six hours, max. We'll start tomorrow morning. You'll be in Phoenix before tomorrow evening."

It always takes three days. Increasingly, it's taking five, six, seven, eight days because of increasing Border Patrol presence,
digital surveillance, and "patriot" vigilantes along the "short" routes necessitating longer trips through the "Devil's Highway" as it's known. Migrants start with two gallons of water, which is really "too much" for their short walk in the desert.

Sweet dreams in the Casa de Huespedes. Get some rest. After all, the tired are the first to succomb to dehydration and heat exhaution in the desert.

So, I told these guys my story of the Mexican restaurant in horrendous spanish. I told them about the guys that called me "Brother-in-Law" with a wink and a request for a "foto." We laughed some more.

"How old are you?" I asked the guys. Cuantos anos tienes, guey? 22, 19, 20, 17. "Where are you going?" "New York," one guy told me. "Alabama." "Dever." "I don't know." They've got no concept of the distance. Denver, they've been convinced, is "just up the road." Florida? No problem. New York. Not too far. One of the guys, a guy from Guatemala that had tried to cross once before but was picked up by the Border Patrol, he asked me-- his name was Juan, I'm pretty sure-- "If you see a migrant in the desert, you'll call the Border Patrol?" "Yeah. Would you?" asked the 17 year old, now with scared eyes that betrayed his mexican machoism.

Seventeen. God. Kids that young aren't even in college. Not out of high school. If he weren't the one headed for the border, I'd be his role model, his protector, his big-college-aged-buddy. I'd be tutoring him, or advising him on girls at church camp. But, in this case, I've got nothing to offer. He's the one carrying his family's dreams on his back, and all I've got to offer are distances: "You know New York, it's very far. I traveled from Florida on the bus, and it took two whole days. And New York is very far. At least three, four, five days on the bus. Walking? No. No puedes. You can't. Never. Alabama? Very far. It's right next to Florida..."

The seventeen year old looked me in the face: "I could get a ride with you?" he asked. The kid had only just gotten a moustache. "No man," I told him, "we can't because of the Migra, the Border Patrol." He kept going: "I could fit under your seat? How about that? Or, how about under your van? With ropes?" "Or," someone else added, "you could paint him, so he'll be lighter skinned?"

And, to my other side, was the 22-year-old from Guatemala. He only made it one hour across the border last time before being caught. Because of the Guatemalan passport he was carrying, he wsa returned all the way home. The journey from Guatemala to Altar is three to five days on the bus. For the past two years-- since his deportation-- he'd been saving moeny to make the trip again. He knew of the Coyote fees, the required brides, the roberries, the overpriced food and lodging required of the migrants. He was among the lucky. He knew what he was getting into.

That night, at the migrant shelter, we met Angel. He's 40. He's got two little girls. Eight and 12 years-old. His family lives in Sonora. He just returned from the US three months ago after finishing a summer landscaping job in Denver. After a visit to his family, he's heading back, this time for a job working on snow removal in rich neighborhoods. He's going to go alone, he told us. People don't go alone. Being left alone in the desert is the death sentence where the devil and his demons handle the appeals. Alone with desolation, the devil, and the heat, on the way to the promised land. Though he smiles to earn his name, with the dimple-wrinkles of a wise elder, this is not a man in need of pity.

~ ~ ~

I stayed up late last Wednesday night. In the last moments before sleep, I scribbled out a few words: "Who will be caught by the Bordder Patrol? Made to show their anus? Who will be robbed? Beaten? Jailed? Abandoned in the desert? Who among those I met today will die in the crossing? Could be any of them. Ay Guey!"

~ ~ ~

Do you know what a migrant says when you ask her how's she doing? How's life? What's new?

No?

Me either. What if she actually tried to answer?

Hell, the question wares me out, and the first to succomb to heat exhaustion in the desert crossing are those who...


Nathan