To Those GOOD FOLKS With Whom I Like To Exchange Stories, share ideas, mutually engage in real work, visit and generally keep up to date:
On November 21st, 1977, my cousin Rhonda was born, which means this past Wednesday, November 21st, 2007, she turned thirty. What's November 21st, 2007 mean to you? What'd you do? What'd you eat for breakfast? What were you wearing? Can you remember?
This past Wednesday, November 21st, Chayito, my host mother in Nogales, Sonora received a call. There was a group of nine migrants at Grupo Beta (the Mexican agency established to educate migrants about water, the desert, etc and aid deported migrants). They had arrived naked. They'd been deported naked. Grupo Beta had called the Madres (Mothers), a group of three nuns who live in Nogales. And then, the nuns called Chayito because they knew that Chayito and the rest of Pastorales de los Migrantes (Pastors of the Migrants) often having clothing, and, besides, they live just up the hill from Grupo Beta.
I went upstairs to check my email. By the time I'd come back downstairs, the humanitarian response was in full action. Beans and spaghetti were cooking on the stove. Lupe, my fellow student's host-mother was searching for disposable plates, Chayito was making salsa, a man outside was unloading bags of clothing out of his truck. Jenny, my fellow student and I quickly joined the action, loading the van with food, clothes, shoes.
Five minutes later, we were in the van headed down the hill to Grupo Beta.
The migrants had received a layer of clothes by the time we arrived, but they still had no shoes, no socks and had not eaten for several days.
As we served food, the story came out. The group, an entire family, had lost their farm in Guerrero a state in southern Mexico. With no place to stay and due to the fear of their family being separated, they chose to come north as a family. In the desert west of Nogales, they had been walking in the desert for three days and two nights. In the afternoon of the third day, a man, "a good American", by their reports, showed them the way north to continue their journey towards Tucson and offered them lodging and food for the evening. "That's the way, but come to my house for the evening. You can stay with me; I'll give you something to eat."
But, apparently, according to their story, a "bad woman" saw them on their way to the "good Samaritan's" house and called the police. They came and took him to jail. The woman came along and stayed behind with the migrants to keep watch until the Border Patrol arrived. She took all of their shoes, their coats, and the rest of their clothes.
They were then loaded into the Border Patrol "dog-catcher" trucks-- naked. They were processed in the Nogales Border Patrol headquarters-- naked. They were loaded into the contracted Wackenhut deportation bus-- naked. They were dropped at the port of entry-- naked. From Mariposa, one of the two ports of entry in Nogales, they walked along the highway and down Reform St, about a mile, in order to reach Grupo Beta-- naked.
I talked with Jesus, one of the older brothers. He was probably 24, 25. He was traveling with his mother and father, brothers and sisters, including two girls about 14 and 15. Imagine.
Everyone was served three tortillas, a scoop of spaghetti, a bit of salsa, a scoop of beans and some cucumber slices leftover from a church function. Then we made another pass with the tortillas: two more. Then one more pass: one more tortilla each.
Socks were pulled over cold feet. Five of the nine found shoes in our box that fit. Sweaters. Coats.
Later, in the car as we were driving away, Jenny, my fellow student asked me: "Why'd she take their shoes? All their clothes?"
"I don't know," I told her. "Maybe she thought that if she took their things, they wouldn't be able to come back through the desert."
Why DID she take all their clothes?
I still don't know.
Today I remembered with realization that almost all migrants sew secret pockets into their clothing to hide money because being robbed is routine and expected on the Devil's Highway. Accordingly, migrants split their money up: a little in the hat, a bit under each shoe insole, some sewed into the hem of their pants, a few more bills sewed in their shirt. All told, they might have several hundred dollars in order to make due until they find work. Or, in case they don't make it the first time and have to hire another guide, or... There are a lot of unexpected scenarios on the Devil's Highway to the American Dream.
Maybe she knew that migrants hide their money, sew it into their clothing, hide it in their shoes.
I don't know.
Maybe, she was just trying to do her part to stem illegal immigration.
I don't know.
Even my guesses run short.
My guesses also run short when I think about what Jesus and his farming-family of nine is up to tonight. Where are they? Have they eaten since Wednesday? Are they trying to make the trip again, five of them with the shoes our host-family offered them, the other four in socks? Through the desert, which tonight is 35 degrees?
It gets personal. 1000 miles from home, in clothes you got from two middle-aged Mexican women. The sun dips down behind the horizon; you're in a city you've never visited in your life. You're with your family. It's getting cold. You ask a couple of other migrants, and they don't know where to go either, they're from Oaxaca. You've got no money, none; out of your family of nine, four are without shoes. One of these is Maria, 14-years-old. She's getting cold. She doesn't say anything, but her lips are a bit purple. One of the agents at Grupo Beta tells you that if you stick around, you can get a job in the Maquilas (American owned factories). The agent tell you the pay is between five and eight bucks (if your lucky) a day. You play everything out in your head: night coming on, desert, 65 miles to Tucson, $5, $8 or even $10 per hour working in the US, $5 a day in Nogales. You remember from friends' reports that in order to emmigrate legally to the U.S. you have to have a bank account filled "with lots of zeros" at the end of the figure. And as you work things out in your head, the Grupo Beta agent tells you that "Unfortunately things cost a lot here in Nogales. Too bad you won't be able to cross over to the US to buy your groceries for at least a year. Milk only costs $3.50 a gallon there. Here in Nogales, it costs $4.50." Finally you hear about a shelter, but they don't serve food. For a fleeting moment, you imagine there might be an appetite for prostitutes here in Nogales with American tourists in the city. You heard about such things about Acapulco back in Guerrero. Who in your family? No! You put it out of mind. It's too awful. You'll find a way. You heard years ago from friends that the drug cartels will sometimes pay for your guide to Tucson if you'll carry a 50 pound sack of weed on your back. No. There's got to be another way. You'll make work. But how?
What would you do?
It can make you sick. And you, YOU can just stop reading. My sister keeps telling me: "That's enough Nathan."
But Lord, Folks! This family is screwed. Why do they have to carry the weight of NAFTA, ruinous foreign relations, unjust border policy, and inhumane, civilian and bureaucratic "border protection" on their naked backs? They're our neighbors, y'all. Neighbors.
Border Patrol apprehended 350,000 "illegal entries" in Arizona during 2006. 350,000. Nine of those 350,000 "illegals" are going to remember November 21st for the rest of their lives.
~ ~ ~
This afternoon, back in Tucson, I was walking through the neighborhood on my way to the laundry mat. On the bumper of a nice, little, red truck with bike racks on top, there were two stickers. One read: "Build the fence." The other one said, "No mas Illegals!"
The owner of this truck is probably a nice person. I could probably have a great conversation with them about mountain biking, how my friends up at school are big into it. With this tie-in, I could then introduce my college. Perhaps we'd get around to gardens and I'd mention the edible cacti and rosmary growing in the owner's yard. Maybe s/he is a college professor. Maybe s/he has a kid that they take to soccer practice a couple times a week. Maybe s/he watches Fox. Or maybe s/he watches CNN. Or maybe they don't watch the news. Maybe they have personal experience along the border. Maybe they don't. Maybe they'd be proud of the lady who called the police. Maybe they don't know what goes on. Maybe they think that since migrants enter without papers and are therefore illegal, they're dishonest and dangerous. Maybe.
I don't know. But.
There's a new idea of legality emerging in my soul. It is surging through my veins, and I feel its strength.
It's the legality that ended slavery. It's the legality that guarantees the landless, the middle class, women, American Indians, and blacks the right to vote. The legality that says you're worthy of respect regardless of your paycheck.
It's the legality that says we are all created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Nathan
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Border Update: Not in 100,000 houses, VOL X
To Those GOOD FOLKS With Whom I Like To Exchange Stories, share ideas, mutually engage in real work, visit and generally keep up to date:
Forget the politics and the economics for a moment. Sometimes a story is "just a story." Because sometimes a coincidence is too good to pass up.
~ ~ ~
I just found out this summer that my great, great grandmother (in Spanish: my tata abuela) was an herbalist, a medicine woman, or in the words of my grandmother: "She knew woods-medicine." According to my Uncle C, my mother's brother, she'd follow behind folks weeding in the fields gathering "the roots or some part of them plants the rest of us called weeds." Then, "She'd boil 'em and boil 'em and boil 'em until she made a... little vile of something" like what some of my friends today call "tinctures." My Uncle C told me all about it: "Then, she'd take a little bit of it everyday. She said it taste good. It kept her healthy."
So, I asked my Uncle C whether he thought it tasted good: "Tasted good, huh? You ever get sick? She give you some? It tasted good?"
"Oh yeah," he said, "It tasted real-good. Like," he paused for effect, "Like trying to swallow a bag of nails."
In her role as a medicine woman, Mary Carroll, Mary Emeline Elizabeth Carroll, my great-great-grandmother was also a midwife. The two went hand-in-hand. And the healing touch passed down through the generations. My great-grandmother knew the plants too, my grandmother told me. But when Grandma Mary (my great-great) died, "Big Granny" (my great-grandmother) stopped collecting plants. So my grandmother didn't learn the plants. But the healing-touch wastn't to be lost. My mother's a nurse. And three of my cousins have been involved with healing others in one way or another.
~ ~ ~
Three weeks ago, before our semester break when I made a dash to Seattle to visit my sister Kelley-- Three weeks ago, as a BorderLinks group, we visited Dona Gloria, an Indian medicine woman (una curandera) who lives on the west side of Nogales in a neighborhood called Los Encinos. She's 79. We ate chicken soup, she told us stories and sang us songs. She said, "If I were to tell you everything my father taught me, we would be sitting here many days." Such are the words of a storyteller. Like obediant grand children, we sat around her while she told stories.
And at some point, I asked her about my hypoglycemia. First, she said, you must not eat those things that "make you mad" because you have "emotional blood sugar. It is mental, crazy." And then, she told me, "Every morning, you must take a glass of water and lift it towards God and say, 'Dios (God) help me today. Fill this water with your spritual medicine. Give me the strength I need and the steadiness to make it through the day.' And then, drink it all and give thanks to the Lord." Lastly, she suggested that when I feel my blood sugar crash, I should eat something good for me and do something else for a while like write or sing a song or draw a picture.
And her plants! When she moved to the city in 2002, she brought her plants with her from the country-side. In pots, growing in her patio, peach, orange, lime, lemon, and other fruit trees. Several plants for diarhea, several for stomach pains, several for nausia, several for head ache, several for ant bites, bee stings, muscle pain, bone strains, menstral cramps, when you have a cough in January, when you've got a runny nose in spring time, for a clear mind, for internal parasites. They looked like weeds. She knew better. Her eyes and words flowed with wisdom.
We were there for two hours. Only two hours. Maybe it was actually five minutes. But the short hand did move two places.
~ ~ ~
Like I said, I just found out in August that my great-great-grandmother knew "woods-medicine." Too bad, I thought, that my great-grandmother didn't pass this knowledge down to my grandmother and she to my mother.... How I would have liked to walk the forest with a person of such wisdom. How I would have liked to ask my mother or grandmother for cures. How I would have liked to be able to pick weeds, make teas, and take them to family and friends as medicine because I grew up in a house with such wisdom. But, it wasn't passed down.
For this reason, just for one more taste of my family's history, I wanted to visit Dona Gloria again.
~ ~ ~
Well, I didn't know Dona Gloria's address. All I knew was the name of her neighborhood, its general location in Nogales, a city of 450,000, the correct bus route, the main road into the neighborhood, the look of the hill on her street, and the look of her patio from inside her fence. I talked to Elias, my spanish tutor about visiting her, and he told me it'd be no problem. "Just go to her neighborhood and ask the people. Since she's a curandera, everyone will know where she lives."
So the other day, I took a walk. I took a bus to Los Encinos, and then I took another walk into the neighborhood.
I walked asking the people as I went. Contrary to the advice of Elias, no one seemed to know Dona Gloria, "la curandera que vive en una loma en esta colonia" (the medicine woman who lives on a hill in this neighborhood). Finally, two different women pointed me to a house. "She lives there," one, and then the other, told me. But I'd visited her with Theresa and the other BorderLinks students before, three weeks ago. The house they pointed to was not the same house I'd visited.
So, after the first referral, I explored the neighborhood again. Up streets, past growling dogs, always with my questions at the ready: "Do you know Dona Gloria?" But I didn't find her house, and the people didn't know where she lived or, even, who she was. "Good afternoon," I told the folks on the street. Then I returned by the same way: "Good afternoon." And again: "Good afternoon again."
Who is this gringo? I've seen that gringo three times already.
"Do you have the address?" they asked. "No, but she lives on a hill," I replied. "Si (yes) but there are many hills..." "I know. Well, Thanks. Thank you. I'm going to look some more. Thank you again. Adios."
So I returned to the main street once again. Who are the gossips? I began to wonder. Who in a Mexican neighborhood, colonia would know everyone else? The shopkeepers? The elderly? I passed a beauty shop. I stopped.
"Excuse me. Do you know Dona Gloria? She is a curandera." The lady inside told me she did. She told me, "She lives right there," pointing.
It was the same house again, not the one I'd visited three weeks ago but the one with a green gate. Well who knows, I thought.
Perhaps, I thought, she received us in a friend's house because it had a bigger kitchen or perhaps this house in front of me was her child's house. Regardless, if it was the house of another Dona Gloria, perhaps all the Dona Glorias in the nieghborhood knew each other.
So I opened the gate and knocked on the front door.
A woman, say, 40-years-old, opened the door.
"Ah, oh. Estoy, I am looking for Dona Gloria. Does she live here?" I asked.
"Dona Gloria?" No. She doesn't live here." And she said something else, but with my limited spanish I missed most of it and forgot the rest. "Pero mi mama, But my mother Dona - - - - - lives here." (I didn't catch the name.)
The lady left calling her mother. Was it her, Dona Gloria afterall? I saw an elderly figure approach the door from the shadows. Dona Gloria?
Nope.
This elderly woman told me her name was Elora. She knew a Dona Gloria, but not the same one I visited. Her Dona Gloria lived across the street, was sick, and "is about 80-years-old." But she's not a curandera.
Dona Yoya, as Elora is called, asked me what I was doing? Why was I trying to visit Dona Gloria? Where was I staying in Nogales?
"Just to talk," I responded. "She tells stories very well, and I visited her three weeks ago with group. I'm living with a family in Colonia Rosario, but every day I go to the Casa de la Misericordia (House of Mercy, the BorderLinks' compound) for classes."
"BorderLinks?" she asked. "Yes. I'm studying with BorderLinks," I said.
"Oh really?" she said. "I'll be right back," she prefaced. She came back with a book of photos. "Two years ago, I had 'BorderLinks children' in my house for five weeks. Four of them.... They were wonderful." She began to show me the pictures. "Chelsea from Washington, " she pointed, "And David from North Carolina.... And Colin--"
"David?!" I jumped. I knew that kid. "Si," she continued--
"David is from my college!" I exclaimed. No way. I shook my head. I bit my lower lip. No way. 100,000 houses in Nogales...
"Si, David, David Andrews from North Carolina. "He was so nice. When he came, he couldn't speak any spanish. But he learned very fast. They," pointing to a group photo of BorderLinks students, "made me a pinata for my birthday." She showed me the birthday cards they'd made her. I saw David Andrew's signature. "They were terrific," she told me. "He's from your college? Really?"
"Si," I responded.
~ ~ ~
David Andrews was my admissions tour guide the first time I visited Warren Wilson. I sat in on his eight-person theology class in April of my junior year of high school. He's two years older than I. He attended BorderLinks two years ago. And, out of the hundred-thousand houses in Nogales, he lived in the house of Dona Yoya, which I happened to find via a bad referral from a lady in a neighborhood beautyshop in a nieghborhood on the far side of Nogales from my host family and from the Casa de la Misericordia.
David Andrews, Matt Blue, and I are the only students I know who have been to BorderLinks. There have been others, but we are the only ones I know of. I found David Andrew's host family, and Elias, my spanish tutor was Matt Blue's tutor.
How do you say, "It's a small world," without sounding like a Disney promotion?
~ ~ ~
Well, I did eventually find Dona Gloria. I found her today. And we talked, and she told me stories, and I drank fresh-made tea and ate fresh-made soup from her patio plants. She gave me more suggestions for my hypoglycemia: cactus broth. She told more stories, sung another song, showed me pictures of her family, mentioned her indian heritage, commented on her home before Nogales: a farm in the country; and she told me that whenever I want to come again, "Mi casa es tu casa (my house is your house)."
~ ~ ~
Some things are really nice in this world, and there's no politicin' or economizin' that.
Nathan
Forget the politics and the economics for a moment. Sometimes a story is "just a story." Because sometimes a coincidence is too good to pass up.
~ ~ ~
I just found out this summer that my great, great grandmother (in Spanish: my tata abuela) was an herbalist, a medicine woman, or in the words of my grandmother: "She knew woods-medicine." According to my Uncle C, my mother's brother, she'd follow behind folks weeding in the fields gathering "the roots or some part of them plants the rest of us called weeds." Then, "She'd boil 'em and boil 'em and boil 'em until she made a... little vile of something" like what some of my friends today call "tinctures." My Uncle C told me all about it: "Then, she'd take a little bit of it everyday. She said it taste good. It kept her healthy."
So, I asked my Uncle C whether he thought it tasted good: "Tasted good, huh? You ever get sick? She give you some? It tasted good?"
"Oh yeah," he said, "It tasted real-good. Like," he paused for effect, "Like trying to swallow a bag of nails."
In her role as a medicine woman, Mary Carroll, Mary Emeline Elizabeth Carroll, my great-great-grandmother was also a midwife. The two went hand-in-hand. And the healing touch passed down through the generations. My great-grandmother knew the plants too, my grandmother told me. But when Grandma Mary (my great-great) died, "Big Granny" (my great-grandmother) stopped collecting plants. So my grandmother didn't learn the plants. But the healing-touch wastn't to be lost. My mother's a nurse. And three of my cousins have been involved with healing others in one way or another.
~ ~ ~
Three weeks ago, before our semester break when I made a dash to Seattle to visit my sister Kelley-- Three weeks ago, as a BorderLinks group, we visited Dona Gloria, an Indian medicine woman (una curandera) who lives on the west side of Nogales in a neighborhood called Los Encinos. She's 79. We ate chicken soup, she told us stories and sang us songs. She said, "If I were to tell you everything my father taught me, we would be sitting here many days." Such are the words of a storyteller. Like obediant grand children, we sat around her while she told stories.
And at some point, I asked her about my hypoglycemia. First, she said, you must not eat those things that "make you mad" because you have "emotional blood sugar. It is mental, crazy." And then, she told me, "Every morning, you must take a glass of water and lift it towards God and say, 'Dios (God) help me today. Fill this water with your spritual medicine. Give me the strength I need and the steadiness to make it through the day.' And then, drink it all and give thanks to the Lord." Lastly, she suggested that when I feel my blood sugar crash, I should eat something good for me and do something else for a while like write or sing a song or draw a picture.
And her plants! When she moved to the city in 2002, she brought her plants with her from the country-side. In pots, growing in her patio, peach, orange, lime, lemon, and other fruit trees. Several plants for diarhea, several for stomach pains, several for nausia, several for head ache, several for ant bites, bee stings, muscle pain, bone strains, menstral cramps, when you have a cough in January, when you've got a runny nose in spring time, for a clear mind, for internal parasites. They looked like weeds. She knew better. Her eyes and words flowed with wisdom.
We were there for two hours. Only two hours. Maybe it was actually five minutes. But the short hand did move two places.
~ ~ ~
Like I said, I just found out in August that my great-great-grandmother knew "woods-medicine." Too bad, I thought, that my great-grandmother didn't pass this knowledge down to my grandmother and she to my mother.... How I would have liked to walk the forest with a person of such wisdom. How I would have liked to ask my mother or grandmother for cures. How I would have liked to be able to pick weeds, make teas, and take them to family and friends as medicine because I grew up in a house with such wisdom. But, it wasn't passed down.
For this reason, just for one more taste of my family's history, I wanted to visit Dona Gloria again.
~ ~ ~
Well, I didn't know Dona Gloria's address. All I knew was the name of her neighborhood, its general location in Nogales, a city of 450,000, the correct bus route, the main road into the neighborhood, the look of the hill on her street, and the look of her patio from inside her fence. I talked to Elias, my spanish tutor about visiting her, and he told me it'd be no problem. "Just go to her neighborhood and ask the people. Since she's a curandera, everyone will know where she lives."
So the other day, I took a walk. I took a bus to Los Encinos, and then I took another walk into the neighborhood.
I walked asking the people as I went. Contrary to the advice of Elias, no one seemed to know Dona Gloria, "la curandera que vive en una loma en esta colonia" (the medicine woman who lives on a hill in this neighborhood). Finally, two different women pointed me to a house. "She lives there," one, and then the other, told me. But I'd visited her with Theresa and the other BorderLinks students before, three weeks ago. The house they pointed to was not the same house I'd visited.
So, after the first referral, I explored the neighborhood again. Up streets, past growling dogs, always with my questions at the ready: "Do you know Dona Gloria?" But I didn't find her house, and the people didn't know where she lived or, even, who she was. "Good afternoon," I told the folks on the street. Then I returned by the same way: "Good afternoon." And again: "Good afternoon again."
Who is this gringo? I've seen that gringo three times already.
"Do you have the address?" they asked. "No, but she lives on a hill," I replied. "Si (yes) but there are many hills..." "I know. Well, Thanks. Thank you. I'm going to look some more. Thank you again. Adios."
So I returned to the main street once again. Who are the gossips? I began to wonder. Who in a Mexican neighborhood, colonia would know everyone else? The shopkeepers? The elderly? I passed a beauty shop. I stopped.
"Excuse me. Do you know Dona Gloria? She is a curandera." The lady inside told me she did. She told me, "She lives right there," pointing.
It was the same house again, not the one I'd visited three weeks ago but the one with a green gate. Well who knows, I thought.
Perhaps, I thought, she received us in a friend's house because it had a bigger kitchen or perhaps this house in front of me was her child's house. Regardless, if it was the house of another Dona Gloria, perhaps all the Dona Glorias in the nieghborhood knew each other.
So I opened the gate and knocked on the front door.
A woman, say, 40-years-old, opened the door.
"Ah, oh. Estoy, I am looking for Dona Gloria. Does she live here?" I asked.
"Dona Gloria?" No. She doesn't live here." And she said something else, but with my limited spanish I missed most of it and forgot the rest. "Pero mi mama, But my mother Dona - - - - - lives here." (I didn't catch the name.)
The lady left calling her mother. Was it her, Dona Gloria afterall? I saw an elderly figure approach the door from the shadows. Dona Gloria?
Nope.
This elderly woman told me her name was Elora. She knew a Dona Gloria, but not the same one I visited. Her Dona Gloria lived across the street, was sick, and "is about 80-years-old." But she's not a curandera.
Dona Yoya, as Elora is called, asked me what I was doing? Why was I trying to visit Dona Gloria? Where was I staying in Nogales?
"Just to talk," I responded. "She tells stories very well, and I visited her three weeks ago with group. I'm living with a family in Colonia Rosario, but every day I go to the Casa de la Misericordia (House of Mercy, the BorderLinks' compound) for classes."
"BorderLinks?" she asked. "Yes. I'm studying with BorderLinks," I said.
"Oh really?" she said. "I'll be right back," she prefaced. She came back with a book of photos. "Two years ago, I had 'BorderLinks children' in my house for five weeks. Four of them.... They were wonderful." She began to show me the pictures. "Chelsea from Washington, " she pointed, "And David from North Carolina.... And Colin--"
"David?!" I jumped. I knew that kid. "Si," she continued--
"David is from my college!" I exclaimed. No way. I shook my head. I bit my lower lip. No way. 100,000 houses in Nogales...
"Si, David, David Andrews from North Carolina. "He was so nice. When he came, he couldn't speak any spanish. But he learned very fast. They," pointing to a group photo of BorderLinks students, "made me a pinata for my birthday." She showed me the birthday cards they'd made her. I saw David Andrew's signature. "They were terrific," she told me. "He's from your college? Really?"
"Si," I responded.
~ ~ ~
David Andrews was my admissions tour guide the first time I visited Warren Wilson. I sat in on his eight-person theology class in April of my junior year of high school. He's two years older than I. He attended BorderLinks two years ago. And, out of the hundred-thousand houses in Nogales, he lived in the house of Dona Yoya, which I happened to find via a bad referral from a lady in a neighborhood beautyshop in a nieghborhood on the far side of Nogales from my host family and from the Casa de la Misericordia.
David Andrews, Matt Blue, and I are the only students I know who have been to BorderLinks. There have been others, but we are the only ones I know of. I found David Andrew's host family, and Elias, my spanish tutor was Matt Blue's tutor.
How do you say, "It's a small world," without sounding like a Disney promotion?
~ ~ ~
Well, I did eventually find Dona Gloria. I found her today. And we talked, and she told me stories, and I drank fresh-made tea and ate fresh-made soup from her patio plants. She gave me more suggestions for my hypoglycemia: cactus broth. She told more stories, sung another song, showed me pictures of her family, mentioned her indian heritage, commented on her home before Nogales: a farm in the country; and she told me that whenever I want to come again, "Mi casa es tu casa (my house is your house)."
~ ~ ~
Some things are really nice in this world, and there's no politicin' or economizin' that.
Nathan
Friday, November 2, 2007
Border Update: barriers and fumigation, VOL IX
To Those GOOD FOLKS With Whom I Like To Exchange Stories, share ideas, mutually engage in real work, visit and generally keep up to date:
Look here. Nine Posts. Nine.
A couple of years ago, for three years, I served as a Co-Moderator of the Presbyterian Youth Connection, which is like the "Congress" of Presbyterian youth. I learned a lot about email. Along with my co-hort Patricia, we coordinated meetings, recruited volunteers, and passed ideas along. Because of my work with the Youth Connection, I had somewhere around 300 related email addresses in my address book. I learned a lot about emails and, more generally, about communication. If, for instance, I was in need of some help to run a meeting, plan a conference, or start a movement (you know, small things) and I sent a blanket email to "Everybody out there"-- around 300 folks-- I'd get absolutely no responses. If, on the other hand, I copy-pasted the email into ten separate emails, added a personalized first paragraph like "That book you were telling me about, you know The Populist Moment?, really sounded great. I've put it on my "to read" list. You know, I got to thinking about something that's coming up..." and started the emails with names: "Hey Michael!" "Lateef listen here" "Megan, check this out" "Fauntleroy" you know "Daniel-" "Rachel" "Lindsey" "Chris" "Mary, how are you?" ... with this bit of personalization, I'd end up getting nearly eight out of ten responses, and a bunch of them would be positive.
But, of course, I'm not doing that with these update emails. So, after eight emails, your mental space, your lack of time, and your fidgety fingers probably add up to a desire to delete. Hey, I've done it too. These emails aren't about guilt; I don't think good things come of that emotion.
So...
I moved in with my host family. Spanish for breakfast, lunch, dinner, late evening snack. All spanish, all the time. The first night here, I wrote in my journal:
"So, I've moved in with my homestay. Oh my God I am tired. As I try to find words even in english, they are impeded by the great slate of blank, like the "nothingness" from the Never Ending Story; it consumes all thoughts and they are forever lost as my mind attempts comprehension and my thoughts navigate rapid translation. Every gap is filled with the meaningless word "Pues" (Well). Something funny? "Pues." Something serious? "Pues." Something I agree with? "Pues." Something I don't understand? "Pues" Mi mente esta muy cansado, tanto cansado. Solamente tengo dos mas palabras: Buenos Noches. [My mind is very tired, so tired. I only have two more words: Good Night.]"
The first night, before I wrote in my journal, we met our to-be host families at a potluck dinner party. We started learning all the important words, like, you know: boogers. "How do you say, caca en tu nariz (poop en your nose)?" Mocos. As it turns out, "mocosos" are "snotty nosed little children" or just "kids." So, we learned the five, ten, or fifteen other ways to say kids. In spanish, or at least in northern Mexico, there's about a million different ways to say everything. Everything. Cada cosa. Todas las cosas. And so it goes.
About that time at the party, amid the laughter, Fausto, my to-be host father, reacted to our use of english. "No. You can't. No!" he joked. "From now on, only spanish. No more english. You're here to learn spanish, so you can only speak in spanish. Every english word costs one dollar." I bargined with him: "How about ten cents?" "No, un dolar," he said. I've been living with Fausto, Chayito (the mother), Iban (20-year-old son) and Cynthia (12-year-old daughter) now for two weeks. Still, every use of engligh in the house is promptly called out: "Un dolar!" Of couse, nobody actually pays. The other day, I called Fausto out because he said "Good morning." When I said, "Un dolar!" he said that we were actually even because I'd said "dolar" and "dolares" (or dollars) are American and therefore english, and so, in fact, I owed him a dollar. "No, no," he corrected himself: "10 pesos."
Currently it costs 10.85 pesos to change for a dollar. In 1994, it was three to one (3 pesos, 1 dollar). Promptly after the passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), in a matter of two days, the peso devalued to 50% of its prior exchange value. In two days, the exchange rate went from 3:1 to 6:1. Two days. Imagine going to the grocery and paying $7.50 for milk this Sunday. The devaluation was wrapped up in the NAFTA negotiations. I read it was anticipated and agreed upon. Why? Who'd it help? NAFTA has cost the U.S. workers three million jobs, and our neighbors to the south have to pay $7.50 for milk. Good ole not-free, free trade.
The wall, "el muro" is practically in my host family's backyard. Well, it's in the neighborhood, just up the street. The first day in the neighborhood, I walked up the street and saw these great rolling hills just a few hundred yards away. My mind raced forward to picnicks and afternoon reading opportunities. I kept walking up the hill, and, then, in the ravine between the hills, I saw the wall. 16ft of rusted corrogated steel with a guard-rail at the top to prevent recreation and temp-work. Well dang. My imagined picnick would cost a possible concussion and a felony. 100 yards: so close, yet so far away.
Remember Elias? My spanish tutor? The guy whom I asked how to say "Your feet stink like dead fish"? The man loves to eat acorns. We watched Narnia the other day in Spanish, and jointly munched away. They're a lot sweeter here than in the East. My friend Rachel Williamson, from Warren Wilson told me that she'd found a single oak tree at Warren Wilson that had "the sweetest nuts on campus. [She] ate a whole acorn without spitting it out." So either Elias found the sweet tree, or they're just sweeter here in northern Mexico.
Anyway, today we went across town on the buses to a community center where he works teaching kids English. Last night was halloween, so a little snotty nosed kid, a "mocoso" had a bag of candy and shared it around. She kept insisting I have some, but, of course, I can't eat sugar. I swear those kids love Elias. When he took out his guitar, all talking stopped, and they gathered around. Listening. Watching. The four-year-old, Martin kept trying to strum the cords. Eventually, we moved around back to the basket-ball court. Elias left his guitar in the hands of Martin and the other five-year-olds while we and the rest of the children played a game a lot like duck-duck-goose. Then he played some more songs. After a song or two, the kids began to drift away.
The girls started doing cartwheels and back-bends. The boys climbed on top of the basketball goal and jumped down acting like their favorite wreslers from the Lucha Libre (Mexico's WWF). All of them called for attention. "Natan! Mira (Look). Watch me. Watch this." And to Elias: "Profe! (Teacher!) Profe! Look. Watch. Watch me. You weren't looking. Hey, I'll do it again. Watch. Watch!"
Katie, my niece, she's ten. I know about this stuff.
They did their own thing until Elias started singing and playing songs in English. The cords started; I thought: Do I know this one? What is this? No, I can't. Of course not. Ahha! It was "Imagine," John Lenin's song. Then he played "Stand By me", the overly-sentimental song that I can only guess originated in the early nineties. If you want to know beauty, listen to 25 little mocosos try to sing, "Darling, Darling, Darling. Stand. Stand by me."
Of course, it's has become routine now to hear people speak of "el otro lado" (the other side). The first couple of times I heard the phrase, I asked for clarification: "The other side of what?" Or, one time, we were walking on the street, so I asked, "Over there?" pointing. No. It means the other side of the wall, the Estados Unidos, the United States.
The great thing about talking spanish with kids is that they do most of the talking. They say a lot of "watch!" They fill me in on the gossip of their friends: so-and-so is her boy friend-- "No he's not!" "Yeah. He. Is." But, mostly all I have to do is listen, and nod, and laugh, and try to offer appropriate listening grunts. They have a lot to share. The problem arrises when they ask me questions in their high-pitched, pre-puberdescent voices. They're about as easy to understand as, well, um-- They're hard to understand.
Still in the community center, midstride through a smile-and-nod, I received the blank, anticipatory look that means I was supposed to say something because my companion asked me a question. I'd missed it entirely. Turned out, Guadalupe was asking me where I was from, and some other details. I told her I was from Florida. Her nine-year-old face screwed up in confusion. Her friend clarified the situation: "It's on the other side," he said. "Oh," she said, "I've got an uncle that lives in Phoenix, en el otro lado (on the other side)."
The wall was built in 1994 here in Nogales as part of the Border Patrol's "Operation Safeguard." Guadalupe was born in 1997. It's part of her reality. I guess kids grew up in Berlin as well. Nogales is not a Mexican town. Only because of the wall, there now is a Nogales, AZ and a Nogales, Sonora. It historically was known as Ambos Nogales (or both Nogaleses). Nogales is a border town. Ceselia, a long-term employee with BorderLinks told us yesterday that back before the wall, folks would call across the chain-linked fence to their neighbors, many whom were friends: "Hey. Could you pick me up a gallon of milk?" "Yeah, grab me a pint of tequila on your side and we'll swop." It was faster than going through the Port of Entry.
When you drive into Mexico, you don't have to show your drivers license. When you drive to the U.S., you've got to huff exhaust for one and a half to two hours waiting in the customs Port of Entry line. You've got to answer questions about what you did, where you're going, whether you're "bringing anything back with you?" etc, etc. All cars get stopped, and poorer vehicles, darker faces, and heavier accents all increase the likelihood of a search, canine sniff-out, and further questioning. I'm not crying for anybody or throwing guilt; it's just true. You ought to know. For a U.S. citizen to enter Mexico, you've got to... nothing. If you're Mexican, in order to enter the U.S., you've got to have a crossing card (which costs $300 U.S. dollars), or a Visa (which also costs at least $300), and starting in January, everyone also has to have a passport (which costs $80 U.S. dollars). Starting in January, US citizens will also be required to carry a US passport to re-enter the U.S. from Mexico.
At the top of the 16ft corrogated steel wall, there is a guard rail. I've mentioned it twice before. It angles backwards into Mexico. The edge is sharp. Back in September, our Border Parol tour guide told us about how he sliced open his arm rather seriously during the wall's construction. On the U.S. side, I often heard this wall talked about as "protection." Here the kids talk about the wall and "the other side." Folks here think of the wall more like the walls of a cage. In reality, they don't talk about it much. It's a rather bitter subject. Here it's not wrapped in such good PR. It's actually rusted corrugated steel, 16ft tall with a guardrail at the top.
It's a curious thing, our border relations with Mexico. Have you ever ran into one of those folks that are seriously afraid of germs? They're usually pretty insulting. I like to think of myself as a fairly clean person. I wash my hands. I don't cut my vegetables on the same cutting board as my meat without washing it first. And then, there are those folks that microwave their sponges before every use in order to sterilize them. They tend to furrow their eyebrows a lot and open their mouth in panic when you abid by the "five-second rule." They're only a step away from Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. They're the folks that don't really want to hug you, and if you're in town, they're afraid to offer you a place to stay because they'll have to wash their sheets and hire a fumigator as soon as you leave. Really? What do they think I've got? Gengivitis, leprosy, cold-sores, hand-fugus, influenza, and oozing venereal disease? What the heck?
Sometimes I think that American immigration policy is kind of like the reactions of an obsessively-clean, rich person. Really? They're Mexican. Well shit. Then they must be dirty, lazy, dishonest, theiving, illegal, impatient, waiting for a hand-out, and a-- if not already, a potential-- rapist. Solution: keep them away. Let's build a fence-- make it a wall. And, we need to micro-wave our sponges and take some antibiotics. Please. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), please, we need you to sterilize our community as well. Raid our communities too, please.
Remember the Greyhound? Folks I know tend to have a certain hesitancy with folks that have less money than they do. They're "dangerous." I do it too. It's no secret that we let slip words like "The sketchy part of town," which is affluent-code for "the poor part of town" or "they-have-less-money-than-we-do part of town." Y'all. We do the same thing with the twelve million illegal migrants. Except it's worse because they've got even less money.
That's a couple of things I've been seeing, hearing, living, and thinking.
peace be with you,
Nathan
Look here. Nine Posts. Nine.
A couple of years ago, for three years, I served as a Co-Moderator of the Presbyterian Youth Connection, which is like the "Congress" of Presbyterian youth. I learned a lot about email. Along with my co-hort Patricia, we coordinated meetings, recruited volunteers, and passed ideas along. Because of my work with the Youth Connection, I had somewhere around 300 related email addresses in my address book. I learned a lot about emails and, more generally, about communication. If, for instance, I was in need of some help to run a meeting, plan a conference, or start a movement (you know, small things) and I sent a blanket email to "Everybody out there"-- around 300 folks-- I'd get absolutely no responses. If, on the other hand, I copy-pasted the email into ten separate emails, added a personalized first paragraph like "That book you were telling me about, you know The Populist Moment?, really sounded great. I've put it on my "to read" list. You know, I got to thinking about something that's coming up..." and started the emails with names: "Hey Michael!" "Lateef listen here" "Megan, check this out" "Fauntleroy" you know "Daniel-" "Rachel" "Lindsey" "Chris" "Mary, how are you?" ... with this bit of personalization, I'd end up getting nearly eight out of ten responses, and a bunch of them would be positive.
But, of course, I'm not doing that with these update emails. So, after eight emails, your mental space, your lack of time, and your fidgety fingers probably add up to a desire to delete. Hey, I've done it too. These emails aren't about guilt; I don't think good things come of that emotion.
So...
I moved in with my host family. Spanish for breakfast, lunch, dinner, late evening snack. All spanish, all the time. The first night here, I wrote in my journal:
"So, I've moved in with my homestay. Oh my God I am tired. As I try to find words even in english, they are impeded by the great slate of blank, like the "nothingness" from the Never Ending Story; it consumes all thoughts and they are forever lost as my mind attempts comprehension and my thoughts navigate rapid translation. Every gap is filled with the meaningless word "Pues" (Well). Something funny? "Pues." Something serious? "Pues." Something I agree with? "Pues." Something I don't understand? "Pues" Mi mente esta muy cansado, tanto cansado. Solamente tengo dos mas palabras: Buenos Noches. [My mind is very tired, so tired. I only have two more words: Good Night.]"
The first night, before I wrote in my journal, we met our to-be host families at a potluck dinner party. We started learning all the important words, like, you know: boogers. "How do you say, caca en tu nariz (poop en your nose)?" Mocos. As it turns out, "mocosos" are "snotty nosed little children" or just "kids." So, we learned the five, ten, or fifteen other ways to say kids. In spanish, or at least in northern Mexico, there's about a million different ways to say everything. Everything. Cada cosa. Todas las cosas. And so it goes.
About that time at the party, amid the laughter, Fausto, my to-be host father, reacted to our use of english. "No. You can't. No!" he joked. "From now on, only spanish. No more english. You're here to learn spanish, so you can only speak in spanish. Every english word costs one dollar." I bargined with him: "How about ten cents?" "No, un dolar," he said. I've been living with Fausto, Chayito (the mother), Iban (20-year-old son) and Cynthia (12-year-old daughter) now for two weeks. Still, every use of engligh in the house is promptly called out: "Un dolar!" Of couse, nobody actually pays. The other day, I called Fausto out because he said "Good morning." When I said, "Un dolar!" he said that we were actually even because I'd said "dolar" and "dolares" (or dollars) are American and therefore english, and so, in fact, I owed him a dollar. "No, no," he corrected himself: "10 pesos."
Currently it costs 10.85 pesos to change for a dollar. In 1994, it was three to one (3 pesos, 1 dollar). Promptly after the passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), in a matter of two days, the peso devalued to 50% of its prior exchange value. In two days, the exchange rate went from 3:1 to 6:1. Two days. Imagine going to the grocery and paying $7.50 for milk this Sunday. The devaluation was wrapped up in the NAFTA negotiations. I read it was anticipated and agreed upon. Why? Who'd it help? NAFTA has cost the U.S. workers three million jobs, and our neighbors to the south have to pay $7.50 for milk. Good ole not-free, free trade.
The wall, "el muro" is practically in my host family's backyard. Well, it's in the neighborhood, just up the street. The first day in the neighborhood, I walked up the street and saw these great rolling hills just a few hundred yards away. My mind raced forward to picnicks and afternoon reading opportunities. I kept walking up the hill, and, then, in the ravine between the hills, I saw the wall. 16ft of rusted corrogated steel with a guard-rail at the top to prevent recreation and temp-work. Well dang. My imagined picnick would cost a possible concussion and a felony. 100 yards: so close, yet so far away.
Remember Elias? My spanish tutor? The guy whom I asked how to say "Your feet stink like dead fish"? The man loves to eat acorns. We watched Narnia the other day in Spanish, and jointly munched away. They're a lot sweeter here than in the East. My friend Rachel Williamson, from Warren Wilson told me that she'd found a single oak tree at Warren Wilson that had "the sweetest nuts on campus. [She] ate a whole acorn without spitting it out." So either Elias found the sweet tree, or they're just sweeter here in northern Mexico.
Anyway, today we went across town on the buses to a community center where he works teaching kids English. Last night was halloween, so a little snotty nosed kid, a "mocoso" had a bag of candy and shared it around. She kept insisting I have some, but, of course, I can't eat sugar. I swear those kids love Elias. When he took out his guitar, all talking stopped, and they gathered around. Listening. Watching. The four-year-old, Martin kept trying to strum the cords. Eventually, we moved around back to the basket-ball court. Elias left his guitar in the hands of Martin and the other five-year-olds while we and the rest of the children played a game a lot like duck-duck-goose. Then he played some more songs. After a song or two, the kids began to drift away.
The girls started doing cartwheels and back-bends. The boys climbed on top of the basketball goal and jumped down acting like their favorite wreslers from the Lucha Libre (Mexico's WWF). All of them called for attention. "Natan! Mira (Look). Watch me. Watch this." And to Elias: "Profe! (Teacher!) Profe! Look. Watch. Watch me. You weren't looking. Hey, I'll do it again. Watch. Watch!"
Katie, my niece, she's ten. I know about this stuff.
They did their own thing until Elias started singing and playing songs in English. The cords started; I thought: Do I know this one? What is this? No, I can't. Of course not. Ahha! It was "Imagine," John Lenin's song. Then he played "Stand By me", the overly-sentimental song that I can only guess originated in the early nineties. If you want to know beauty, listen to 25 little mocosos try to sing, "Darling, Darling, Darling. Stand. Stand by me."
Of course, it's has become routine now to hear people speak of "el otro lado" (the other side). The first couple of times I heard the phrase, I asked for clarification: "The other side of what?" Or, one time, we were walking on the street, so I asked, "Over there?" pointing. No. It means the other side of the wall, the Estados Unidos, the United States.
The great thing about talking spanish with kids is that they do most of the talking. They say a lot of "watch!" They fill me in on the gossip of their friends: so-and-so is her boy friend-- "No he's not!" "Yeah. He. Is." But, mostly all I have to do is listen, and nod, and laugh, and try to offer appropriate listening grunts. They have a lot to share. The problem arrises when they ask me questions in their high-pitched, pre-puberdescent voices. They're about as easy to understand as, well, um-- They're hard to understand.
Still in the community center, midstride through a smile-and-nod, I received the blank, anticipatory look that means I was supposed to say something because my companion asked me a question. I'd missed it entirely. Turned out, Guadalupe was asking me where I was from, and some other details. I told her I was from Florida. Her nine-year-old face screwed up in confusion. Her friend clarified the situation: "It's on the other side," he said. "Oh," she said, "I've got an uncle that lives in Phoenix, en el otro lado (on the other side)."
The wall was built in 1994 here in Nogales as part of the Border Patrol's "Operation Safeguard." Guadalupe was born in 1997. It's part of her reality. I guess kids grew up in Berlin as well. Nogales is not a Mexican town. Only because of the wall, there now is a Nogales, AZ and a Nogales, Sonora. It historically was known as Ambos Nogales (or both Nogaleses). Nogales is a border town. Ceselia, a long-term employee with BorderLinks told us yesterday that back before the wall, folks would call across the chain-linked fence to their neighbors, many whom were friends: "Hey. Could you pick me up a gallon of milk?" "Yeah, grab me a pint of tequila on your side and we'll swop." It was faster than going through the Port of Entry.
When you drive into Mexico, you don't have to show your drivers license. When you drive to the U.S., you've got to huff exhaust for one and a half to two hours waiting in the customs Port of Entry line. You've got to answer questions about what you did, where you're going, whether you're "bringing anything back with you?" etc, etc. All cars get stopped, and poorer vehicles, darker faces, and heavier accents all increase the likelihood of a search, canine sniff-out, and further questioning. I'm not crying for anybody or throwing guilt; it's just true. You ought to know. For a U.S. citizen to enter Mexico, you've got to... nothing. If you're Mexican, in order to enter the U.S., you've got to have a crossing card (which costs $300 U.S. dollars), or a Visa (which also costs at least $300), and starting in January, everyone also has to have a passport (which costs $80 U.S. dollars). Starting in January, US citizens will also be required to carry a US passport to re-enter the U.S. from Mexico.
At the top of the 16ft corrogated steel wall, there is a guard rail. I've mentioned it twice before. It angles backwards into Mexico. The edge is sharp. Back in September, our Border Parol tour guide told us about how he sliced open his arm rather seriously during the wall's construction. On the U.S. side, I often heard this wall talked about as "protection." Here the kids talk about the wall and "the other side." Folks here think of the wall more like the walls of a cage. In reality, they don't talk about it much. It's a rather bitter subject. Here it's not wrapped in such good PR. It's actually rusted corrugated steel, 16ft tall with a guardrail at the top.
It's a curious thing, our border relations with Mexico. Have you ever ran into one of those folks that are seriously afraid of germs? They're usually pretty insulting. I like to think of myself as a fairly clean person. I wash my hands. I don't cut my vegetables on the same cutting board as my meat without washing it first. And then, there are those folks that microwave their sponges before every use in order to sterilize them. They tend to furrow their eyebrows a lot and open their mouth in panic when you abid by the "five-second rule." They're only a step away from Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. They're the folks that don't really want to hug you, and if you're in town, they're afraid to offer you a place to stay because they'll have to wash their sheets and hire a fumigator as soon as you leave. Really? What do they think I've got? Gengivitis, leprosy, cold-sores, hand-fugus, influenza, and oozing venereal disease? What the heck?
Sometimes I think that American immigration policy is kind of like the reactions of an obsessively-clean, rich person. Really? They're Mexican. Well shit. Then they must be dirty, lazy, dishonest, theiving, illegal, impatient, waiting for a hand-out, and a-- if not already, a potential-- rapist. Solution: keep them away. Let's build a fence-- make it a wall. And, we need to micro-wave our sponges and take some antibiotics. Please. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), please, we need you to sterilize our community as well. Raid our communities too, please.
Remember the Greyhound? Folks I know tend to have a certain hesitancy with folks that have less money than they do. They're "dangerous." I do it too. It's no secret that we let slip words like "The sketchy part of town," which is affluent-code for "the poor part of town" or "they-have-less-money-than-we-do part of town." Y'all. We do the same thing with the twelve million illegal migrants. Except it's worse because they've got even less money.
That's a couple of things I've been seeing, hearing, living, and thinking.
peace be with you,
Nathan
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