We got into San Francisco at 5 this morning. I slept until about 10, then was awake. I got sick yesterday morning during debriefing. I am still tired. Everything is still a blur. San Francisco is cool and grey, overcast. Summer is nearly over. Of course our summer usually comes in the fall. But soon it will be winter, rain, christmas. In the desert we'd just be finishing evening patrol, coming back to camp for dinner, debriefings, bed. I'd be tired, aching, walking slow. Telling stories of my patrol, listening to the stories of others. I wonder what's happening there now. I wonder how the patient is doing, if he's ever going to make it home. I wonder who's waking up from their daytime rest, getting ready to hike the trails all night. I wonder if they're finding the water we left, the beans, the socks. I wonder if any of the migrants who were crossing when I was there have made it home like I have.
Everything is comfortable here. My tiny bedroom never seemed so big, so much space to stretch out, keep my things. My bed was so soft I stayed in it most of the day, even though I couldn't sleep. Technology gave me access I hadn't had in a week, my phone, my computer. Showering was a simple convenience, different kinds of soap to choose from, a loofah to scrub out the deeper layers of grime in my skin. I dressed in all black, as if a rebellion to the khakis and light colors I'd been wearing all week. I walked to the bank, the coffee shop. The terrain was flat, smooth, paved. I didn't need a GPS to find it. Everything is easy.
But I'm already planning how I can get back. How much money I'd have to save to take a few months off work, go to Mexico or Guatemala to learn Spanish really well, go back to No More Deaths next summer and stay longer, be able to do more. Work in the desert and maybe the Border Aide stations too, providing services to people who had been deported, gathering stories of abuse by the border patrol.
I'm still trying to piece my experience together in my head. I was only there a week, but in reality it felt on one hand so much longer, and on the other not nearly long enough. Before and after my trip I've been reading The Devil's Highway and it's really underscored the deadly realities of this situation. And I've been thinking about how to relate this back to my own communities, in San Francisco and in Michigan. Because every time someone gets deported from here, you know they're going to want to get back. Wouldn't you? If someone picked me up off the streets of San Francisco tomorrow and shipped me back to Michigan, well I love Michigan, but I'd want to come back. And a lot of these people have families here, have parents or children or spouses. As soon as they can, they're going to be in that desert, walking those trails. And some of them are going to die. No matter how much water we leave out, no matter how loudly we yell "tengo agua, comida, y attencion medica!", as long as the global economy is pushing people north, as long as the border patrol is pushing border crossers into the desert, some of them are going to die. These are not just interchangeable, faceless migrants, these are not just numbers on a page. These are our friends, neighbors, community members. They are people making a very tough decision in order to be with their families, have opportunities, make enough money to make life better. The penalty for that should not be death. It should never be death.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is really good. I've spent some weeks out in that desert too and so much of what you wrote rings so true, too true, when the world collapses around that little camp and everything else is unimaginably far away and you just can't understand how it's all possible. (Or at least that's how it gets to me.) When such a jagged and brutal world becomes sharp and clear and real it hurts. Yet at the same time it feels good to be there. It's confusing. I think that's part of why I always want to go back.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard about the desecration of Josselina's Shrine. Like you said, disagreeing is one thing, and slashing bottles in other places is another. But that, doing that in such obvious proximity to death is just ruthless.
Thanks for writing this--you say so much so well.