ICE & GPS

I have to go with the obvious pun here: it sounds like it should be a jewelry advertisement. ICE ankle bracelets. Of course ICE here does not mean diamonds and the anklets in question or not decorative. During my visit to the shelter last month two African guys arrived about a week apart. My understanding is that they were both seeking political asylum but were denied. Neither could be deported - in their cases I don't specifically know why. It could be that their citizenship can't be proven, that their country's government refuses to receive any deportees, or possibly that there is not enough government in their country to arrange deportations with. (These guys are from different countries and arrived separately.) This is not a terribly uncommon situation as far as I know - at least I've encountered it various times. Because they cannot be detained indefinitely they were released on their own recognizance. They will have the opportunity to obtain work permission and a social security number so that they can support themselves, but have no official immigration status (no visa, no residency etc., and most likely no way to ever get status). Ostensibly if circumstances ever change so that they can be deported, they will be.

Both men, within a week or so of being released and arriving at the shelter, went to regularly scheduled check-in appointments with ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) and came home with GPS monitoring devices in the form of ankle bracelets. The reasons for this were not really made clear to them. They both told ICE that if there were prohibitions on them traveling, then they would not travel, they would come to their check-in appointments, etc. Sure, it's just their word, but they made good on it at least by showing up for their first appointments. However they were both told that they had no choice.

A bit of internet research on this practice reveals that ICE is using the ankle bracelets as part of a program intended to be an alternative to detention. Notably it has been used to allowed mothers who are picked up by ICE to return to their children while their cases are being processed rather than spend that time in a detention center (as the fathers of the same children do). In that case it is an alternative to detention - as in the woman would otherwise be detained but the use of the ankle bracelet allows her to not be detained. (There are other components to the program as well.) Sounds terribly progressive, but really it's a money saver - it's cheaper then maintaining someone in detention, which costs $95 a day.

When does it stop being a money saver? When it's used on people who would not otherwise be detained as in the case of my African friends at the shelter. Then it's just...? A question mark. Haven't found an explanation yet. I suspect this will be legally challenged by someone. For people who are not criminals and have rightfully been put in liberty it seems like a clear invasion of privacy.

The psychological effects of this are real. It's humiliating and degrading. It amounts to being treated as an animal. While in Texas I had the chance to catch up with a young man who I knew from my time at the shelter. He is a Cuban national of African descent who is having legal difficulties similar to those of the African guys. He had moved to Atlanta and the ICE agents there, in addition to generally being rude and unpleasant to him, gifted him with his own piece of ankle jewelry. He felt so dehumanized by it that at one point he was contemplating suicide. He finally decided to go to the ICE office and refuse to leave until they removed it. The two guys from Africa are doing their best to roll with the punches on this one, but it is obvious that they feel ashamed, frustrated, and angry about the situation. Frankly I feel the same way.

Here is a picture of one of the guys with his face cropped out for privacy. I was not trying to photograph the anklet, but you can see it on his left leg. Those power cords? On is for the stereo, of course. The other one is the charger for his anklet. That is really the kicker to me - people who have the ankle bracelets must plug themselves into an outlet for two to three hours a day to charge it.

Cake on my Face

What I forgot to do immediately upon arriving in Texas is put my birthday on the calendar so that I would not be scheduled to work. Due to this oversight I was, of course, put on the schedule for the PM shift on my birthday. Oh well. I have worked on my birthday in the past, and it is not the end of the world. I went to a free concert and dinner with some friends the night before and that was my celebration. However there turned out to be plenty of festivities on my birthday was well.

My parents sent a fruit bouquet that got there in the morning. That was fun and delicious and the kids went nuts over it. Shortly after lunch the some of the guests went to work crafting me a b-day cake that ended up being two elaborately decorated cakes. It helped that there was a guy with culinary training around. He had just arrived at the house that day, and I had only been at the house a little over a week. No one would be surprised, and I would not be offended if after such a short acquaintance the guests would not be motivated to make a big deal about my birthday. However, they were motivated, in fact, to make it a really special day. Besides the sheer effort that went into decorating the cakes, they were delicious. After singing me "Las Mananitas" and me blowing out my candles I took the traditional "mordita", or little bite. It is traditional for the birthday boy or girl to take a small bite directly out of the cake before it has been cut - not using a fork or anything, just lean over and take a bite out of the cake. In almost every case someone standing behind you will take the opportunity to shove your whole face into the cake.

After cake there was a dance in the living room, and lots of roaring laughter as lots of unlikely couples took their turn on their dance floor. It was really really fun, and I pretty much forgot that I was working. At least until 10 pm when I had to turn off the music and send everyone to bed, then do the dishes. It was completely worth it though - my most memorable birthday in a while.

Beyond Good Intentions

I recently stumbled across Beyond Good Intentions. Beyond Good Intentions is a web based program with a series of short videos (by short I mean 5-10 minutes each) on the topic of international aid and development. The host of the show traveled around the world for a year investigating different approaches to aid and development to see "what works and what doesn't." While some of the biases of the makers come across, it's never a case of them saying, "This is approach is right and this approach is wrong." They're not trying to give concrete answers. It's more of an exploration of the topic, but it does a good job of addressing some of the modern approaches to aid and development and what some of the common pitfalls are. Their goal is to encourage dialogue on the topic, centered on the idea that good intentions are not enough.

My career goal in college was to work in international development, but my senior year I became disillusioned with it. Well, to easily enter the field one usually needs a masters degree, and I had at least enough doubts not to want to pursue a masters degree at that juncture. I remember at the time I was determined to continue to study on my own and to explore different aspects of the development debate as well as pay attention to what's going on in the field. I haven't really done a great job, but I'm starting to turn my brain towards it again...

Things to Come

I was glancing back over my personal journal entries from the last months yesterday. It was pretty amusing, I tell you, to read about my frustrations about being an ENTIRE MONTH post-Texas and still not knowing what my next step was. Funny how one's perspective changes as the months roll on. How you stop planning on living at some future time and just start living. In the meantime I have become content to flow with the river's current instead of trying to push it. (Have you ever tried to push a river?) I have no idea what's going to happen. I've sort of reached a place of expectation, feeling like I'm "on call" for some opportunity that's going to pop up, but without having much sense of what it could be. But I'm open. To whatever. I still check the Chicago sites, but I'm pondering and checking about a million other things, too...

One thing I've been considering is doing some traveling. By that I mean, I have been thinking about doing some traveling at some point in the future after I've made and saved some money - I'd like to say in maybe a year or so, but who knows...could be a long while. Depending on whether you consider my time on the border to be "travel", it's been a while since my last major trip. I've spent a lot of time thinking of the kinds of travel I've done in the past and what they've meant to me and meant in a larger context. I've turned my thoughts towards taking another big trip, but I've been thinking a lot about what KIND of travel - what do I want it to look like this time. How do I have an experience that is responsible and educational but also engaging. I have my old ideas of what makes meaningful travel, but these days I have lots of questions about those ideas. I hope those old ideas and questions will become new ideas and plans. It won't happen soon for financial reasons, so that gives me plenty of time to consider what my goals are and what kind of trip I want to take.

In the meantime there is a little more than a week of school left, and I doubt I will get anymore work this year. I spent some time pondering what I wanted to do this summer - try to find a summer job at a camp or something like that, or get a cooking gig somewhere, or ?? And while I love summer camp and I love working as a cook, both ideas were leaving me flat. Also, you may know that I've been wanting to visit the shelter ever since I left, and a month or two ago that desire was getting pretty intense, and I was missing EVERYTHING about the border. Well, from there it just seemed like a logical conclusion, and on June 10 I will be heading South for the summer, or at least part of it. I really don't know how long I will be able to stay, although probably not as long as I would like. Regardless, I'm really excited to be going and all and grateful to have the opportunity.

Looking forward to:

1. Watching the sun rise from the roof of the shelter
2. Seeing old friends, volunteers/guests/others, and meeting new
3. Hopefully being there when the summer rains start
4. Mass at my favorite church and maybe in the shelter chapel
5. Cheap beer and cheap burritos
6. Musica bajo las estrellas
7. Train watching and perhaps running afoul of the train yard rent-a-cop (hmm, did I ever post about that?)
8. Sitting in the mist of the alligator fountain
9. Re-memorizing large sections of el folleto (the page of info and rules that we give out to new guests)
10. Looking at the mountains daily
11. Day trip to J-town
12. Art museum
13. Sitting in the sala of an evening platicando con quien sea...
14. Shooting hoops in the parking lot...or more likely watching others do so

The list goes on...

Top 2

Top 2 moments from 2 days in the bilingual 2nd grade:

1. I'm working with a small group doing some flash cards of words they have been working on. One of the words is "oh". I hold it up, the kid reads it, and then I say, "Yes, as in, 'oh my goodness!'" One of the other kids say, "Yes, but our teacher says it's better to just say '¡Ay, albondigas!'" Roughly translated, 'oh meatballs!' I laughed at that, which encouraged all the kids to throw their hands in the air in dismay, slap their hands to their foreheads, and repeat '¡ay albondigas!' in chorus about fifty times.

2. In ESL class we were brainstorming about all the fruits and vegetables we could grow in a garden, and one kid raised his hand and said, "Pie."

Naturally my response was, "¡Ay albondigas!"

In his defense he kind of meant apples.

Eres Luz Que Puede Tocar Este Corazon...

For the last few months I've been watching the telenovela "Cuidado con el Angel". As you probably know, I swear by novelas as a language learning tool, and Cuidado has helped keep me sharp while I haven't been otherwise using my Spanish too terribly frequently. The plot is incredibly tedious and more than usually unbelievable - not one of the more sophisticated novelas I've seen, but it'll do in a pinch. The main character, Marichuy, was raised in an orphanage until she ran away at the age of fifteen, lived on the streets for a while, and was then adopted by a woman of the barrio. As a result she has an extremely slang-y, "uneducated", way of speaking. I have learned a lot of interesting expressions from Marichuy, so I present you with a small sampling of Mexican Spanish slang a la Cuidado con el Angel:

Pintarse de colores - literally "paint yourself with colors" (or something), means to leave or to get out of here

Naranjas - literally "oranges", Marichuy uses it to mean nothing. No quiero nada contigo becomes No quiero naranjas contigo. (I want nothing to do with you).

Miguelita - mi, that is me. Alejate de mi becomes alejate de miguelita (Get away from me, leave me alone).

Retacharse - return, go back

Canton - big house, like the mansion of Marichuy's rich birthparents she has recently reunited with.

"No quiero naranjas contigo asi que pintate de colores, retachate pa' tu canton, y ¡no te acercas a miguelita!" - Marichuy to Juan Miguel, the love of her life. Repeated over and over and over again.

Resolution

Being patient and trusting in the midst of life's transitions is a valuable skill. A valuable skill I hope I will one day possess. Honestly I think I've improved by small increments over the last six months, but I'm still far from where I'd like to be in this area. After all, I keep realizing over and over that being impatient and anxious never actually succeeds in making anything happen in my life.

I've been reflecting a lot lately on what seems to me to be the difficulty of being all of what we are. Or at least the difficulty of me being fully 100% all of what I am. There is such a temptation to settle, accept trade offs, and be content with being just a few of the things (but hopefully important ones) that we are. Perhaps this is the societal message we hear. Perhaps we are just held back by the difficulty of reconciling all the things that we are and finding a way to contain them all and be them all.



Almost every day that I can I go for a walk on the trail that is about three blocks from my parents' house. It is old railroad tracks converted into a cement trail that snakes through our town. My walk usually begins or ends at the teeny tiny nature sanctuary I've posted about before. It is, as I may have mentioned, really small. Maybe half a city block, if that. However, there is a creek and lots of birds and animals and unpaved trails, and especially now that there are leaves on the trees again it's enough to make you feel like you're in a wild place. Time after time I find myself back there because, no matter how insignificant or miniscule, being in a wild place makes my heart sing and my soul pray. And just maybe I think a little more clearly there, too.



And sometimes I laugh at myself, too, for being so contented by such a little thing. Don't get me wrong - I think appreciating the little things in life is extremely important. Sometimes, though, when I'm there I think of all the amazing lakes and rivers and mountains and deserts and forests and jungles that are out there in the world - bigger, more wild, more beautiful, accessible and yet unvisited by me. I sit by a tiny creek and watch a sparrow fly from branch to branch. I think, wow, if I love being here, how much more would I love being in somewhere truly wild, that's not half a block from houses and streets.

It's made me realize that I want to be almost everything that I've ever wanted to be, no matter how young I was when I wanted it. There was a point in my life when my dearest wish was to be an explorer of wild places, and even though that dream has lain mostly dormant for a pretty long time I realize that I still want to be that. That is not, however, the only thing I want to be. I still want to be a writer, an artist, and a traveler, too. And yes, I want to be a servant. I don't want to "help the poor", but I do want to get to know them, accompany them, and let them teach me. I want to fight injustices. I want to be all these things.



I have no idea how to be all of these things. I would like to be all of them at once. Part of me thinks that if I can find it within myself to not accept anything less, then I will find away to do it all. If I am willing to accept uncertainty, if I am willing to let go and let myself be carried by the spirit, then somehow I will discover how it all fits together. If I can be patient and courageous, if I can challenge the limits and walls that are around me, somehow, maybe I can do it.



What if it's not possible? What if I can only be one or two or so of those things at the same time? Is it enough to say - I'm laying aside this part of me for now, but I will come back to it. If I can't be everything I want to be all at once, then I will just be everything at intervals without giving anything up for good.

That approach might involve a lot of compromise, yet most of the time I go even farther than that. I have this idea that I have to choose one, maybe two things to focus on and make my life out of and let the rest go. I attach value judgements and decide that certain pursuits are "selfish" and others are "worthy". I seek security instead of fulfillment. Presumably it's irresponsible to do otherwise. Vagabonding and creativity were all well and good when I was just out of high school, debt free and still able to use my parents health insurance. These days it hardly seems reasonable.



For now I'm recommitting to trying for everything. Rather than seeing unreasonable walls and limits I'm going to believe that it's all possible and see a way to make it happen. Rather than assigning value judgements on the things I love I will trust that being the truest most complete version of myself is somehow a virtue. That's not to say that I will just give in to doing whatever I want to do regardless of how it affects myself and others. Rather it is to say that I will stop trying deny the longings that God has placed in my heart and instead open myself up to understanding what they mean and how they all fit together. I can't say I have any plans right now - I have ideas, but also a sense that anything could happen. I'm trying to just let go and let things happen, even if it seems like they don't.

For The Birds

Here are the goldfinches, with a cardinal looking on from the tray feeder on the right:



Red headed woodpecker:



A Rose-breasted grosbeak (and a mourning dove):

Exploring the Border

Have I told you guys about Border Explorer? If you pay attention to my measly list of links in the sidebar, you may have already hopped over to check out her blog. Billie and I met at the shelter, and I love her blog because besides giving me a way to keep up on what she is doing, it also provides lots of information about the border. I have never been a "news" kind of person, so I am sorry to say that since leaving the border I have been kind of in the dark about a lot of what has been going on down there. Billie helps me stay more up to date, and the best part is that a lot of the information comes first hand, since for part of every year she is actually down on the border witnessing a lot of what is going on. Anyway, her blog is well worth checking out - and I am NOT just saying this because today she gave me a very touching award on her blog. That was a verrrry nice touch, but Border Explorer stands on its own merit. Check it out!

News Flash!

It's National Poetry Month! And has been for 24 days. Oops. I was thinking about blogging this way back in MARCH and somehow I STILL dropped the ball. Well I hope you have all been happily enjoying the festivities without waiting for me to inform you of it. I sincerely hope.

If you DO need help getting into the spirit, check out the Free Verse group on flickr.

Also, next Thursday (the 30th) is National Poem in your Pocket Day, and it is not too late to participate and take a lot of people with you.*

You've got six more days...get out there and poetry it up.

*Blog etiquette requires that I tip my hat to my parents who brought the above links to my attention.