Pages

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Tijuana. The younger children.


During my week in Tijuana with Al Otro Lado Border Rights Project, I had two assignments (after the morning of shopping for bread and making peanut butter sandwiches).  One was to greet and sign in asylum seekers as they lined up at the door at 12:30 for legal counsel and/or medical attention.  In the afternoon, I looked after the kids, usually with other volunteers.  It was called playtime, in a set-aside area of the larger room where everything happened, very well stocked with jigsaw puzzles, books, soft and hard toys of all kinds, for all age groups. The number of children varied daily from 3 to 10 or so, and so did their temperaments and needs vary.  One child repeatedly left the play area to reassure herself that her mother was still nearby.  One four year old girl, dressed in pink, could nod yes or no but never spoke a word, and drew with a pink crayon and painted in pink, so I knew that pink was a comfort blanket for her, but she finally branched out.  There were resilient children and there were exhausted children.  There was quiet play in the room sometimes, and at other times, noises of either exuberance at being warm and fed and having boxes full of toys, or sounds of needs that could not readily be met.

Narrima came on the last day I was there.  She was about 7 or 8, but wise and patient with younger children.  I asked if she’d like to do a puzzle with me, and we were off, and then another puzzle, and then painting.  She got it that my Spanish wasn’t really solid, so she supplied the words I needed.  At one point, I went out of the room for 10 minutes, and when I came back, she had painted this message for me: Fransis, te extrañaré mucho. de Narrima.  I will miss you very much.   I was called out of the room permanently in the late afternoon to do a task nobody else wanted to do (sit by the downstairs locked door, turning people away until the sessions the next day or letting in people with medical needs), and when I said good-bye to Narrima, we hugged with the embrace of old dear friends who would really miss each other.  She’s probably forgotten me, facing too many trials for so young a child. I won’t forget her.




I had a friend a long time ago who was a pilot of a two-seater, and we flew excursions to various tiny airports.  At one, there was a small hut where we had to sign in. A sparrow-sized bird had accidentally flown in, and 
not knowing glass, was furiously beating its wings against the back window.  As I approached, it became still, no doubt with fear.  I was able to put my hands around it and carry it out of the hut, and when I opened my hands it stood there for a couple of seconds, figuring things out before flying away.  The bird was lucky that someone came by, but I was profoundly lucky, that I experienced for an instant an intimate connection with nature, that I was privileged to touch wildness and hold it in my hand. 

Another time, standing in a parking lot, a butterfly landed on my shoulder and stayed a while.  These incidents remain with me, and I remember them in relationship to Narrima.  Not that I saved her, or that she came out of the wild and landed on me, but that she came out of abstraction, out of newspaper reports and photos, one of so many who we don’t touch directly and don’t even see, and there she was, present, and real.  More than all the 200 other people I met that week,  Narrima and I really found each other, something like having a butterfly choose my shoulder to rest on.

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Tijuana continued.

I was expecting a different scene when I got to Tijuana. I  was expecting streets lined with homeless asylum seekers, camped around the door at Al Otro Lado. It wasn’t so. They were invisible. We arrived Saturday and Tijuana looked like any city, with pedestrians and thriving mercados, and the same on all other days. When they did come to the AOL door from 12:30 till 1 each day, I didn’t know where they had come from. I didn’t visit the shelters, which all accounts paint as full to capacity, and I didn’t see the street dwellers, and I didn’t ask. My  assignment was to welcome the people and sign them in so that they could later hear about their rights, or lack of, and have a private consultation, and to be for a few hours in a warm welcoming  place. At the intake, they would  reveal all that they had traveled through and why, and all the details of their current situation.  AOL Border Rights Project celebrated 100 days of legal help during our stay.

Volunteers gather every morning at 7 at the Chaparral, the Plaza on the Tijuana side. There would be a station with a table and a long queue of people, who are there to get a number that in a few days or weeks or longer would be called for the first leg of their journey by van across the border. Near the queue, people who already have numbers mill around. Each number is assigned to 10 people, and they calculate from the last number called yesterday, what day they think they should start showing up for their own ride in the van. Every day 40-70 people are called. Thousands are waiting. The AOL volunteers talk to the waiting people and hand out maps to the AOL office (across from the Wax Museum). This, plus word-of-mouth, is the main outreach strategy, the way to let all those waiting people know that there is a place that really cares and can provide legal Information and medical assistance and a few hours of daycare, and modest food. The numbers are called and the called ones pass behind a barrier, to wait for the vans that will ferry them over.

      The barrier in the plaza almost deserted after the morning lineup 

Until Wednesday the 6th of March, every day, AOL volunteers were back there too, beyond the barrier, with those preparing to leave, with two critical missions. First, to hand out Sharpies and instruct people to put names, phone numbers, and contact information, on their arms and the arms of their children, to guard as best as possible against the horror of the separation of families. And the other task, equally critical: people will be transported to holding cells on the US side, three stories down, 48 degrees cold, for three to seven days, where they will be permitted to wear only one layer of clothing and no shoes, and AOL must tell them that frightening news.  The volunteers distribute thick warm socks and sweaters, as most asylum seekers don’t know ahead of arriving what awaits them. They are wearing t-shirts, shoes without socks, and they can't put these new clothes on top, they must change into them. This is the only layer they will be permitted.

Allison and I were there Wednesday the 6th. I helped as much as my Spanish allowed, rescued a few times by a native speaker. But the guard was unhappy with our presence that day, with the serious help being offered, and was rather threatening.  We were sent away and couldn't return again to that side of the barrier on Thursday and Friday. A small cadre was chosen for outreach. I was glad I got at least that one day.

Some levity: I was up until midnight Tuesday night, and set my alarm for five-thirty a.m. When the alarm went off Wednesday morning, I dragged myself out of bed into the shower. When I came out of the shower a little more awake I realized that my tablet, on which I had set the alarm, was still on New York time. It was 2:30 in the morning not 5:30, but I was by that time totally awake. So I used my hours to write to my congressman about what I was seeing, and to think, as well as I could.  And then I was awake for a very grueling day again till midnight, so I was secretly happy that I was not one of those chosen for mornings volunteering at the Chaparral, though I would have liked another morning, now a seasoned veteran.


Tijuana continued

Tijuana continued

Allison and I created a successful blog to cover our expenses volunteering at Al Otro Lado Border Rights Project.  We are deeply grateful to everyone who contributed and/or posted warm messages of support. We are donating all excess funds as follows:

One months rent for a new LGBTQ shelter,
Some to a volunteer who buys warm clothing and food for asylum seekers,
The remainder to AOL Border Rights Project.

You can still donate!  Click here:  Tijuana volunteers

Saturday, March 9, 2019

We left Al Otro Lado Border Rights project yesterday. It was nearly a week, though it felt like a month, intense and exhausting. We welcomed asylum seekers into AOL  where they found legal consultations and medical care, and we provided play time for all children with them, and some food, mostly peanut butter sandwiches.  I was stationed at the front door welcoming the very people who are abstractions in the daily news reports, and here were the real people, who came through arduous journeys, who experienced inhumane treatment and humiliation, these were the people that I welcomed at the door.  In the afternoon, I was assigned playtime, more about that soon, and sandwich making, and shopping for bread, and whatever else was needed.  I was not part of the intake process, as were my travel companions Allison and Kris, My Spanish is limited, though enough to welcome and register newcomers, and so I was not privy first hand to the heart wrenching stories. I heard about many later at the end of each day.  Rather, I greeted tired hopeful people carrying their stories forward hoping for asylum.  Certainly not all would be "qualified” and many were given that straightforward sad news.  Each day was filled with real lows, and real highs as well.  More later, if I can wrap my head around writing my blog after a day or two of R&R in San Diego.

Thursday, February 21, 2019

About to start blogging again, because I'm heading for Tijuana, with Al Otro Lado Border Rights Project, and I want to be sure I can describe what I see. 

Stand by.  Coming your way early March.