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.