Try as I might, I don’t pay attention to directions if I am not driving. Well, Dre would add, that even sometimes when I am driving I sorta forget where I am headed.
So, I am not exactly sure of the turn-off we took after pausing at a memorial cross of Alvero, swinging by to check out a Humane Borders water tank, and making a brief pit stop at the Sasabe border crossing.
Peter, who was celebrating his two hundredth Samaritan water drop, and I were joined by three investigative reporters from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. They had been brought to the States by the University of Arizona to report on Central America: What does it mean to be a journalist today? They only had three days here, so in addition to filling up on Tucson’s Mexican food, “the most delicious food ever!” they requested a trip to the wall.
Oh beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of steel
Undulating beyond our eyes
last shards of hope do reel.
We had arrived. The stiff, course warriors cemented firmly in place along a bulldozed desert path. Trump budgeted $15,000,000,000 dollars, mostly from the military budget, to build 738 miles of wall, but Biden returned $2.2 billion of it, so then it was only about $12.8 billion, but now Biden has unleashed an impossible goal of repairing the ever-so-many-gaps in the wall, basically every section that crosses an arrollo, a dry desert streambed, or where a thirty dollar saw cuts through a post in twenty minutes. Thus, silent hunks of machinery glare down at us as we pause and gape wide-eyed and clenched hearted at the ripples of thirty-foot rusty beams. The human body is not built to withstand thirty-foot drops. The impact shatters bones and fractures spines. *
We drove slowly up and down the scraped dust. The desert mourns this slash across her being. Our crew ask to stop to photograph at a lonely sweater abandoned by the wall. Border Patrol makes migrants drop almost everything except their phone after they make their request for asylum and enter the vehicle for the detention center. One night last year I watched outside of Lukeville when BP also made a long line of boarding migrants toss their passport into a trash can, basically their most valuable possession, one that verifies their humanity.
Up and down. Up and down. Peter locked into four-wheel drive and the engine had to grind a bit. We passed a cattle ranch, nestled between two hills, cute, perhaps even charming in this prickly passage. “That’s one of the good ones,” he explained. She is pretty supportive of what we are doing and helps out when she can… and, we are there.”
Up one more hill and down and suddenly we were in the midst of a mishmash of dozens of improvised, wind-smashed tents a kitchen crafted with folding tables and stacks of supplies, and a glowing firepit with blanketed bodies huddled around.
It was also a mishmash of humans. Samaritans in their red shirts and name tags, a very tall dude stirring what appeared to be a pot of beans, folks hunched behind huge movie cameras gazing over the gathering, and the asylees themselves from Guiana, Cameroon, Mexico, Egypt and Ecuador. A pretty fancy mobile home looked to be providing wi-fi and I could hear happy voices connecting with long-separated family members, “I’m safe, I’m safe. Yeah, and they served us some food and I am safe.” Another guy had a small group of attentive listeners circled around as he explained never say that you are looking for work during the immigration interview, use the word fear instead, and yeah, you will have to get a lawyer for your asylum case. And yeah, after you are done with detention you will get dropped off at a “church” named Casa Alitas and you will be able to get a shower and they will explain to your family how to buy plane tickets.”
The Central Americans smiled broadly and began to wander, noticing, moving in, stepping back. In their element. There were stories to listen to.
I too, was in my element. After checking in with the tall guy, I started gathering, shaking, folding, storing blankets. At many levels this place did not seem very inviting, and I am the hospitality lady. Tent after tent had their ropes tugged on, crumpled chip bags and empty water bottles gathered, and random bits of plastic and old cardboard boxes arranged into a sort of flooring. Tidy is my thing.
I circulated, checking in with my guests, but also getting pulled into translation gigs and answering questions. “Ask Christy, she knows everything.” There were newspapers, newscasters and even a pen and ink artist trying the capture “the human experience.”
One of those four-wheeled motor scooters roared up with two riders. They always made me nervous, often driven by the camouflage shirt sorts with MAGA hats who angrily accuse us of child trafficking or destroying America. But somebody waved a friendly hello and I watched a woman dismount and limp over to a near chair. She plopped down, and received a water bottle and carne asada with a weary smile. The bottoms of her feet were one solid, centimeter deep blister. She propped them up on a crate of water bottles.
This is her story, shared with me later on by the Honduran as we bounced back down the road to Tucson: I am from Guatemala, and I had a small store that I ran from the front window of my home. Things are very difficult, and we always had just enough. One day, two men came up to the store and looked me in the eye and said, “We are going to start charging rent. Give us so much money on Saturday, or you will die.” I begged. I said I didn’t make that much money in a week. They did not flinch, “See you Saturday.” I didn’t know whether they were cartel or gangs. I saved everything I could, but it wasn’t enough.
On Saturday, they showed up. “This isn’t enough. But we are kind. We will give you one more chance. Next Saturday you must give us the full amount, or you will die.”
On Monday I went to the State Office and told them that I was in fear for my life. The man behind the desk had me fill out a form. I asked what they could do. He said, “Nothing.”
I signed my name. He said, “Well, we can drive a police car around your neighborhood a couple times a week, but nothing else. You should emigrate.”
So I did. I left everything. I packed a backpack and took a bus, and another bus, and another bus. And when the buses ran out, I started walking. I walked seven days. And it felt like I was walking in circles. Around and around, Where was the wall? I haven’t eaten or drunk anything for three days. But then suddenly the wall was there. And I walked through a big hole and there was this ranch with cows and horses. I went to the door and the lady who answered couldn’t speak Spanish but she gave me water and food and then motioned for me to come with her.
I said, “Where are we going?”
She answered, “Ayuda.”
And I got on her vehicle and she took me here.
So I kept serving beans and tortillas.
Then Peter came up to me. “I gotta make trips. There are a lot of folk up at the end of the wall, and it is too long of a walk, so I am going to transport for a while.”
Technically, Samaritans don’t transport. It’s illegal to carry migrants north. And you can get thrown in jail, which is not such a big deal, maybe, but They will also confiscate your vehicle, which isn’t ours to lose. So don’t transport. But times are tough. Border Patrol is understaffed and exhausted, thirsty, hungry and cold asylum seekers can wait three or four days in the rain and wind waiting for BP to pass by and pick them up. And our lawyer has dug down deep. Actually, ain’t no one gonna convict folks driving parallel to the wall, only if we turn North. So Peter headed up and down and up and down the wall. And came back with a truck load, two families: five tiny children, two teens and four adults, exhausted, thirsty, hungry and cold.
The big television camera pushed into the scene, rolling. We opened the back of the camper, and lifted out weary souls. Cups of water were handed out, and small paper plates of carne asada and bean tacos. The families were gently led to one of my “tents,” plastic and cardboard, but tidy. And the cameras rolled.
“Talk about what is happening. Talk.”
And as I spoke of the journey, the heaped-up stories I have gathered over the years and years of welcoming, all I could hear was the whispers in the tent, “We are safe, we are safe.”
I wept.
The honor and joy of being part of a safe, albeit damp cardboard and half a roll of toilet paper space.
The honor and joy of it all.
* KPBS news, San Diego
