Devastating.

From the Tucson Citizen:

"Thursday, Border Patrol agents were told by an immigrant that he and his group of 12 wanted to surrender and that a woman in the group had died in the desert near Rio Rico. A 6-year-old girl flagged down an agent sent on the call and told him it was her mother who had died. The agent drove on, and the immigrant who had called 911 with the surrender request guided the agent to the woman's body.

The 6-year-old and a 17-year-old girl in the group were turned over to the Mexican Consulate in Nogales to be returned to relatives, and the adults were taken into custody, pending their return to Mexico."

Six years old.

Did you know that the EPA has 18,000 employees?

What is it that they do? And more importantly, why do we still have pollution? That's 360 people per state.

At any rate, the Gray Lady has once again shown why she is an invaluable national treasure.

The article drags a bit in places, but the subject matter is so important I just couldn't stop reading.

A taste:

"Only 1 percent of [China's] 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union."

As always, there's a silver lining: "Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China."

Huh. And I thought it was the parking lot that they call the 405.

Meet Your Neighbors 2: Understanding in a Car Crash

A friend of mine asked that I follow-up my last "Meet Your Neighbors" post with a little bit of information on what happened with "Alberto" and his Mixtopek speaking friend.

Sadly, I have no idea what happened. Which is pretty common. Actually, it's the norm. Which is hard.

To avoid talking more about that, I'm going to change the subject. Stay with me.

Sometimes when I am speaking with someone in Spanish I get this sense that I must be understanding the story wrong, that my language skills just aren't cutting it and I need to ask more questions to figure out what is going on.

When I was talking to Alberto the other day I kept coming back to one thing that I thought just HAD to be a misunderstanding. Alberto had told me that his friend, a man in his late thirties or early forties, spoke some Spanish, but his son did not. "That can't be right," I thought. "If he can speak both Spanish and Mixtopek, his son should be able to as well."

And so I asked him about the situation again, trying to clear up what was, to me, a glaring inconsistency.

"No," he said. "That's right. He can speak Spanish but his son never learned how."
"Why not?" I asked.
"When my friend and I were kids, our parents had enough money to send us to school. By the time we had our own kids, everyone was worse off."

Oh God.

A third man sitting in a chair and listening to the conversation, a migrant himself, spoke up.

"The whole country is going backwards."

What do you say exactly?

Wow.

Art.

Meet Your Neighbors: I'm So Frustrated Edition

I'm annoyed.

So Mexico is a big country. A diverse country. This can be a problem as we tend to think of everyone who isn't American as pretty much being exactly the same.

Canadians? They say "eh" and have milk in a bag. I don't know, whatever Five Iron Frenzy said.

Australians? Pick from one of three funny stereotypes: The surfer guy, the outback guy, or...no, that's about it. The cute accent guy? I'm beat.

Iranians? Either ruthlessly oppressing people, or being ruthlessly oppressed. Pick your poison.

Obviously we don't all think this way, or at least not all of the time. But for the most part we do generalize people into categories and then we make assumptions about people, countries, ourselves, etc., all based on those categories.

Back to today.

Today I was at the Migrant Resource Center (something that I haven't gotten to do a lot of in the past two months or so...desk jockey/tour guide woot!). But I was there today, and I met a man who we'll call Alberto. Alberto was traveling with some friends and family from Mexico when they were arrested by the Border Patrol. Pretty typical.

But that's where the problems start. The reality (which became a problem) is that not everyone in Mexico speaks Spanish. There are, literally, hundreds of indigenous languages. And unfortunately for a guy from a small village, he's on his way back to...wait for it...El Salvador.

So what happened? Well, being that the Border Patrol agents couldn't speak his language, and he couldn't speak either Spanish or English, they assumed that he was from Central America. So they started asking him questions about that. And, being confused, he just sort of made some responses that they took to be agreement. When his dad figured out what was going on (his dad speaks a limited amount of Spanish), he tried to convince them that his son was in fact from Mexico. But that didn't work out so well because he was not carrying any identification with him.

So as of right now he's on his way to Tucson where he will be kept until they send him to El Salvador...for the first time ever...where they won't be able to understand him either.

I'm not saying that the Border Patrol is responsible for speaking every language in the known world. But this is the type of stuff that happens when you try to combine a major humanitarian crisis with a bureaucratic system.

I called the Mexican consulate but haven't heard back. I hope for his sake that they can prove he's a Mexican.

"We got older, but we're still young"

So I'm back from Portland. Which was...well, I'll just say it was. Fun. Difficult. Interesting. And now I'm back.

I have had much less time this summer to blog, to reflect about my work/life/community here, and to read what other people are saying. I really miss all of that. I'm going to try and make it a part of my weekly life again in the coming months, but we'll see how that goes.

For today, I just wanted to say hello, say that I'm doing just fine in this new job of mine, and say that I think you're all swell people. More on that one later.

Perhaps one anecdote before I go. (This one's for Bryce)

When I was in the Sacramento airport (for many hours) I saw a man wearing a shirt that said "estar guars." In English that means nothing. In Spanish that means "to be guars," which is also nothing.

BUT

If you take a stereotypically Spanish accent and apply it to the words "Star Wars", then "estar guars" would be exactly what you would get. I don't know if anyone else in the airport thought it was funny, but I'm still laughing two weeks later.

You make me want to be a better man.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WESLEY BENGT WICKLUND


Here are some thoughts I wanted to share with you on this momentous occasion:

1. You've been around through a lot of stuff. I remember being in elementary school with you, hanging out, moving on to middle school, and then being really excited when you finally got there two years later. Mission trips. Praise band. Leadership teams. Mexican champagne. I love that our history goes deep. I love that our future is going to be even deeper.

2. Because I can look back for years and years, far past a decade of friendship, I have no problem saying that you have always been a really, really good guy. More than uncommonly legit. And you've become a really, really good man. One of the best I've ever met. You've always tried to do the right thing, and when you've failed, as we all do, you've tried even harder. The title says it all.

3. You are damn passionate. I've seen you get in fist fights, yelling fights, and soccer fights (the dirtiest fights of all). I can't say I've always thought it was a good idea for you to be fighting, but I've always loved and admired that spirit. You have convictions, and a belief that there are things in life worth fighting for. And there are.

4. You don't love the law for the law's sake. You want all the freedom that Jesus can give you. Let's get after it.

5. JBBP baby.

You are my brother. I love you.