Seeing deeper and sleeping at night - Feb 24, 2020

A week has passed, a few people have joined our group, and a few have already left. We have settled into a routine, leaving the house around 8am to head to the center where some of our team will drive an hour to the border to distribute food and toiletries and some of our team will stay at the center with the people who were welcomed into the country, preparing and serving meals for them, helping them find a change of clothes, organizing the closet of clothes so it’s ready in case a big rush comes, preparing bags of food to distribute at the border, and cleaning the center. 

The center has a very empowering approach to volunteering. The pace is very self-guided, and if you don’t know what needs to be done, you might think there’s no work to do. As veterans, with a whole week behind us, we’ve learned not to wait to be asked to do something, just to jump right in. Often, the people livingu at the center can be seen helping as well: sweeping the huge shared living area and preparing bags of food to send over (perhaps having experienced how helpful those supplies are). 

In the camps, we have been able to bring chocolate milk a few times and see the grins on the kids faces as they come back for a second or third cup. Meanwhile, the parents wait patiently in a line by the food while diapers and toiletries are distributed next. The calm about the place is incredible. In a camp that has over 2,500 people, you’d expect a table with only 60 bags of food to be pilfered and overrun, but no one touched the food, or even tried, day after day, patiently waiting for the distribution. People walk right by getting their milk and toiletries, and not one person attempts to take a bag, instilling so much confidence that none of the volunteers are even watching the food. 

I read one article that described the Tents in the camp like “barnacles” on the tip of Matamoros. Another article helped me realize what I find so confounding about the camp - the quiet. It described: For a group of people who love music so much, all you hear is quiet chatter in tents. I think I find the calm exhibited in the line similarly perplexing. Articles have reported gang activity in the nights, many cases of rape, kidnapping, trafficking, and “disappearings”, but that seems like a different place than the calm of the day, or perhaps it explains it. For families who are on the run for their lives to escape this kind of violence, it seems unconscionable that the government is making this situation worse. 

But we leave each day after the food is distributed and look the government officials in the eye as we return to the US, hoping there will be no problems. We drive back to the center to prepare for tomorrow’s run so it can all begin again. 

At the end of the day, some days as early as 3pm, some days as late as 5pm, we drive the 10 min from the center back to the AirBnB that we rented in a ranch-style house in the middle of suburbia. We all stay together in one house, to enjoy community time in the evenings, a shared meal and prayer. 

Our team is comprised of five sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame (from Toronto, NY, Montreal, and PEI), two people from North Carolina, one from PEI, and three from nearby San Antonio (my mom, sister, and 8-year old niece). 

My mom joined us the first week, and graciously prepared a dozen meals ahead of time, so our evening meal preparation is simple. She spoiled us with enchiladas, lasagna, rice casseroles, and a special seafood extravaganza, culminating in a homemade cheesecake for the shared birthday celebration! She left, but we continue to enjoy her hospitality. 

A week into our trip, my sister and niece drove down from San Antonio to join us, and a day later my mom and niece left. During the 21 hours she was here, my sweet 8-year old niece played pool (billiards) with some of the sisters in the lounge part of the house, volunteered at the center, spending hours bagging food and practicing her writing skills labeling bags, and took a break to go dress shopping for her upcoming first communion. We really maximized our day together, spending our last hour at a local skee-ball, pizza party locale to celebrate my upcoming birthday. As mom and Layla waited for the bus to San Antonio, part of our team came bustling in for one last hug. The bus departed and those of us left returned to work after a very busy 24 hours. 

In the evenings at the house, you might see one of us occupying the ongoing scrabble game that started when I was at the novitiate and never seems to end, someone playing the guitar or ukuleles, someone taking advantage of the washing machine and doing laundry, or a happy soul enjoying a bowl of ice cream. We are pretty tired when we get home, but there is chatter for hours until the grand silence when people head to bed around 9pm, preparing for the noise to start again the next morning around 6am. 

Sharing a house has been a wonderful experience, especially participating in prayer each night, led by a different person each with their own style if giving thanks for the joys of the day, and centering ya in our purpose for being here. We’ve also discovered our rendition of Dona Nobis Pacem in parts and rounds could put us on the map if thus volunteering thing doesn’t wasn’t work out. 

As comfortable and grateful as we all are to have a lovely, safe place to sleep each night, the people we serve are never far from our thoughts, sleeping in tents on the ground, scared for their security amid the “disappearings” and gang activity not seen during the day. It is unsettling to think about the hardships they are experiencing, hoping for a better life, especially while we go about our evenings together. 

We are here for the anniversary of MPP  - the policy that made it legal to keeping people from specific countries out of the USA. 60,000 people have been excluded this way, in the hopes that they return to their country rather than live in the camps. Many families have left the camps, and more still have been deported after an unsuccessful asylum hearing. It has been reported that many of the people who return (voluntarily or not) are killed by the gangs they were fleeing. Bringing 60 families meals each day in a camp that has at least a thousand people is not enough. We as a people need to do more.