March 6, 2005
Uuuuuuhh…sleep! Less than 5 hours of sleep in the last 72 hours. But…we’re here!
We had a stop-over last night at Jenna's house in Austin for dinner and then continued on our all-night drive. We official arrived in Brownsville around 7am. I pulled the all-night passenger shifts while Sumeet and Nader drove from Austin to Brownsville. It was a long dark drive, and it started to pour down rain after a couple hours. The funniest part of all this (and those who know my reputation will understand why), was that I was in charge of directions during those 7-8 hours. And I will proudly say that our van lead the other van and we never got lost. Oh yeah!!
(okay, so we made 2 wrong turns…but they were easily fixed! they don't count!)
We stopped at McDonald’s around 6am as we were nearing the outskirts of the city…or signs of some kind of civilization. The last 7 hours had been dark long country roads. Most everyone was sleeping. I quickly ate my McGriddle and hashbrown before sunrise.
I got really excited to start seeing billboards in Spanish. It’s funny – the package that our site leaders gave us about Brownsville & Matamoros describes these places as touristic locations…which I wonder how far that really is from reality since the reason we’re here is to do service with respect to poverty and immigration, mainly.
For those who don’t know, the Baha’i season of fasting takes place during March 2nd and 2oth. It's the "season of restraint" where Baha'is abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. Fasting "is a symbol of self-restraint, the withholding of oneself from all appetites of the self, taking on the characteristics of the spirit, being carried away by the breathings of heaven and catching fire from the love of God" (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, p. 69). Although those who are traveling are exempt, I’ve decided to maintain the fast during this trip. It’s extremely challenging especially with there constantly being food available to us during the car rides and eating meals together. I eat breakfast a lot earlier than everyone else, so it can feel a bit awkward in the mornings and afternoons when everyone else is eating breakfast and lunch together and I have to politely decline. Why do I feel a little embarrassed? I don’t want to announce to everyone that I’m fasting, but I don’t want to draw unneeded attention to myself by doing the opposite.
I feel it’s important to keep the fast even while traveling because Baha’u’llah did not have the luxury of exempting Himself from lack of food just because of harsh conditions He was exposed to. Plus, it's befitting with the nature of this trip: a chance to experience poverty and the effects of immigration first hand.
As we drew closer to Brownsville, we started to see Palm trees. They’re not as verdant as the ones that decorated all of Barcelona; they were browning and in some areas of the city, losing leaves…but still they’re beautiful. We passed many homes and buildings that weren’t in the best shape, but Brownsville still seems to be a nice community. Taquerias line every street – each with their own colorful design with painted or neon signs advertising their popular menu items.
You know you’re near Mexico when the First National Bank and Bank of America buildings are all decked out with traditional cream colored walls with the brick red wavy tiles on top, and the Circle K gas stations have huge signs up on their mini-marts: “wake up and smell the tacos.”
We arrived at the First United Methodist Church, our lodging for the week, this morning at 7am. It’s built in similar looking materials as the Bank…I think it’s called terra cotta, but not sure. I had to pee sooo badly when we arrived and the guy that works at the Church, Ken, wasn’t gonna be there for another 5 minutes – and I feared he was running on Latino time and wouldn’t really show up for another hour. The guys kept making me laugh and it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold it in! So finally Sumeet drove me and some of the other girls to the nearest gas station after the guy was a no show after 10 minutes. Of course, all the traffic lights turned red at the same time. Go figure! But we got there safe (and clean) and I finally got to relieve myself. Sumeet was my hero of the day, haha.
After a brief introduction, we went straight for the couches and crashed for an hour. We had to leave because the youth were holding their Sunday school classes this morning in that room. It took us forever to mobilize. Before coming to a unanimous consensus to take a quick nap, we made a grocery list and Kelly made vocal efforts to get us up to go grocery shopping. But all attempts were futile: we all, including Kelly, didn’t budge at all – so the nap happened.
Then we drove around a bit – the gang decided on a taqueria to eat at. Then half of us came back here to unwind, and the others went to get the groceries.
The set up of the Church is really nice. In the center of the buildings that make up the church, there’s this plane of brick pattern and a blue circle in the middle – a mosaic with a white dove in the middle. This center is surrounded by 3 sides of open passage ways with benches all along side each one. In each corner of that triangle is a concentrated cluster of browning palm trees and other plants. And the top is open to the sky. So I walked around and took some pictures just now – yes, I go crazy with pictures when it comes to flowers and plants, haha…okay – I go crazy with pictures period.
The temperature is comfortable – in the 70s today – a sweatshirt is sufficient. It’s not particularly sunny…pretty cloudy and gray today, but there are pockets of sunshine that break through now and then that turn this garden-sort of area into a paradise.
Tonight we’re meeting with the youth at this church and we’re gonna share with them what ASB is all about and what we’re doing on our specific project. Tomorrow starts the real work.
...
The youth meeting was so much fun. We all went out back in the backyard of the church and engaged in an intense game of Ultimate Frisbee. Even though I had no clue what was going on, our team kept scoring. So I dished out high-fives every time people on my team cheered. Then we went inside, had the Q&A from the youth – who were all middle schoolers, by the way – a really lively bunch. We ate dinner together and continued to throw the Frisbee around. The ASB group bunched together at one of the tables, but I sat at one of the kids’ tables during dinner – it was so funny to listen to them go on about their stories about how this and that happened. You could see the excitement in their eyes. Seeing these kids happy brought me a lot of joy.
They all eventually got picked up by their parents and it was us again, just the ASB gang. We played several rounds of Mafia. Let me tell you, this is an amazing group. I’m always laughing. It’s a good mix of quiet and outgoing and I immediately felt at ease to be myself. I look forward to spending the rest of the week with them.
Okay, now for a night of much needed & awaited sleep!
Quotes of the day:
“some people put on make up, some people do their hair. I put on my sweater” – Sumeet
“I wanna take a salt water shower” – Kelly
“Okay police, wake up. Who would you like to finger? Umm...let me rephrase that” – Dave, the “narrator” for Mafia
“The parfait was frozen though…but it’s still okay – you just gotta wait” – Sumeet
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