Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Dreams and Nightmares

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America. 

In the sala, I talked with Patricio (a pseudonym) from El Salvador. He had received troubling news: the government had informed his family that it would take their land unless they built a house on it by a certain date. There is an issue with documents and a signature that I don't understand. 

How does one take care of such family business when one is a refugee? Patricio and his wife have a four-year old son. With luck, they will join Patricio in February. 

Patricio shared with me a photo of his son, along with phone recordings from conversations between him and his little one. 

Nightmares awaken Patricio. 

~~~~~~~~

My Spanish isn't good enough to understand the specifics of Patricio's situation, but below are relevant issues, any one of which could touch on his family's predicament: 

• August 2024, Tico Times: The Battle for Land: Coastal Salvadorans Fight Eviction as Tourism Rises
• June 2021, Waging Nonviolence: Unable to claim title to homes they paid to own, Salvadorans unite to fight developers for land rights

Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Deportees

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America.

Some women and men deported from the US also passed through the guesthouse. I've given them pseudonyms. 

Some new folks arrived today. 

A married couple came up with the first caravan from Guatemala. They'd been deported from Austin, Texas. They believed it best for their two young children, ages three and five, to leave them in safe hands in Austin. 

Another man, Juan, originally from Chiapas, arrived. He'd been living in Chicago for a number of years, working for a landscaping company. Deported just last week. Instead of returning to Chiapas, he plans to stay in Mexico City for now, as there are more opportunities here. 

A third man, Guillermo, who'd lived in Nevada for more than 20 years, was visiting New York when tapped. He's lived in Mexico City for almost a year now, and plans to move to his own place here in January. Originally from Jalapa in Vera Cruz, he says, smiling: "Yo soy jalapeño." Chuckles. 

Loose Ends: Creative Life: Dance and Clothespins

 An ad hoc poem I wrote in some time in some where? An exercise with the Tumblewords Project? No idea. But here it is, about a real-life experience at some dance function, in which I was trying to learn how to dance something. My guess is that it was a contra dance thing. 

Two clothespins in his hair. 

What am I to make of this? 

An eccentricity?

A clever hack?

A genius' forgivable befuddlement? 

I can't concentrate on the dance instructions

Which are befuddling enough, like a confounding algebraic word problem about orbiting, colliding bodies on a wooden floor. 

I burst into laughter ...

... at the clothespins in that man's hair ... or the Alice-in-Wonderland instructions for the dance? 

I don't know. 

I wonder ... Can I escape? 

Just leave the floor? 

Abandon my dance partner? (What's his name again?)

Those clothespins. 

Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Emergency Health

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America. 

One of the asylum-seekers became ill, and I wrote this:

So when you are vomiting blood and have no money, what do you do? 

In the case of one of my housemates, you go to a pharmacy for a consult - in some pharmacies free and in others, for a nominal fee (but even this is inaccessible if you have no money, so one of your housemates pays the consulting fee for you - about 35 pesos). 

The pharmacist takes your vitals (blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and throat check), but no blood, stool, or urine tests. 

The pharmacist takes a history from you, considers the possibilities, rules some out, and recommends an endoscopy. Which, of course, is outside your financial reach. 

The pharmacist suggests there is an irritation in your esophagus or at another milepost along the gastrointestinal boulevard, and to eat fruits and vegetables, and avoid spicy foods. If still producing blood in two days, do what you can to get that endoscopy. 

What could be the cause? 

The violent blows to your torso, delivered 10 days ago by fellow caravanners from a different country than  yours, who maybe took umbrage at your membership in the caravan's LGBTQI group? Or the cocaine you ingested yesterday evening, even though you've never had such a reaction before? Or stress? Or malnutrition? Or an ulcer? Or a pulmonary issue? Deadly? Or a passing health incident, self-repairing? 

Does an affliction care if you are kind and amiable, that you sometimes engage in risky behaviors, are poor, have left all that is familiar to you, and your access to food, shelter, and employment is insecure? No, it does not; it is impersonal. 

Maybe there's a biological tipping-point algorithm at play: stress+malnutrition+uncertainty+a beating+cocaine+compromised immune system from the cold virus that's been visiting the house = a crocodile crack on a corporeal byway = vomiting blood. 

A truism: Time will tell.   

10 Years Ago: Louisiana: Opelousas: A Holy Ghost Party

 

Given the bendiness of the word ghost, it pleases me that the Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Opelousas, Louisiana, hosts the Holy Ghost Creole Festival around Halloween. 

 

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Louisiana: Opelousas: A Holy Ghost Party

 

Men of Vision, 2014 Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival, Opelousas, Louisiana

So. Halloween. Not being a trick-or-treater or wear-a-costume sort of gal, my annual strategy is to get out of the house on Halloween and hide out til the littles have completed their rounds.

In Lafayette, it being a party kind of place and Halloween being on a Friday this year, you would surmise correctly if you thought that most getaways included dressing up.

But then I saw the perfect place to go - the 22nd Annual Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival. The festival is the first weekend in November, beginning on Friday. Gospel music on Friday night.

Here's a video from St. Landry's Parish, focusing on Holy Ghost women making potato pies for the 2011 festival:

I got to hear different styles of gospel music at the church: 

• Rap
• Jazz
• Blues
• and I guess what I'd call the traditional gospel style

Here's a gospel rap song called "Having a Holy Ghost Party," performed at the concert Friday night:

 

And one of the songs from the Mount Olive Baptist Church Men's Chorus:

And from three women whose group name I forget:

       

There was even a performance of liturgical dance by the youth, and at first, I thought, aha, this is a new idea for me, but wait .... liturgical dance is just a fancy way of talking about sacred dance, which has been practiced in many cultures for eons.

2014 Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival, Opelousas, Louisiana

Sheesh, didn't I just spend a year in New Mexico, where traditions of sacred dance are carefully protected and handed down through the present generations?
 

2014 Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival, Opelousas, Louisiana

 
It was a perfect way to spend All Saints Eve.

Men of Vision, 2014 Holy Ghost Catholic Church Creole Festival, Opelousas, Louisiana

10 Years Ago: Opelousas: Market and Music: A Pretty Girl

 

In preparing this post, I came upon the sad news that "Lil Kenny," the namesake of Lil Kenny and the Heartbreakers died in 2021. 

 

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Opelousas: Market and Music: A Pretty Girl

There are a number of reasons why the regularity of my blog posts has faltered, and one of them is that even though I may have gone to a kick-ass musical event, there's only so much one can say about music events. Ditto for photos of musicians. Even the sublime becomes mundane with too much talk about it.

So it is that instead of a photo or description of the eminently entertaining Lil Kenny and the Heartbreakers at the October 3rd Market and Music event in Opelousas, I present to you a picture of a pretty girl at that event, Lorena.

Lorena, Opelousas, Louisiana. October 2014.

I saw Lorena and did a double-take - something about her reminded me of a beautiful Vermeer painting. Lorena makes me smile just to look at her.

So thanks to Lorena and her mother - a fellow life adventuress, as I subsequently learned - for permission to share this photo.

Word of the Year: Migration: Vietnam

 

Vietnamese refugees on boat, circa 1985. Credit: US Navy via wikipedia.

 

I'm visiting Hanoi in November. I'll be there for a month.

Both boats and Vietnam are on my mind in recent days.

As an agnostic member of a couple of 12-step programs, I've had to fashion a higher power that works for me.

Many years ago, before I walked into the 12-step life, a quote by Thich Nhat Hanh spoke to me:

In Vietnam, there are many people, called boat people, who leave the country in small boats. Often the boats are caught in rough seas or storms, the people may panic, and the boats can sink. But if even one person aboard can remain calm, lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, he or she can help the boat survive.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

 

I envision my higher power as a sturdy little boat. (I aspire to being calm, lucid, and capable.) My sturdy little boat can't prevent, lessen the strength, or shorten the duration of inevitable storms, but its sturdiness imparts calm, confidence, and courage to me - as long as I trust in its seaworthiness. 

For much of my life I looked to birds as inspiration - and even now, their song, beauty of flight, nest-building skills, and yes, their "bird's eye view" of things - speak to me. 

But it's in the sturdy little boat where I can find calm and courage as family members, country, and the world convulse in painful spasms of confusion, helplessness, mistrust, horror, fear, loss, and grief.

I do not reduce Vietnam to static tropes of "boat people," the Vietnam War (aka the American War, as viewed by Vietnamese), or pho.  

No, it's the juxtaposition of my series on migration this year, and my distress (and on some days, despair) over the shameful lashes of verbal and mental abuse on the backs of women, men, and children who are only doing what rational, courageous people do to rescue themselves from untenable circumstances in their homes. 

Mere days ago, folks in the path of Hurricane Helene left their homes, household items held dear, neighborhoods, schools, houses of worship, vegetable gardens - not because of any frivolous reasons - but because they felt they had to leave. For their security. They were/are migrants themselves, even if only for a short time. If they are among the fortunate.