Nigeria, Guatemala, and unaccompanied minors

Border Patrol has not shown up, even though it's been light since 5a.m. and people have been waiting since last night.

As we wait, two more people walk around the wall, down the other side of the canal to the bridge over the water, and then return on this side of the canal to where we wait

It is a womon with maybe a 7month bulge and her husband. I greet them in Spanish and english and the couple smiles wider than the old Colorado River, proclaiming they were coming from Nigeria, have been traveling for over 5 months, have worked their way from Ecuador and Colombia through the Darien Gap to Panama. Both their eyes widen as they talk about how hard it was to traverse through jungle and mountain and dangerous waters. Both look very road weary but relieved to be here, hungry and tired and thirsty.

Just after they arrive, I see four more short, very young brown people working their way around the wall, down the road, over the bridge and back down the road. They are kids, teenagers, unaccompanied minors who speak very little Spanish - at least they don't seem to understand my Spanish. They are from Guatemala and when I ask where their parents are, they say they are in Florida. One of the boys is 15, the girls are 16, and the other boy is 17. I don't think one stands taller than 4'11" at the most.

Tears and terror

Everyone calls me Grandmother - even the two men from India who demand more bananas that we don’t have but who have kissed my feet, let me know that god blesses me and asked me to say hello on the screen to their Grandmother back in India.

But it is the family from Ghana and the family from China that my heart especially breaks for. Both of them had been captured by the cartel or the Mexican police – neither of them know, but whomever, it was bad.

Both fathers have tears and terror, disbelief and shame in their eyes as they talk about how they were beaten, their wives were beaten, they were stripped of all their belongs, their money, even their shoes.

The mothers won’t look at me as we talk and I fear they were also raped. I hold the hand of “Rose” and tell her nothing is her fault, she’s safe now – although the minute I say this, I wonder if I’m lying. She weeps and tells me how the men held a gun to the head of her 10 year old daughter – TEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER – who had never even seen a gun in her whole life.

The man from China tells me he was held somewhere in a dark and cold jail, away from the rest of his family, held for four days and nights until he could get someone from China to pay a $2000 ransom. Then he was thrown into the street, at the feet of his huddled family who had also been beaten and stripped of their belongings.

And all this after the children and the adults survived the Darien Gap.

Senegal, Ghana, Nepal, China, Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil

I get into the worn work horse of a large red pick up truck 4:15a.m. – we are getting an earlier start then we did last month, most likely because of the heat that is coming earlier and earlier.

Only one of the brothers are home and ready to go this morning, the back bench seat is loaded with plastic bags of loaves of bread, containers of baloney and another yucky lunch meat, this square and with little specks of cheese scattered thru it.

We have a large carton of cookies in boxes, a cooler of a few water bottles, two thermoses of terrible folgers coffee, another smaller cooler of mayo, mustard, sugar, jelly, and a smidgen of peanut butter. This latter – the jelly and peanut butter – is a recognition of the many vegetarians that are fleeing their countries and arriving on our border land.

We bounce down the unpaved road for a block, dash across the four lane highway onto yet another even bumpier narrow dirt road, dust kicking up around us, the front passenger seat is a deep crevice with a rag and the back of the seat can’t be leaned against as it is broken. I try to keep my balance as we head toward the horrific 30 foot wall, thru lettuce fields and around the water canals bordering both the fields and the wall.

Maybe 15 jarring minutes of rough road, we can see head and tail lights of early morning traffic on the Mexican route 2 bridge that runs along the border and over the miniature remains of the Colorado River, the current water flowing through a narrow cement canal, either side of the canal is bounded by a dirt road that is u.s. territory but beyond to the original land where the Colorado River flowed maybe a mile wide or more, now is only dried scrub brush and an occasional mesquite or palo verde tree. This half of that land is Arizona, the other half Mexico.

As we approach the break in the wall where refugees walk around to leave Mexico and touch u.s. soil, we see many people milling about. We are surprised, as most of the time we find refugees sleeping on the ground, wrapped in the blankets left there the evening before, draped over the poles of the canopy.

We turn the truck around and get out, greeting several mostly men milling about. I can see other people peering at us, not sure who we are - friend, foe or migras until Seferino begins to build a fire and I begin to greet everyone with my terrible Spanish, asking if they have hunger or thirst.

Now womyn and children rush over, along with all the other men, to huddle together around the campfire. Their eyes go wide when believe I am from the united states, after asking me many times. Equally, they ask me now and then several times as we wait for border patrol if this – pointing down to the ground – is really Estados Unidos. I reassure them as many times as they ask.

I bring out the bags of food and begin to make sandwiches. Everyone waits patiently for this food and water.

Not everyone speaks Spanish, so I talk with the refugees from the non-Spanish speaking countries and find out there are about 8 men from Senegal, a family of 3 from Ghana, four guys from Nepal, two from India, and two families from China who have 3 children between them.

The family from Ghana understands my English perfectly, but the guys from Senegal do not. The ask the father from Ghana to translate and I’m feeling like I’m back in Cuba or Mexico, speaking to people in Spanish only to have another person interpret my Spanish. This time, Mohamed repeats the English words I say and the Senegalese can understand his English but not mine…go figure! There’s a young couple from Venezuela, the womon holding her tiny bump asking me how to say “embarazada” in English. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to let just anyone know that she is pregnant. There could be the border patrol person who doesn’t want her unborn child to be born here and have u.s. citizenship as he has the power to return her immediately. But I tell her several times how to say pregnant. She can’t get the “g” sound in the middle of the n’s. So I pull out my phone and print it out for her to see. Finally, she can say pregnant properly.

The rest of the refugees are from Peru, Columbia and Brazil.

In all there are about 50 refugees. We ask them what happened to the blankets – there is no sign of them. Later someone walks over to the big dumpster there and let’s us know, there are the blankets. Plus there are lots of backpacks, clothing, shoes discarded from yesterday afternoon’s border patrol pick up. None of the humanitarian aid folks are present in the afternoon so I guess border patrol thinks they can dump blankets and possessions with impunity.

My RRB parked under the full moon before we head out to the border wall