I.
Everything is going according to my plan. I am in Washington, DC to wait out the dregs of winter before I head on to Virginian Appalachia. And it's spring...sugar plum fairy, cotton candied, luscious blossoming pink euphoria...yum. Spring in this part of the country is the best way to experience the Earth in transition. And suddenly we're filling our pockets with it, bringing it home on bicycles, perched on porches waving to each other, sitting on sidewalk curbs admiring bright dresses. Grass is growing in between our toes in the swampland.
Quite honestly, I had planned to focus the majority of my trip away from the major cities, only passing through on my way to smaller towns. This is because of the sort of connection and community that I believe can be found in these places. Bearing this in mind, DC completely took me by surprise.
Granted, this middle ground that sits between the constipated, suit tails of the North and the southern-fried good mornings of our neighbor states makes us walk the color line to the nearest Metro and beyond. This land of the "tion"'s- gentrification, segregation, pollination, nation. The land that inspired the poet Langston Hughes to write about his neighbors and among this, "Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead." The land that MLK Jr. fought for, knew would be stuck in compromise. This city that says it loud, greets us in the morning after our coffee to ask if we are still doing our jobs, still paying attention? to race and class. It yells at us from construction sites and museum tours, "Who am I to you?"
In one week I have: danced merengue with a young Salvadoran man; sought and found refuge as a minority at Gallaudet University, the very politically active University of the Deaf; dined alone in a small Ethiopian restaurant where I was the only non-Ethiopian and female patron (I loved it- men in fancy hats and suits, I felt like there should have been a card game or something happening in the back); grooved to some Latin jazz I was well-equipped to place from my days singing salsa; written poetry amongst Belgians and their tasty beers; and discussed the politics of southern speech countless times. It's amazing what being female and alone brings on. Every place I have stopped I have a dozen new friends to count on. I am thoroughly addicted to community.
I have been very impressed with the communities I have found in my search here. Needing to get my hands dirty (and frankly, to stop sleeping in...every once in a while I regress to the work addiction thing) and with a suggestion from my helpful former boss, I contacted the DC Central Kitchen to do some volunteer work. My focus is Latinos blah, blah, blah, but I wanted to witness the work done with the homeless communities here.
The DC Central Kitchen is three things: a culinary arts training program, a catering business, and a street outreach program. They serve many businesses around town, in addition to providing meals for the homeless population, who unlike folks in Portland, are only guaranteed a place to sleep a couple of times a week. They are housed in the bottom basement of this really large building with shelter beds in it. Their motto is "feeding the soul of the city" which I loved immediately because this community certainly has soul.
I started by volunteering in the kitchen, gently being ordered around by Miss Dot, a wonderful older, black woman whose severity in her culinary guidance is perfectly matched with her ability to be teased and to laugh at herself. She shares my grandmother's name, a thing we both enjoyed discussing. I spent three whole hours chopping carrots and felt transformed; I needed a little Zen in my travel routine. I worked next to one of the program's students, who got in trouble quickly with Miss Dot when she clearly needed a smoke break and starting pronouncing her exhaustion by letting the knife come down hard on the cutting board. In a moment of shared sisterhood, she leaned over to me and completely caught me off guard when she asked,"You ever been with a black man?" We avoided Miss Dot's gaze as we discussed our shared "cultural experiences". My new friend talked quickly about her life in her transitional home in DC but when I asked her about home in the Virginia countryside she was all bright smiles and talking about picking berries and slaughtering chickens. Amazed, I listened while she excitedly detailed wringing a chicken's neck. Uh-huh.
I'm going to say it right now: I am not a museum person. Don't expect me to be writing about too many museums on this trip. I think they are great, don't get me wrong, but not while there are so many people to get to know. I can be totally satisfied talking to the guy at the information desk. My childhood was all about engaging as many people as possible in my neighborhood in all my schemes: making mint tea bags to market to our block, creating whole new societies in my clubhouse. Nothing has changed, except now I am at their mercy. I want to be in their club.
So when I was invited to do street outreach at some of the most marginalized parts of the city, I jumped at the chance. What a perfect way to get to know DC. And I didn't even have to beg to be included, I was there to do a job: hand out breakfast sandwiches in parking lots and occasionally pour sugar for coffee so that the outreach worker could do her job of talking to folks about their basic needs. She explained to me that more than anything we are there to be a part of their community, provide connection. So I shake some hands, pass out plenty of smiles (unlike in Portland, when you say, "Good morning", nobody says, "What's so good about it?") and notice that this community is similar in what they need and hope except for some major differences: 1. Almost all of the street folk coming to this mobile breakfast unit are black. We went into three of the most marginalized areas of the city and met with three different groups of people but they varied little with race. 2. Drugs are everywhere. The last neighborhood we went into was one of biggest suppliers of heroin in the city. Consequently, many of the folks we were serving came up to the table with vacant stares, hallowed cheekbones, the kind of physical strain that is drug addiction. And if we looked out beyond our two tables, we would have seen people shooting up, deals being made. This scene truly scares me. I think of one of the clients I have worked with in Maine during his struggle with this drug and think: please don't let this happen in my city.
This last neighborhood also had the most beautiful mosaics I have seen in DC. The symbolism is not lost on me: this is definitely a community piecing together shards of hope and survival, rearranging what has been broken.
This is a wonderful program. I have watched the street outreach worker treat us all with so much dignity.
The other program I have been fortunate to visit and check out here is the Center for Community Change. They are a Washington-based political organizing think-tank and support for grassroots orgs around the States. And as large as they are, they were great to give me a face-to-face about the organizing they are currently doing. It keeps the organizing fire within me well-kindled.
And, of course I could not help but notice the Latino presence all around me. Not help but notice each time I unwillingly had to cross the street to accommodate the construction that DC is full of and hear the Spanish following me. Or see the Virgencita encased in glass on someone's lawn. But my experience here was such a mixture of all of the many racial and economic realities at the center of our country.
II.
Something is jumping around inside of me. As I meditate I stir into craziness. I walk around in circles feeling euphoric. Could this be happiness? Why haven't I felt this way in so long? Is this the tickle in my belly? If by nothing else, can I be fertilized by this feeling? I sure hope so.
I finally got used to the noise of this big city. When I first arrived my friend Laurie suggested that I would be offended yet again by all the catcalling from the pockets of men here. I calmly reminded her that as we had both lived in Bolivia for some time, I was quite familiar with this challenge and how to handle it. I was quite wrong. Because not only was it loud and much more pervasive than I had remembered, but there is an element to this that doesn't necessarily feel safe in a big city.
So now I am headed to the mountains and back to the experience of being completely by myself again so I make sense of noisy rumblings in my head and heart.
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