I.
...is that they have to learn how to fly again. And that is exactly why I have come to Providence: to learn how to pick up more than my heavy bag for the road.
So I have been flapping my wings a bit for awhile now, trying to get started. We're still in the middle of winter, and I'm still in the Northeast, and I was just released from my home a little while back. So I wasn't exactly prepared for the lifestyle shock I would experience in RI. I'm looking for healing solutions to our immigration crisis, but I'm also out here to heal my own heart. And I've called on the gods of travel to watch over me and deliver me from the rat race that life can become.
I know that when I travel for long periods of time, just as in any major life change, I am prepared to shed layers. There are the obvious changes like...I guess I didn't need to bring all those earrings with me...or being prepared for the diversity in bathrooms one can expect on the road (that's using the "strength's perspective", Sarah). But there's also a more profound, metaphysical transformation that takes place. We call it "culture shock" when we travel abroad, stuffing ourselves into an airplane, soon to be transported into a different time zone, speak a different language, eat different food. We are thrown into our secret telefone booth, to slip into our traveling superhero self with an R for road warrior upon our breast. I have done this when I've crossed over to Bolivia, France, Nicaragua and-especially- Cuba.
So how could I have known this transformation would be so potent in my own country? I arrived in RI with more questions than answers about my whole existence. I just realized I couldn't go home- not yet- and how radical the road ahead might be...if I let it. But learning to fly is a tremendously huge, wonderful and lonely process. At thirty, I am completely looking at my culture with all it's expectations of me in the face and telling it off. And still, everyone around me gets up and goes to their regular jobs, their family lives, etc. And the truth is that I long for a warm bed, two steady dogs, cups of loose leaf tea and a good CD. But I also want to fly...
It reminds me of the first month I lived in the tiny town of Villa Rivero, in Bolivia. I never slept so much, because the silence was exhausting. It was exhausting because silence that comes from the quietest corners of our world often allows for the noise in our brains to drown us. We remember all the expectations, all the sorrow we still have. Sometimes dragging around this backpack of clothes is easier than all the me-luggage I got.
So I will live here for three weeks, and learn how to love the traveller I am and the road I seek. I will ask and ask and ask, and get over my first few stumbling sentences, to speak this language.
II.
So how do my Latino brothers and sisters find community and mend their wings from the road in Providence, RI? I wondered. My first step towards documenting immigrant concerns here led me to a bakery in the downtown area, stuffing my face with hot, steaming fresh bread. I devoured this bread, and the chance to bathe in a little indoor sunlight when I set out to interview a few folks about the hiring process at the bakery. I had heard they hire a lot of Central American workers, who settle in Boston, and that they appear to be fairly happy at this job. I wanted to ask how they might have experienced the last year of immigration "reform", and whether they participated in the marches for positive legislation. I had read that on the day of the greatest march, of "a day without immigrants" fame, only 500 people turned out.
Unfortunately the bakery occupies a certain niche in the community, and an outsider strolling in to buy bread with her bike helmet and big smile was not convincing enough to earn much time or interest there. But I did sit with my bread and nourish some ideas about what it might mean to be employed here if you were Latino. As lunch meetings took place, and University students on study breaks came in for sandwiches, I noticed that the only Latinos I had seen had come from the back of the bakery, and were carrying bags of flour, or trash out to the back lot. Now this may not appear fair to discuss. Don't people like to work with people who speak their own language? How do you know they aren't interacting with other people in the back room? you might ask. But doesn't invisibility say a lot? How do we know what hiring practices are like and what opportunities people are given (i.e. access to language classes) if we can't even see the faces of the people making our food? Okay, I know, I am forming some conclusions on my own here, but this is just the beginning of my tour of Providence. All I know is that in a city where many Latino immigrants settle, I have walked and driven around the center, and still haven't seen many people. And first impressions say a lot.
Back in Boston, I again visited the St. Francis House for the homeless community and spoke with the whole "Latino team". They offer on-site access to immigration counseling, psychiatry, and substance abuse services. They work with mostly men, who make up one third of the population at the center, similar to the numbers I began to see in the homeless community in Portland. We talked about the reasons that people go back and forth between Boston and Portland. The Latino team mentioned that they see many people going to Portland to work in the seafood packing plants and returning to Boston to recuperate from the cold conditions in the factory, often seeking medical attention from their "jornadas de trabajo" (work-related journey). At the St. Francis House, they offer a on-site substance use treatment model that also prepares people for work.
I also spoke with Dr. Jose Hidalgo, who I was informed is the "expert on trauma and Latinos" in the Boston area. He said he has led support groups for victims of trafficking in the past, but stated that the city still needs work in making the connection between trauma work and immigrants. He did encourage me to explore whether I wanted to focus on trauma related to immigrants who had been trafficked versus those who are here undocumented. My feeling regarding employment and immigration is that whether someone has been smuggled or trafficked, they can both have experienced horrific amounts of violence.
III.
And now a word about my sponsors...I want to commend the women who are hosting me for being a part of my travelling community.
My friend Alana is poetry in motion. It's 9 o'clock in the morning and she's up making tea and obviously thinking about how ripe that mango in the fruit bowl is getting. The sun rises in her living room across the rug where her knitting needles lie, just as it will later on out west on the beads of red rock, where her spirit soars. She gets on her bike and is summer heat in the winter, pushing past me and shouting curses in Spanish. Amazon woman, she pulls up her long skirts and kicks up the dirt. She is the peace of the teacup in my hands or the stomping of the ocean's fury in my ears. She spills wine in ritual and just for the hell of it.
I went biking with Lady A this past weekend. We biked out of this unkind traffic for a good thirty miles on our bikes, which are really our superheromobiles just disguised as bikes. I had borrowed mine from my gracious host Mary, and when I brought it into the bike shop for air the guy simply said, "umm...you do know this bike might fall apart at any point, right?" Of course, it didn't. It was made by Mary.
Mary and her household are hosting me right now; I offered to do a workshare to help them with house renovations for a built-in health clinic. The thing I love about the house is that they live sustainably...i.e. compost, composting toilet, garden out back which supplies the household, lots of great dumpster diving going on. And there are two great dogs. The thing I love about Mary is that she is my age and about to buy her own house and start a business. She's an herbalist who is committed to sharing alternative medicine and good food with her community. I am just glad I can offer my two hands to the household while I am here.
My guitar, meanwhile, lies waiting while I explore our next venue.
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