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Arivaca
By Holly | August 19, 2008
You know, I haven’t posted about the week I spent in Arivaca because I really don’t know how to get it all down without it being a huge jumble. That week was hard but it was also one of the most gratifying weeks I’ve ever spent doing anything. I was up at the crack of dawn and asleep at dark. I spent the mornings and late afternoons hiking the migrant trails and dropping supplies and looking for people. That’s the hardest part to grasp and the one thought that was constantly in the back of my head: I was hunting people. Looking for signs of life. Looking for signs of distress. Looking for dead. That was the stressful part and the part I pushed to the back. Every time we went out there was the possibility of finding people in terrible shape or dead. There were signs of life everywhere: pants, shoes, backpacks, empty water jugs, food wrappers, bean cans…under a tree littered with debris someone left tea towels that someone had spent hours cross stitching and hooking crochet borders. Those personal artifacts brought the back of the mind thoughts right to the front. That desert crossing is such a desperate journey. The fear in the faces of the migrants we came upon was heartbreaking. We did what we could with food, water and medical help and then cheered them on if they decided to keep at it. That’s all we had - supplies and well wishes and hopes that they made it safely.
As hard as it was I felt useful out there. Probably for the first time in my life I had a sense of purpose. I woke up every morning ready to go. Motivated, and I don’t do mornings. I’ve been working on a plan to get back there. I am definitely going back next summer but hopefully I can work out something more permanent in the future. For now we are going to gather migrant supplies and ship them out to Tucson over the winter and keep our fingers crossed that we won’t be needed next year at all because people no longer have to cross the desert. Now that’s a pretty thought, isn’t it?
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