Day 7: Sunday, April 19, 2020

Back in the day when I had an income, I used to play Texas Hold ‘Em, not particularly well, but I was an almost decent recreational player. Aside from the obvious benefit of occasionally winning money, I learned a lot from the game which I have applied to my life as a humanitarian aid worker.

Texas Hold ‘Em is, according to Annie Duke, and I concur, a game of “decision making under conditions of incomplete information.” What counts is the quality of the decision regardless of its outcome. It also requires you to take the long view, to accept that the universe owes you nothing, just because you have patiently folded bad starting cards for hours does not mean that you now deserve to get dealt pocket Aces. Poker teaches you to maintain a zen state of detachment, to hold the outcome you are looking for lightly and accept that it may or may not come.

All of these lessons apply to doing humanitarian aid work in the Ajo corridor. Not that people’s lives in the desert are a “game” in the frivolous sense of the word. Clearly there is nothing frivolous in the disappearance of thousands of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters as a result of Prevention through Deterrence. It is a “game” in the sense that to recover the disappeared and deliver supplies to help people keep themselves alive requires strategy, adapting to change and trying to think as both your allies and your opponents might think, to aid the former and outsmart the later.

Our SAR this past weekend required using all of my poker skills.

We began the search with a waypoint. That may seem like a lot of information on which to base a decision. But in the context of the desert it is really very little. With no corroboratory information, such as the starting location of the group, their destination, how long they had been walking before they left the man behind, which mountains they had passed or were headed towards, a waypoint is almost no information at all. In this situation of incomplete information, the first decision is, “do we go out and look for this person at all?”

In this case the answer to that question was “yes.” It was “yes” for some practical reasons. First, we had the capacity in terms of people ready, willing and able to mount a search. We also had a bigger picture motive of exploring an area, the Bryan Mountains, that none of us had ever been to before. It was also “yes” for existential reasons, even if we did not find him, the very fact of looking demonstrated that this man was a person worth looking for. That seven people hiked 22 miles to look for him, hopefully went out into the universe and even though we do not know his name or his family, he and they got a moment of a sense that some people cared.

As we got closer to the waypoint the sense of expectation grew. It is human nature to get excited when you feel you are close to achieving your goal, especially one that has required the exertion of a great deal of physical and mental effort. Here is where poker comes in again. The fact of expending the effort does not equate to deserving the expected outcome. The person we were looking for was not at the waypoint. That does not invalidate the decision to come and look for him. It does not invalidate the effort expended. It is simply the unexpected result of a good decision.

We continued our search in a grid, now a zen poker mindset is most needed and hardest to maintain. You have been sitting at the table for hours, you have been getting Q3 off suit for hours, you want something to happen, you envision Aces or Kings coming your way as the cards are dealt and you peek at the corner of the cards...Q3 again. This happens to me a lot on searches, I have been walking for hours, looking under trees for hours and I want to find the person. I start to imagine finding them under the next tree, in the next wash, over the next saddle. And I look, and there is still just the desert. I tell myself to let go, to hold the thought of the person lightly, to think about something else. Sometimes that works after a fashion. Sometimes I become so focused on trying to hold the person lightly that I end up clinging to them tighter than ever.

At night, looking at the stars, I remember that this is a “long game.” I believe that the universe knows we looked for this man, and I believe that one day, if we all hold him lightly and constantly enough, he will be found.

Now, say his name aloud: “Desconocido.” “Presente!”