Day 1: Monday, April 13, 2020

Many people have asked me what I “DO” out here in Ajo, Arizona. This week I am going to try and keep a daily journal posted on this blog that responds to that question. The proper answer is that I provide humanitarian aid; which means food, water, blankets, socks and medical care with the goal of saving the lives of people making the crossing from Mexico to the US through the Sonoran Desert.

That sounds rather good, it sounds like I interact directly with people on their journeys through the desert and provide them directly with humanitarian aid. Most of the time that does not happen, most of the time I wander around in the desert carrying an enormously heavy backpack looking for trails and other signs that people have moved through an area. Then I leave the supplies and hope that people who need them, find them.

Working in the Sonoran Desert around Ajo is like playing a giant game of Bridge. In Bridge there are 4 players, North and South are partners and East and West are partners. One team controls the hand and can see their partner’s cards. In our scenario, East representing the Trump Administration controls the hand. East can see their partner, Border Patrol’s (West) cards.

We, North, humanitarian aid workers are partners with people crossing, South, but we do not have control of the hand. We cannot see South’s cards, so we put out feelers, experimental caches of aid supplies to see if South picks them up. Then we continue in that area if South agrees or we try again in a new area if South is not there with us.

In this game, the Trump Administration and Border Patrol’s cards include the technology, the money and the manpower (there are approximately 700 Border Patrol agents in the Ajo sector and their numbers are bolstered by the military personnel on the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range, the Ajo Sherriff’s Department and the Law Enforcement arms of the National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife). Against this awesome array of military might, we, the 20 or so humanitarian aid workers in Ajo, and our allies in the South, hold the cards of humanity, compassion and resilience. We have the strength that comes from reuniting families, instead of tearing them apart, and the search for a new and better life, rather than the supposed maintenance of an old and stagnant one….and frankly one that never existed in the first place, nor would one want it ever to have existed or to exist in the future.

Anyhow, before I digress down a long and convoluted rabbit hole, the question was, “what do you DO in Ajo?” “DO” being to do with actions not ideals expressed as imperfect card game analogies.

Well, today I woke up at 6 am, which is the time I wake up now. This may come as a shock to anyone who knows me as better than a passing acquaintance, I absolutely hate getting up in the morning. So, I woke up at 6am, wandered outside for a cigarette and then promptly went back to bed with the Guardian crossword until, the significantly more acceptable time of 8am.

Then I “ran errands.” “Running errands” is an activity that I always suspected people said they were doing when they wanted to get out of doing something else, or were up to some nefarious other activities that they didn’t want you to know about. But actually, “running errands” is a real thing, who knew! It includes things like: getting the spare tire on the Mossy (F150) fixed so we can go back out into the desert for real tomorrow; stuffing empty water gallon bottles with snacks, duct taping them closed and writing “comida” on them so we can put them in the desert; mailing ink cartridges for recycling and returning my Snapshot device (I got that in an attempt to reduce my exorbitant Michigan car insurance, I saved $42…yea!); looking for Clorox wipes (COVID safety, in case anyone lives under a rock); not finding any and so making wipes by putting bleach water with dishcloths in sealed zip lock bags (you are welcome!); and finally rounding up a variety of brands of walkie talkies, getting them to work and talk to each other (because people, who shall remain nameless, keep losing them in the Mohawk Dunes or dropping them in Sheep Tank).

With breaks for food, checking my phone, general procrastination and an afternoon visit with Linda, sitting the required COVID safe 12 feet apart outside while wearing our masks, “running errands” took all day.

I am pretty sure that none of that sounds even remotely like playing Bridge against Trump and Border Patrol or like providing humanitarian aid to people crossing the desert. But it is, it is the bits they leave out of the history books. The stuff that someone had to do before the Freedom Rides, before Standing Rock…and before we go to Charlie Bell Well tomorrow.