AfricanKelli

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I spent Saturday working in Nogales, Arizona. It has a variety of economic and health issues — none unique to this border town. Nogales, Sonora — just across the imaginary line — is regularly plagued with disease that you rarely hear of in the US. Cholera, scurvy, malnutrition, etc.

When it rains, the poor drainage mixed with houses that have been built on top of each other, cause a catastrophe. The top soil has eroded. The water table is corrupt. A healthy existence is not easily found in a town where 500,000 push against a wall, waiting for their turn to cross.

With a group of volunteers, I helped in a medical clinic. I served as translator and quickly realized my Spanish skills are rusty at best. I need to find a Spanish podcast to regularly listen to and get back to a conversation group.

That said, there is something about this sort of work that makes me feel at peace. I hold hands, I listen intently and I truly love trying to figure out how we can help others. It hasn’t always been this way, but I am so glad it’s where I’ve arrived.

“The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It’s doing something
that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. I think of my
strawberry souffle. I did that at least twenty-eight times before I
finally conquered it.”
–Julia Child

~K

Admiring the perfection of nature last night while cooking…

I was in a meeting this morning discussing the AmeriCorps Vista program — which puts incredibly community-minded folks in volunteer opportunities with nonprofits and other groups nationally — listening and pondering the goals of the organization. In contrast to the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps is in part geared toward ending poverty in America.

The speaker elaborated on Vista volunteers receiving a small stipend monthly that barely covers their cost of living. They are to live poor to be more motivated to work for the poor, in theory. In the Peace Corps, I was paid $56 a month and you wouldn’t believe how high that placed me on the social ladder. I had my own home, never went hungry and had plenty of pocket change for bus trips back and forth to the major cities. (The buses rarely ran and were a complete pain in the ass — think 20 people, animals and babies in an 8 passenger Toyota van — but cost wasn’t one of the challenges.) In all fairness, I probably lived a more secure financial existence on that $56 dollars a month in Cameroon (as short as this adventure lasted) than I did on the $124 of financial aid per month I made work for three years of college. I did go hungry. Scraping together enough money for Taco Bell learning to rely on friends was humbling, at best.  Regardless, neither situation made me feel sincerely poor or without hope. I always knew I had an education, good health and a strong family on which to rely.

Fundamentally, that’s the difference between true poverty and temporary class experiments. While Vista volunteers may have to creatively stretch every penny they earn to get by, chances are they’ve seen a dentist, are up to date with their immunizations, have never gone days with hunger, and have an address book full of friends and family who would take them in and help immediately if given the chance. I always had the ability to pull the ultimate “uncle!!” card in the Peace Corps, which I did after just five months. I returned to the capital and demanded my return ticket to the US.

The poor are without financial legacy. Most children born into poverty in the United States are born to children. The cycle of poor education and  health is yet again planted in the worst neighborhoods, only to produce seedlings who will one day bare the same fruit. We all know of the bootstrap stories of those who’ve pulled themselves out of this routine. President Obama, potential Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and President Bill Clinton are in the minority. They had that je ne se quois to break through their environment for greater possibilities.

I’m not sure what we do to change these systemic flaws in American culture that keep certain sectors of society always planted in the same garden of despair. I admire the Vista volunteers working knee deep in the quagmire. Reminding those of the American dream — that you can be anything you want to be — must be far more complicated when dreaming itself  is a luxury.

~K

BEFORE: And the commotion begins. I took on a bit too much for this dinner; from beginning to end, it took about six hours to prepare and clean up afterward.

Aztec squash soup

Turkey chile

Carbs o’ plenty

AFTER: phew.

Last night’s communiy dinner menu included: crockpot turkey chile, aztec squash soup, buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, carrot cake, brownies, homemade hot chocolate with candy canes and marshmallows and a partridge in a pear tree. The prep for this dinner took quite a bit of time, but it was well worth it. There was plenty of food, lots of cheer and even a dozen friends who stuck around to go caroling afterward. We walked through the neighborhood singing a variety of tunes completely off key and completely enjoying ourselves. We agreed the night was well worth embarrassing ourselves when we came to a house where an older gentleman opened the door and his wife, bald from what we guessed was cancer treatment, cheered us on.

We spread a bit of cheer and walked off those calories in the process. I had a lot of fun and am really thankful for my friends. I realized last night as we tromped through the street that I have some incredible people in my life, willing to do the ridiculous to make me happy.

DC was excellent; I had such a great time at the Green Festival with Mike and Sam. Let me tell you — these two know how to hosts guests.

The adorable Tuck home.

They not only drove me around for three days, set up a hotel room in the city so we could walk and enjoy our time without worrying about driving back to the burbs, and spoiled me silly with chocolates on the pillow, awesome food and gobs of time, but they did so graciously. They didn’t make me feel like a guest, but like someone they’d really been looking forward to seeing and I couldn’t be more thankful. We also spent a night in Georgetown singing Billy Joel songs at a piano bar, surrounded by hot men in suits. (Seriously, DC? Good work on the men. Well-dressed eye candy abounds.)
It was a blast, and I’m pretty sure everyone within a five-foot distance — as far as my shouting voice could carry over the piano — knew that there were no such venues in Maricopa County. Phoenix, we need a piano bar, lots of Billy Joel and more suit-worthy weather.

Spicy chicken wrap with local veggie salad: $10. This was about three bites and the one thing I’d change about the festival was the commercial angle. They charged $1 for a cup of water — as in they charged you for the cup and then you used the faucet. Pretty silly.

Africankelli bag being rocked at the festival by Ms. Sam.

Books for sale a the fest. I didn’t buy any books. I spent my cash on an ionized foot detox instead. The photos are here, but be forewarned, they are horrifying.

We also heard Marion Nestle and Amy Goodman speak. Nestle is one of my public health heroines and she did not disappoint. Goodman gave me an entirely new perspective of the media. I learned gobs and felt right at home with my fellow Birkenstock-wearing, earth-loving, tree-hugging friends.

My notebook, ready for some Marion Nestle insight…

Dr. Nestle, who within five minutes of taking the stage made me reconsider everything I eat. In a nutshell: the US now imports the majority of our foods (and preservatives and pharmaceuticals) from China, India and Mexico — noteworthy because of their lack of quality control in areas such as preservatives and pharmaceuticals. Or so she and the recent dog food/melamine/baby formula scandals would suggest. Scary. Her talk made me sit up straight and think of all the foods I’d eaten in the last two hours that had countless preservatives, most of which probably came from an unregulated source. Yikes. Time to make some serious pantry changes.

In response, we decided not to go out for dinner after the conference. Instead we celebrated with a homemade meal and lots of local incredients:

Roast acorn squash filled with apples and garlic…

Turkey, sage and squash simmering with onion and olive oil.

Voila — the perfect meal to end a fantastic weekend. We included local Tarara wine, which was excellent.

There is certainly something to eating fresh, local and eventually vegan.

Three cheers to the Tuckers at Washington DC. I’m smitten.

~K

When I listened to Lauryn Hill in college on repeat for two years (seriously, ask Finny how silly obsessed I was with that album), I never thought 10 years later I’d be working with actual refugees. There is a lot of confusion about refugees in America and I am new to this field. Here’s what I’ve recently learned:

~ A refugee is someone living outside of his or her home country and is unwilling or unable to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution. This could be because of race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group, political opinion, etc.
A current example are the Sudanese lfrom Darfur who are fleeing to camps in Chad and Kenya to escape persecution. The Janjaweed Arabs of the north are committing active genocide against the African tribal folk of the south. (I am over-simplifying a mass migration of people, but you get the idea.)

~A evacuee is not a refugee. An evacuee is someone who has been evacuated. Simple enough, right? You can imagine the confusion when after Katrina political leaders started referring to evacuees as refugees. No dice. Evacuees who were born in the US could not be refugees. Make sense?

~An immigrant is a person who has moved to a second country by will or through refugee status. Refugees are therefore immigrants. Immigrants are rarely refugees. Only 1% of refugees living in refugee camps around the world make it to a third-country, such as the United States, for immigration.

~ An illegal immigrant is a person who has moved to a second country without the permission of authorities in the second country.

~ An asylee is a refugee who reaches another country through their own devices. For example, Cubans who reach the shores of the US are asylees. They are able to seek asylum in the United States. Another example is Martina Navratilova, who requested political asylum from her home country of Czechoslovakia. She later became a US citizen.

Refugees are brought to the United States from dozens of countries. In Arizona, there are refugees from more than 90 countries. How do these refugees get here? The United Nations High Commission for Refugees asked a dozen or so countries to help with the 12 million refugees worldwide; 80% of these are women and children. Most of the men die during the conflict that led their families to flee. Some 70% of these families live at least 10 years in refugee camps, outside of their native countries.

The Refugee Act of 1980 created specific US funding to help aid those fleeing persecution. Before then, refugees were handled on a case-by-case basis. Considering how many people from Eastern Europe immigrated as refugees after the World Wars, it is surprising it took until 1980 to pass formalized legislation and funding. The cap on refugees accepted into the US each year is 70,000. In 2007, 41,000 refugees were resettled.

The process is entirely political. There are countries we would gladly accept refugees from — think North Korea and Iran. There are countries were the trickle of folk come in, but it isn’t as politically glorifying — think Africa. In Arizona, our largest current refugee populations are coming from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Bhutan and Burma.

I’ll cover the life of a typical refugee family resettled in Arizona in the future. And yes, I am loving this job.

~K