So today I "helped" at the birth center my friend Katarra works and studies at, Maternidad La Luz, which translates to Maternity the Light. It was a great experience, except that I was limping around because the day before I'd gone hiking out in the desert hills and I got stabbed in the left knee joint by a cactus and apparently this cactus was one of those ones with venom in it's spikeys, because my knee swelled all up and I've been having difficulty hobbling around. I've learned a new respect for catuses, that is for sure!
Katarra was busy today, so I shadowed her friend Michele, who was a wonderful person to shadow. Together we did a total of three prenatal appointments, a labor check, and did a lot of cousiling with a girl who may or may not have been miscarrying. Actually, I don't speak any Spanish, so Michele did all the work, and I just kept her company and ran and fetched a few things for her, like copies of forms when she needed them.
Most of the women who come to Maternidad La Luz live in Juaraz, that mysterious town just across the boarder from El Paso, where you frequently hear about women going missing, being taken by "coyotes" (people paid to help people sneak across the boarder,) as sex slaves and sold to someone in the United States, bodies turning up naked and beaten to death, all of that sort of stuff. Juaraz is apparently a really brutal place to live, yet the women I saw around me in the clinic today seemed happy, vibrant, glowing with the new life they had growing in their bellies. This, despite the often two-hour waits at the boarder just to cross to come to prenatal appointments. This despite the fact that they sometimes get strip-searched at the border. Katarra said she'd even worked with one client who wanted good prenatal and labor care so badly, she would swim across the Rio Grande in order to sneak into the country for every appointment! Amazing what ladies will sometimes go to in order to get good health care!
Katarra took me on a drive last night past a good portion of The Fence; that famous cage that is suppost to keep poor brown people from mixing with rich white people. It was strange to see an actual physical barrier between the haves and the have-nots; in my head, that Rage Against the Machine song that has that line "give the power to the have-nots...I think I heard a shot!" in it, kept playing. Parts of The Fence are really intimidating; about twenty feet tall, in some places with barbed wire on top. Other places have human sized holes in them. Clearly, however, crossing the boader illegally is dangerous. Everywhere border patrol cars drive up and down in front of the fence; we saw one car pulled over with a man in the back, obviously in trouble. It is really crazy to be able to see through this fence into Mexico, to see the little kids gathered in groups, playing in the dusk, and knowing that this wall or fence was built to keep them and theirs out, in much the same way we keep fences between ourselves and wild animals, like at a zoo.
To me, it is truely bizarre that we can decide that some humans are "more equal then others.." Or that some of us belong on one side of some government concieved fence, and the others belong on the other.
When I was meeting with the pregnant ladies today, I saw no reason why they shouldn't live in America if they want to. Likewise, I think any American who wishes to move to say; Mexico or Canada or any other place in the world they desire, should be able to. I think there are enough Americans who'd trade with Mexicans that it would be ok...and anyway, deciding where a "border" should be, is way too much like playing God for me. Who gave us the right? I understand recognizing bioregions; clearly they exist, but countries? What perverted mind came up with this shit?
Thats right, yours truely no longer believes in countries...like money and math, we've invented sick ways to exclude some folks in order to keep others in power...
For that matter, I've decided this year that classifying myself as "white" or "caucation" is way too wierd for words as well; my skin has never been white for one thing (I was born an interesting copper colour,) and besides, I'm nothing like "Whitey." I refuse to be part of that crowd. Try to find a country for a person like me and you'll see that one can't exist; I'm a person to rare to capture inside something as lame as a country...
Nowadays, when forms ask for my race, color, gender, married status, etc, I just stare at the form and shrug...none of these catagories make much sense to me...I'm a copper colored person with fallopean tubes whose ancesors where indigenious tribal folks in Scotland, Ireland and England, and as for gender...(big shrug and smile..)
Love ya,
Carrot
