Two Wednesdays ago, a group of 20 EMU students and our 2 leaders began our cross-cultural experience. The semester will include a week at the US/Mexico border with a focus on immigration and border issues, 2 months in Guatemala studying Spanish and other aspects of Guatemalan culture while we live with host families, and about 2 weeks in Southern Mexico where we'll learn about a coffee cooperative stationed there as well as experience how this community lives as we again stay with host families. We'll also have a week of free travel, where we have the opportunity to go to any place of our choice. It will be a busy semester, but I'm looking forward to it!
We just got back from our week at the border and are preparing to head to Guatemala. Our schedule this past week kept us busy, and sometimes we had 3 or 4 different activities or visits in one day. Some of these included visiting a Detention Center, the Desert Museum, church with a local Mexican congregation, the Migrant Resource Center, various activities around the border, a shelter, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, a journey through the desert, a prayer vigil remembering those who didn't make it, a Border Patrol station, a coffee cooperative, and more.
In general, there were so many things to take in, but I think what affected me the most was the faces I saw - faces of migrants, of the deported, of the detained, of the rejected. Hearing stories about these kinds of people is one thing, but putting real live faces to those stories turned the stories into reality. Right now, I could not tell you exactly what those faces looked like, and their exact descriptions are already fading from my memory. What I do remember is how I felt when I saw those faces - a sort of shock as I realized that those faces were going through the hardships of everything that we talked or learned about through the week. Detainees at the Detention Center, members of the church, a man who came into the Migrant Resource Center looking for help right after being deported, the men at the shelter, our desert guides pointing out migrants in the desert waiting to cross the border, men and women at the factory, names on crosses at the prayer vigil, men and women at the coffee cooperative - all of these people were affected in some way by the border. Each has a unique story to tell, different from any other person's story. Through physically seeing all of these people, the things we learned about suddenly began to make sense.
I understand now that I can't stereotype migrants into one category. I can't assume I know or understand their reasons for wanting to cross the border. I learned that even through the journey may have been hard, many of those people want to tell their story and want others to listen. I now want to be that person who listens and wants to help.
Many times throughout the week, I wondered what those people thought of me and of our group - mostly white US citizens, given tours and access to many places, young people with money for travel and for school. Sometimes I felt like a tourist, which I didn't like. Those experiences when I was a student, learning, regardless of how I looked or how others perceived me - there was so much to take in, to experience, to learn firsthand. I'm still confused about how exactly I feel about many issues surrounding the border and immigration, and the more I learned, the more I realized I don't know or understand. I do know that the faces and firsthand experience helped everything to connect, and the things I take away from this week will be greatly influenced by seeing them.
