El Paso - planties and peoples

On one of my last days in El Paso I was asked to handle the night shift, sleeping over at the shelter to be on call in case of emergency and wake up early morning travelers. To mentally prepare myself, and because I am a plant nerd in my professional life, I decided to spend the morning at the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens and Centennial Museum at the University of Texas. I neglected to factor in school break so instead of chilling in the oldest museum in the city (which was closed), I wandered around the Bhutan-esque empty campus and ate a solitary lunch among the 800 plants in the Texas wildscape. Who are we kidding? It was a lovely interlude.

It turns out that UTEP has a unique relationship with the country of Bhutan (where I've had the pleasure of visiting: https://lennisblog.blogspot.com/search/label/NepalBhutan2016). In 1914, the country was featured in National Geographic, which the wife of the dean of the School of Mines read religiously. Evidently she convinced her husband to rebuild the recently destroyed school in the Bhutanese style. In the 1960s, a faculty member at UTEP reached out to Bhutan for input on the campus thus beginning an official relationship between the school and the royal family. The campus now includes ceremonial prayer wheels, an altar, and a deep kinship founded on a mutual love of green chilies.

I'm so glad I had a chance for some plant-y me-time because that night we had 100 refugees arrive. Every afternoon each of the shelters gets a text message from an ICE official letting them know the approximate number of people and the time they will be arriving. It's a weird system that I'm afraid I got no further background on.

What I've neglected to mention is the great and boundless generosity of the people of El Paso. The city actually has a higher than average number of people living below the poverty line (20% versus the national average of 13%), making it the 25th poorest city in the country. But every day a community group would provide, prepare, and serve lunch and dinner for 30-50 refugees. They would drive people to the bus station and the airport, donate heaps of clothing and help sort it, and manage non-local volunteers doing intake. As we got closer and closer to Christmas, volunteers were harder to come by while more and more refugees were being released to shelters. At one point, someone actually lent me their car to make several trips to the bus station. And several of the generous big-hearted El Pasoans decided to also make back-to-back trips. (I might have cried when a young man signed up for every Christmas morning drive.)

So after a marathon intake session and surprisingly smooth dinner, shower, new clothing rotation, I settled into a cot in the cafeteria for the night. At this point, I had the beginnings of a cold so I conked right out until I had to open the doors at 3AM for a young woman coming back from the hospital.  I napped a bit until 5 when I gently woke up two families to get ready for their drive to the airport. I got to see the sunrise over Mexico!

Later that morning no one showed up to handle the breakfast shift so Sr. Mary and I frantically poured bowl after bowl of cereal and brewed pot after pot of coffee, running out of milk, sugar, coffee and cereal. Then we made thousands upon thousands of peanut butter sandwiches for the families leaving that day exhausting the relevant supplies for that task as well. I was then asked to stay on for one last intake session which I agreed to with the understanding that I would then skip my last day at the shelter. 

After about 27 hours of work (and napping) I headed back to my hotel room where I was immediately faced with a woman YELLING on the phone at someone. Turns out she was to be a new shelter volunteer and had none of the chill necessary. I told her that I had had a long day and that if she gave me half an hour to recenter (in silence) I would then answer all of her questions. This proved to be impossible for her so despite being partly dead I answered her thousand questions immediately and then left the hotel with a book. Despite knowing better than to eat pizza in a restaurant south of the Mason Dixon line or west of New Jersey, I dropped into the Pizza Joint...and it was actually good!

The next day, I wandered around El Paso and accidentally followed the owner of Zona Centro Mexican Eatery into Zona Centro Mexican Eatery and was pleasantly surprised by the vegetarian jackfruit and prickly pear tacos. I was unpleasantly surprised however, to learn that ICE had dropped off hundreds of refugees directly at the bus station and then again on Christmas! But I'll have you know that the good people of El Paso rallied together to bring sandwiches and care packages to the station before getting them to shelters.