The Continuing

Tuesday, February 6, 2007
10:51:11 PM

Today has been a pretty eye opening day to say the least. I’ve decided to to start referring to my room mate as George as that is the english version of his name and its easier to spell and say. We had fresh coffee and cinnamon with mango juice for breakfast. Peaches the bird decided to jump up on the table and try some himself. Unfortunately he then decided to walk in the icing and jump on my shoulder. I got iced by a parakeet. Arriving at the Gateway park Museum at 8:30 we were briefed on the day’s upcoming transpirations. We were son joined by students from 4 local high schools. There were probably about 40 of the total.
Our first session together was a discussion given by local crime enforcement officer Detective Skinner: Child abuse unit. He talked at length about the meth-amphetamine drug use problem that is become of pandemic proportions. 85% of all theft and 72% of all violent crimes in the San Juan district of New Mexico were related to drug use; either under the influence of drug addiction or to gain funds to purchase more drugs. While working undercover, during a transaction, he discovered that a mother had given her 4 year old daughter as payment to the drug dealer to repay a 700$ debt. She had been kept in the basement of the home is a dog kennel and had not been given food or water for over 4 days. Of course he was arrested on the spot but the fact that a drug could be so addicting that someone would do something like that just to get more of it is quite frankly horrifying and sickening.
He then went on to explain why he was so passionate about his work. His younger sister died three weeks before her grade 12 graduation because of an overdose on meth amphetamines. Despite the fact that people had told him that they thought she was using it, he ignored them with the attitude that “this doesn’t happen to people like us”. If he had taken just that one step and confronted her about it up front perhaps she’d still be alive today. The message is that if you know people who are getting themselves into the vicious cycle of drug use, you should intervene because it is an addiction and sometimes that is all it takes to save a life.
We later had a team building session with the high school students where we taught them the “stomp” dance from our show. We also tried to untie human knots and arranged ourselves alphabetically without using spoken or written language.
Splitting into three groups we went by bus to our community impact project sites. I was in the group that headed to the P.A.T.H. Project. The facility of People Assisting the Homeless was in need of renovations and repairs so we provided the man hours to get it done. Working along side our partner high school students, we painted, raked, shoveled, swept, and moved everything from couches to washers and dryers. For lunch we walked over to the “Daily Bread” soup kitchen where some of the other UWP students were working throughout the day.
This was one of the most eye opening experiences of the day. As we got closer; one of the homeless people standing outside, an aging man of Navaho descent, Yelled at us “Are you Guys Christian?”. Poor Kelly, one of my castmates from Colorado was the first to get into the spiel about UWP. Right after she had said that some of us were he cut her off calling here a dirty whore and telling us as a group to “go the hell back to wherever the fuck we came from.” We all quickly shuffled inside. I sat for lunch with Gabe and Mitch; we sat solemnly, glancing occasionally at each other. I know I shouldn’t ever take things personally; especially things like this, but this is the first time I’d really been put in a situation where people automatically disliked me because of my religion. I’ll admit that it was difficult and had I been alone I bet I would have cried or something. With discussion we had later I leaned that although many Christian organizations help support the poor and homeless people in Farmington, that there had been a program similar to Canadian residential schools instituted by the church and that there is still a great deal of resentment over that for many reasons. We ate the same lunch as the other people who came to the soup kitchen, we sat with some of them at lunch in their cafeteria as well. Some were very eager to talk, some not so much. Lauran, another one of our US students told later about how she had a really good one on one conversation with a guy who was sitting over on the side by himself. Sometimes all it takes to make a difference is to lend an ear.
After lunch we went back to finish work at our project site. Many of the people who were painting inside got paint all over themselves. We finished up around 3:30 and headed back over to the food bank for our afternoon session on Human Rights. It was quite the shocking session. We first discussed “what is a human right” and how there are still many places in the world where basic human rights are denied. Armando from Mexico got up and told us how in Mexico there is still lots of persecution of women. We were introduced to the term “Femocide”, genocide but specifically women; and this has happened in Mexico within the past 20 years. Men killing women solely on the fact that they are female. How can this still happen in this day and age? Another thing that also occurs with relative frequency in some places is female genital mutilation. Why would someone force this medially unnecessary, painful and detrimental procedure one someone?
Linn from Norway stood up and started talking about despite the fact that their country is one of the most socially progressive in the world that there is an enormous problem with human smuggling and prostitution rings. Young girls, some as young as 11 and 12 from poorer countries like Estonia are literally “shipped” to Norway with the promise of work and a better life but instead are forced to work in the sex industry. The problem is 10000 times worse in the country of Singapore where young girls are forced into prostitution to help pay off family debts and to help support their families. This whole system is utterly wrong on so many levels; its just appalling. I don’t think that this issue gets enough attention in the world and that societies and governments alike must do more to bring it to the forefront.

Stop and think about that; really stop. These kinds of things happen all over the world everyday.
It Is NOT All Good; not by a long shot.

Back with our host family, we had Pot roast with potatoes and carrots for supper with pie a la monde and A&W root beer floats for supper. We took a quick tour of the town with their son and we stopped at Best Buy where I bough some over the ear studio headphones for the next bus ride. When we got back, George and I got out the maps and showed them all our pictures from home. I also played some fiddle music. Peaches danced along and it was quite neat. Tomorrow follows the sam pattern as today with the exception that we’re not off till 8:30 Pm because George and I are on the crew for setting up the stage for our performance at the Civic center on Thursday. It will be interesting for sure.