(Picture borrowed from Google search of Tucson Benedictine Monastery).

I had been getting intake emails since I got added to the list serve with subjects like “50 Guests Arriving at 1pm.” After a 2-hour training I was “ready” to do intake by Casa Alitas. I still didn’t know what that meant, really, but I was already getting emails every day: “100 guests here, Intake and Support Needed” and sometimes I get emails several times a day, “New group has arrived.”

So, on a Saturday when I was down and having a hard time shaking it, I saw the intake email and got up the courage to call Fred. “Hi Fred, I saw the email for intake support and wondered if you could come to the Monastery with me.” He said: “I’ll meet you there in 20 minutes.” I left my study session and drove to the monastery.

I asked Fred where the monastery was. Classic mistake. Everyone from Tucson wants to give you directions because they assume you know the roads, and furthermore, I (being a Millennial) assume they can tell me the address. And he didn’t know it, so I just said: “What’s the name of where I am going?” Benedictine Monastery. Got it, good. It’s 8 minutes from my house. See you there.

I walked in to find that Fred had already signed in. It was chaos. Fred (I have changed his name here) had alcohol on his breath (maybe he’d only had one drink but I didn’t know) and his Spanish was terrible. I didn’t know what to attribute this to: alcohol or him. But attribution wasn’t important, the point was that Fred was a mess. And I was just trying to learn. He grabbed the sign-in sheet and called up various guests. He was trying to find someone who spoke K’iche’ (he knew I spoke it). What ensued was a confusion between two different guests who were more than ready to get in their rooms and rest. He had called the names of both María and Elfer, and Fred kept going back and forth between which one he wanted to process. So this led to confusion between María and Elfer and embarrassment on my part and, if I’m honest, a little bit of frustration with Fred. I didn’t know what I was doing, and yet I knew this wasn’t it.

Eventually I guided Fred to stop ping-ponging between guests and we asked Elfer and his daughter and her doll, to follow us to an intake table and take a seat. Next we had to get Fred’s computer running. I could have used my phone but the computer would be easier. After it finally booted, myself making uncertain glances across the table to Elfer and his daughter, we began the questionnaire. Poco a poco, I asked Fred for guidance on the questions I wasn’t sure how to ask or respond to, and clarification on the steps. I knew I was supposed to fill out their name tags, their labels for the doors of the rooms where they would stay and give them a document on legal advice (and a bag with sheets, a towel and toiletry items).

Elfer and his daughter were from Guatemala. I could hear it in his accent and imagine him in his pueblo. I had been to the province he was from but I was not familiar with his specific pueblo. Nevertheless I couldn’t believe that I was doing this, processing someone from San Marcos, Guatemala, a place I had been where my friends were volunteers. It hurt to know that he had left a wife and three children behind, and brought this daughter. What went into making that decision, this child over others? And when would he be able to call his wife? He didn’t have a cell phone. I didn’t ask these questions of course, but I couldn’t keep them from my mind either.

The questions on the form are shared with other shelters in the area: Our Mother of Sorrows, Trinity Church, Benedictine Monastery (that’s where I was). Elfer asked me: “How many nights will we stay here?” and I did not know what to say. His sponsor is located in North Dakota, of all places. We can (probably) agree that when you meet someone who has given up their lives, crossed through the desert on bus, on foot, passing from shelter to shelter until they are assigned a court date for their asylum hearing, you might be surprised to hear that their destination is North Dakota. Who lives in North Dakota? North Dakotans, I guess. And now Elfer and his daughter, too.

You see, the people who come to the monastery are seeking asylum due to unlivable conditions in their home countries. When they get processed at the border of Mexico into the US, they are assigned a court date in whatever city their sponsor lives. Who is a sponsor? It is not someone who is paying for anything, it is more like their reference point. Their sponsor is usually a sibling, a relative, who lives in the US, has a phone number and a residence. This person has already been listed by name on the paperwork that ICE/Border Patrol gave them when they were processed. Along with their court date, time and location. How did I know all of this? I learned it from processing guests. Until this time I wasn’t sure who we were helping and housing: illegal immigrants, asylum-seekers? But it didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to help Guatemalans find better lives like Guatemalans helped me find mine.

What the shelter does is give them a place to stay, eat, bathe and find clothes while they arrange their transport from Tucson to their sponsors’ homes. Elfer and his daughter can’t very well hitchhike from Tucson to North Dakota. How will he even know how to get there? And with a 6 year-old. The monastery has a travel office that makes such arrangements.

Fred had never seen the Border Patrol forms we were rifling through. We had to make sure (I learned from our training) that there was no mistakes on the paperwork. Was the sponsor’s name written correctly, was their A-number correct? Their A-number is a means of identification for people who are asylum seekers awaiting their court dates. Each person who passes through border patrol as an asylum seeker is assigned an A-number. So I have to input these details into the form, checking for errors. I also have to ask them: “How many days did you wait at the border? / Did they deny you food at the border, drinking water, access to a bathroom, the opportunity to bathe?” I click yes or no based on their responses. “Did they treat you poorly at the border?” I input all of this information on Fred’s computer who is swinging from one Spanish syllable to the next resulting in words I had to retranslate.

I looked at the little girl, she was happy. I asked Delle, our intake ‘lead,’ in what room they are going to stay. I read my guests’ names to her and she told me she is putting them in a room with another father and daughter. 206B. I’ll never forget that room number, my first time processing. I wrote Elfer’s name on the yellow sheet, and a (2) to represent he and his daughter. On his nametag I wrote his sponsor’s information, address and phone number, and the room number again: “206B.” I left the “anticipated date of departure” space blank.

Then we told Elfer and his daughter to follow us. He’d gathered his folder with his paperwork and Fred and I grabbed two bags of sheets/towels/etc. Someone named Lynn offered to help me take Elfer to his room. My face said PLEASE HELP ME WITH FRED and Lynn helped. But she didn’t speak Spanish either. She asked me to ask Elfer, “Do you have any bags?” and his response was: “No nothing.” It was then I realized. They literally left everything behind. We arrived to the room and I slipped his name card in the plastic sleeve. I told him that he and his daughter would have to share this cot (per Fred/Lynn) and I felt badly but I didn’t know what else to do. Then we accompanied Elfer and his daughter down to the restaurant.

It only got worse. A well-meaning woman but feckless (I’ve always wanted to use this word) came up to them and started saying: “um… frijol…. sopa…. arroz….” and I looked at her in between her pauses and want to know: “Ma’am, what is it you are trying to say?” “Oh I am asking them what they want.” Another woman came over and put a kibosh on the food train: “Wait, when was the last time they ate something?” And I knew the answer but had to ask them again: “Sandwiches and cookies” I tell her. “Okay” said the kibosh woman. “We need to give them soup…” and I felt myself crawl inside a deep dark cave of embarrassment.

In Guatemala, food is an important custom. You don’t simply offer someone the whole menu then place a paper bowl of soup in front of them. That would be shameful. But there it was and I was powerless to stop it. They didn’t even have tortillas, another crime. I said to them: “Buen provecho” and the man replied “Gracias.”

Another woman was serving food but said she needed to do their medical intake. I know now that she was wrong. Their names don’t get added to the list I called them from unless they’ve already gone through the medical questionnaire. But I offered to translate which resulted in me sitting across from Elfer and his daughter while they ate. Fred left for the bathroom and explained that he’s never, in his two years, been in this building when the plumbing didn’t work. But that is where we were: port-a-potties and portable showers outside.

I left the shelter overwhelmed by all of the well-meaning people who didn’t speak Spanish, Fred who was a hot mess and the general sense of tangling up I felt inside when I saw the faces of people coming from the country I just called home. I flew to the USA, handed over my passport and never wanted for food or water. What’s the difference between them and me? Luck? Privilege and papers, nothing else. We are equal but life has been so much kinder to me. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around the cruelty of this, and maybe that’s part of the reason why I wanted to sock some of those well-meaning volunteers right in their big toes. Misplaced anger.

I do want to say, Fred is absolutely an awesome guy. He helped me get connected with this organization and dropped everything to meet me there on that Saturday. I’ll never be able to thank him enough. He said to me: “One day you’ll come alongside someone else and show them how it’s done” and he left without saying goodbye. He emailed me the intake link after he left. In fact I pull it up every time I walk in the shelter.

I left feeling stirred and shaken up, overwhelmed and not feeling much better. I was still feeling sad from the morning’s mood but grateful to have had a distraction during the afternoon and to learn more about this process of helping people get to where they want to be.

Imagine, en cambio, how Elfer and his daughter slept that night, sharing a cot in a random defunct monastery and eating and sleeping and surviving on the kindness of strangers. There is no comparison to our situations, really. Except that he was my first intake guest and I was his intake specialist. And I hope he has made it to North Dakota by now. I hope the best results for his court date but I know how cruel this process is. And still I hope for them the best.