Drip, Drip, Drip

Monday, 05 October 2009 20:58

Commentary through Poetry by Charles Golestani

From Arivaca to Old Tucson, Humane Borders provides the desert crossers with the necessities: water, food and perhaps a blanket, and picking up trash left behind.  These humanitarian trips can be undertaken by any and all in Phoenix and Tucson who have a desire to create a safer enviornment in the surrounding borderlands for migrants.  After an early morning run with Humane Borders, a human rights group who have charged themselves with refilling water stations for use by thirsty migrants, to refill the station near Manville road to the north, the creativity bug bit.  Some of the group sounded off on what they've experienced encountering migrants, and on what a Humane Borders water station represents to the travelling migrant.

A collection of poetry and a short photo slide show attempt to capture in words and images what happens everyday on a much larger scale.  The journey of the migrant is wracked with emotions: fear, dissapointment, hate perhaps?  This is merely a stab at what can go through the mind of dogged adventurers crossing across miles of craggy mountains and baking desert.

Unlikely Religion

Humane Borders is a Tucson-based faith group that operates out of the First Christian Church on Speedway Boulevard in Tucson, Ariz. The group provides and maintains water-resource stations in Tucson and neighboring communities for migrants crossing the deserts from Mexico to the United States.  Here, an ode to the water tank, the migrants deity, their God.  In finding the answer to his prayers, he realizes everything that culminated in this moment from the first thought, by the man that filled it to the flag , and that revealed it the water sloshing forth into his open palms.

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Look There!

The migrants have a guiding line on their journey; a set of power lines run all the way West toward Manville Road where our Humane Borders driver, Gene, led us to our water refill drop site.  These "pillars" run across the desert, the only structure for miles in any direction.  A migrant's journey amongst the desert may have him believing that those lines are as much a part of the landscape as the animals or tree or cacti.  This piece encapsulates the possible anthropomorphizing of the power lines.  A short video slide show of our outing accompanies it.

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Ayudame

If Humane Borders per chance stumbles upon wandering migrants, their protocol is, first and foremost, to ask if they need help: food, water, a blanket or a call to the Border Patrol.  Border Patrol would treat and return them to Mexico.  But, what passes through the minds of migrants when they take on this journey?  What occupies their thoughts, and what's their mind-set if they fail?  The places their mind may go are dark and self-deprecating.  The stakeholders in their journeys are not the migrants alone. Their families suffer as well, and the trek represents an ultimate goal of security they hope to attain, too.

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*All creative works are based on the statements provided by members of the Humane Borders human rights activist group.  They have been described as best can be according to the testimony of those members.  None of the statements contained within are the written or recorded testimony of actual undocumented immigrants.

Written by Charles Golestani You are reading Drip, Drip, Drip articles