Is she not the cutest? Today she called me her fun mom! Mamá divertida 😛
I’m so weary of this administration.
I’ve been trying to find the words for a post criticizing this president’s, and this Attorney’s General’s response to migrants and asylum seekers for weeks now, but I just can’t collect my thoughts. At this point, it’s become personal. Ive found myself face to face with immigrants and asylum seekers, children separated from their parents at the border, and I can’t find the words to put their pain, and my pain at hearing their stories, into words.
A couple weeks ago, a woman named Miriam from Guatemala started working as a busgirl at the restaurant I manage. She crossed the US/Mexico border with her six year old daughter, Mileida, a couple months ago. Mileida sits in the restaurant for 12 hours at a time during her mother’s shifts. She hardly makes a sound. She sits there coloring pages I print out for her, watching movies I put in Spanish for her, playing with dolls and toys I buy for her. When I have a chance, I play with her. Or at least ask how her day was. Even though my Spanish is terrible (I studied it for 7 years in grade school, all 4 years of high school and 2 semesters of university, I only understand about 40% of what she says to me) she considers me her best friend in Los EE.UU. When I walk in for my 2 o’clock shift she runs up to me, hugs me and says, “he estado Esperando todo el día para viene usted!”
Usually I don’t fully comprehend what she says, and I can’t respond properly, but I respond in broken Spanish which makes her laugh and correct me. I just brush it off, calling her “mi maestra de español” and she laughs and says I’m her “maestra de inglés,” because according to her “necesito aprender inglés sí voy a quedar con mi mamá aquí.” And I tell her not to worry, that she’s smart and bright, and once she starts school she’ll learn quickly. And that she doesn’t need to worry about her mom, because she made it through the hard part.
The other day I gave her my phone and opened YouTube. She started watching music videos in English and sang along, perfectly sounding out the words despite obviously not knowing what they meant. I asked her, “te gusta esta canción? A mi me encanta! Como la sabes?” And she tells me, “La sé desde cuando estuve en una casa de inmigración.”
She knows it from when she was detained by ICE. After more questions, it turns out she was separated from her mother, whom according to Mileida is her only living relative, for a long time. During that time, she stayed in a “big room with lots of other kids where they let us watch movies like Moana and Coco and music videos.” They told her that her mother was living in a house just like that, but for adults. Her mother tells me she was in jail. Her mother now wears an anklet monitor so that she doesn’t flee New Jersey (apparently we have more liberal immigration laws than say, Texas ir Arizona).
I read the same thing about migrant detention facilities in the New York Times. The way Mileida describes it, a large room where the adults let you watch Moana and teach you the numbers in English, is literally exactly how they describe it in these publications (the New York Times, the New Yorker, Vox).
A lot of Republicans, my father included, will tell you that all this is being exaggerated and blown out of proportion by liberals. But my question is, How does a 6 year old make this shit up????
My heart breaks for Mileida, her family, and every other child and family in this situation because of this inhumane, cruel, heartless, policy (those words aren’t nearly strong enough…)
I just want to help her, and all of them. I am so disgusted to be a citizen of a country that elected such a dispicible human being. I need to do something to reconcile this knowledge that I played a part in his election with the fact that families are being torn apart for the mere fact that they’re trying to provide a better opportunity for their children. Children like Mileida, whom I love
(Source: robertrothpaintings.blogspot.de, via outsh)
“The first thing I do is I dress for airports. I dress for security. I dress for the worst-case scenario. Comfortable shoes are important — I like Clarks desert boots because they go off and on very quickly, they’re super comfortable, you can beat the hell out of them, and they’re cheap.
In my carry-on, I’ll have a notebook, yellow legal pads, good headphones. Imodium is important. The necessity for Imodium will probably present itself, and you don’t want to be caught without it. I always carry a scrunchy lightweight down jacket; it can be a pillow if I need to sleep on a floor. And the iPad is essential. I load it up with books to be read, videos, films, games, apps, because I’m assuming there will be downtime. You can’t count on good films on an airplane.
I check my luggage. I hate the people struggling to cram their luggage in an overhead bin, so I don’t want to be one of those people.
On the plane, I like to read fiction set in the location I’m going to. Fiction is in many ways more useful than a guidebook, because it gives you those little details, a sense of the way a place smells, an emotional sense of the place. So, I’ll bring Graham Greene’s The Quiet American if I’m going to Vietnam. It’s good to feel romantic about a destination before you arrive.
I never, ever try to weasel upgrades. I’m one of those people who feel really embarrassed about wheedling. I never haggle over price. I sort of wander away out of shame when someone does that. I’m socially nonfunctional in those situations.
I don’t get jet lag as long as I get my sleep. As tempting as it is to get really drunk on the plane, I avoid that. If you take a long flight and get off hungover and dehydrated, it’s a bad way to be. I’ll usually get on the plane, take a sleeping pill, and sleep through the whole flight. Then I’ll land and whatever’s necessary for me to sleep at bedtime in the new time zone, I’ll do that.
There’s almost never a good reason to eat on a plane. You’ll never feel better after airplane food than before it. I don’t understand people who will accept every single meal on a long flight. I’m convinced it’s about breaking up the boredom. You’re much better off avoiding it. Much better to show up in a new place and be hungry and eat at even a little street stall than arrive gassy and bloated, full, flatulent, hungover. So I just avoid airplane food. It’s in no way helpful.
For me, one of the great joys of traveling is good plumbing. A really good high-pressure shower, with an unlimited supply of hot water. It’s a major topic of discussion for me and my crew. Best-case scenario: a Japanese toilet. Those high-end Japanese toilets that sprinkle hot water in your ass. We take an almost unholy pleasure in that.
I’ve stopped buying souvenirs. The first few years I’d buy trinkets or T-shirts or handcrafts. I rarely do that anymore. My apartment is starting to look like Colonel Mustard’s club. So much of it comes out of the same factory in Taiwan.
The other great way to figure out where to eat in a new city is to provoke nerd fury online. Go to a number of foodie websites with discussion boards. Let’s say you’re going to Kuala Lumpur — just post on the Malaysia board that you recently returned and had the best rendang in the universe, and give the name of a place, and all these annoying foodies will bombard you with angry replies about how the place is bullshit, and give you a better place to go.”
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