The Unitarian Church offered us their little kitchen with one little stove, but we felt that everyone was pretty fully committed doing flood relief and everything was so very disrupted that it wouldn't fly. Also, a lot of our recipients were getting a lot of aid and attention because of the flood. We turned in different directions.
Right before the flood, we had gone to a United Farm Workers protest rally in Watsonville, CA. About 30,000 people showed up to support the workers asking Monsanto to put porto potties in the field, to stop spraying while the workers were picking, and to provide drinking water. It was really inspiring. Jesse Jackson gave a talk saying that it was the end of the 1990s and couldn't the corporations make their huge profits, the workers get fair conditions and wages and the produce be healthy for all. What an astonishing concept. The music, the food, the hopes of the workers got us all fired up. Monsanto's response was to plow the crop under and put everyone out of work.
Our next big thing was the Guatemala project. I had worked on a few great projects in Guatemala during their war. I loved the people I met there. The Indigenous population was the second largest in the world after the Aborigines in Australia. I had experienced a lot of magic and healing among them. I deplored the US backed genocide and our role in trying to ruin these people.
The war was officially over, but we had employed a Vietnam inspired scorched earth policy. 230,000 had been killed and countless thousands had fled to refugee camps in Mexico, Honduras and the US. In these fleeings, they had lost their communities and were among people of different languages. Often the first people to be assassinated were the leaders, the healers, the teachers, the clergy. They came back to nothing. The bread kids wanted to help.
Some of the kids collected organic seeds. Millions of them. We prepared to go. Our contact with the people we were going to work with dropped off, but we knew where to look for them. I invited Heather Meyer, a young friend from Marblehead, MA to come along. She spoke Spanish and had a good head on her shoulders. I needed an allay even if she was still in High School. I have no memory of how we got the $ to do this. The kids sold some stuff, herbal wreaths, the clothes on their backs. People gave. A local doctor came and gave me fists full of CIPRO. He said to use them liberally in case of pneumonia, bullet wounds, amoebas, until we could get help. OK.
I told the kids that if any one got stopped anywhere for drugs of any kind I would not know them. I would not help them. I would walk right on through customs and not hear their cries for help. And I was not interested in any of their raps about legalizing marijuana or peyote cults or how the corporations were behind all the drug wars. They got the message. I also told them that we did not want to stand out. We were doing this for other people, that we wanted to be under the radar.
So we gathered together one fine morning to be driven by Saint Winn to San Francisco to spend the night and get a plane from there. I should have known. They came that morning in full regalia. Several had died their dreads green. More tats, more shit hanging off their noses, hair, ears, eyelids than ever. Inconspicuous.
We arrived in Antigua, Guatemala very late at night. The next morning we went by local bus to near our destination. There is absolutely no way we went under the radar. We couldn't move without attracting a huge following of people staring. At one point someone came right out and asked us "What are you?" I, answered "Payasos sin Fronteras." That worked. We got hugs and lovin' from all around. Everyone in those villages knew Doctors Without Borders. Everyone knew Veterinarians Without Borders. I just called us "Clowns Without Borders." The name stuck. It somehow explained our crazy looks.
That night we didn't make contact with our project. We all ended up sleeping in the same room. Oh my God! So there was this awful smell coming from one of the beds. Well, most of them smelled pretty bad (no products) but this was awful. I asked what that was. No one said anything. So I frigging sniffed around until I came to Emily. "What is that smell?" Well, it turned out that E. had had a nipple pierced in honor of the trip and it was badly infected. And she starts giving me this bullshit about how she has been treating it with some kind of tincture and she is sure that it will get better and we have been traveling for three days and are about to take a 12 hour bus ride to NOWHERE to do our project and already we are in a place with no sanitation and there are 12 of us.
I was pretty calm as I told her she was going to start that minute on the marvelous CIPRO or I was going to take her to the airport in the morning and put her on a plane for home. She wasn't buying it. Antibiotics are bad for you and all that jazz she told me. I stood firm praying that the CIPRO would be enough to help her. The other kids who all agreed with her about the nightmare of antibiotics were convinced that I meant what I said and persuaded her to take the medicine. She still smelled awful.
We headed out in the morning for Todos Santos a village near the Chiapas border where we would do Spanish School for a few weeks. Mas manana,
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