A run for the border
Working alongside poor in Mexico makes for fulfilling spring break
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JAY GISH is a senior broad
casting major and Daily
Nebraskan columnist.
How was your spring break?
I spent the week in and around
the city of Juarez, Mexico.
For a few days I was in a “sub
urb” of Juarez - 200,000 people liv
ing in the middle of the desert, in
homes made out of whatever they
can find. The area has been used as a
landfill... what they find is mostly
trash strewf? all over the hillsides.
The streets there consist of about
four inches of loose, red dust. Most
of the “homes” that line them are
made of used shipping pallets. Yet, in
places, some concrete structures
have actually been built.
There, we met a church pastor
and his wife who were willing to let
20 total strangers with next to zero
construction experience help them
shingle and floor-tile a building, as
well as build a brick wall around it.
The building, dusty and crude, is
going to serve as the neighborhood
pharmacy and gathering place.
None of us spoke the others’ lan
guage fluently - so (as you could
imagine) communication was as
much in tone and gesture as in
words.
The pastor and his wife bought a
couple of 3-liter bottles of Coke to
share with our group every day we
were together. To think of the grand
expense that those bottles represent
ed to that couple really embarrassed
us, but we drank them. To turn down
such a generous and sincere gift
seemed unthinkable.
Before we left, we had a church
service with a congregation of about
seven people from the neighborhood.
When the pastor asked us to con
tribute, we muddled through a
Spanish hymn while I tried to play
his guitar. I dropped the few coins I
had in my pocket into the bag they
passed during the offering.
I wondered how much my measly
gifts meant to those people. I guess
they may have also been wondering
what theirs meant to us.
We appreciated their unabated
warmth more deeply than I can say.
If any part of our presence meant as
much to them, I’d say we’d experi
enced a miracle.
Some oi our motley crew or
Caucasian invaders also went to a
vacant lot inside the urban bustle of
Juarez. A mentally ill woman lived
there alone, in a camper shell. Our
desire to help was probably no better
than a rumor to her, yet she greeted
each one of us like a long-lost rela
tive.
We helped her clear the tiny lot
of the rubble that covered it, while
cockroaches scurried and found new
hiding places. We dug a hole for an
outhouse in the newly cleared land.
We shared our lunch of cold sand
wiches with the woman, and said
goodbye.
At one point, I stood ankle-deep
in dust and trash on the Mexican side
of the border, gazing upon the com
parative splendor of downtown El
Paso, Texas. I had no desire to climb
the 10-foot fence in front of me,
since my U.S. citizenship insured
easy return to America.
As I was wondering if the people
I’d met in Juarez longed for the same
privilege, I saw a white truck
approach.
The U.S. Border Patrol had come
to insure us against invasion from
ourselves. We piled into our vans and
left, the policemen watching behind
tinted glass.
That was intimidation, but we
also felt empowerment.
For most of us, it was a real
accomplishment to see a short sec
tion of wall go up and stay up, by the
power of our own hands. And I
wouldn’t have believed we could
survive the vagabond life as
smoothly as we did, even for so
short a time.
Yet while the trip was
empowering, it also
smacked us in the face.
By midweek, we found our
selves commenting on one-story
stucco buildings as if they were
mansions, then realizing how utterly
ludicrous that sounded. We learned
that 20 is the average age in the El
Paso-Juarez area - it’s shocking
to think that people my age
have the weight of society
on their shoulders.
That’s just one of a
thousand reasons
why building a
thriving bor
der com
munity is
so tough.
The
Texas
Mexico
border is
also the
most impov- -
erished and
least educated
(as well as
largely
ignored) politi
cal region for
both the United
States and
Mexico.
Temporarily,
we felt what it was
like to live in those
conditions. During the trip, our
group virtually lived the life of beg
gars. For lodging, we relied on
churches we had never
visited to open their
doors for us. The 20
of us slept in what
ever space we
could find.
We held midnight revivals of
sorts, singing any hymn we could
think of into empty, darkened sanctu
aries. I cried for the first time in so
long I can’t remember.
Sometimes we wondered if we’d
been placed in a curse of irony, since
we spent three days in El Paso during
which the temperature never rose
above 35 degrees. I also watched one
of my closest friends be hospitalized
for dehydration and food poisoning
-not in Mexico, but in Colorado.
All right, enough. I m sure
most of this sounds rather
^ crappy to you, especially
T as a way to spend spring
I break. But no matter
how it seems, it was
one of the most fulfill
ing weeks of my life.
It really was.
How was your
spring break?
k
Matt Haney/DN
The four A’s
Alcoholism, abuse, adultery and abandonment leave lifelong scars
TIM SULLIVAN is a third
year law student and a
Daily Nebraskan columnist.
What I have to talk about this
week isn’t a particularly pleasant
topic.
It’s not necessarily gruesome or
gut-wrenching.
But it is seriops.
It’s about problems people expe
rience as a result of abuse suffered at
the hands of those they expect love
and nurturing from - their parents.
I don’t want to hurt anyone -
especially my own parents - by writ
ing this. I’m going to reveal some
things about myself to you, my read
ers, people who at best are total
strangers to me.
And as I said, my mtention is not
to embarrass or hurt myself or my
family. Rather, I hope that at least
one person out there finds some sim
ilarities in their own life and makes
the decision to get the help they so
desperately need.
My own saga began when I was
bom the eldest of a family of five,
the son of an alcoholic. Not only an
alcoholic, but a strict disciplinarian
with his wife and children, who kept
everyone walking on pins and nee
dles - constantly.
As a career military man, my
father, like most alcoholics, held on
fervently to the one thing that most
alcoholics hold on to until they sink
to rock bottom - his job. And hold
ing on fervently to a military career
means adopting the mind-set of the
organization - strict discipline and
rigid, unquestioning adherence to
authority.
The problem in the family envi
ronment with that mind-set should
be obvious. Risk-taking behavior,
which ordinarily involves trial-and
error learning, is stifled. Anything
that could possibly result in the ver
bal or physical wrath of the abuser is
avoided like the plague. Hence,
learning experiences, especially
those that might involve any kind of
a possibility that Dad might get
upset - simply don’t happen.
When you re walking on pins
and needles, afraid of the wrath of
the abuser, you’re never sure what’s
going to get your ass in trouble. So
you don’t try even the most innocent
of things - like stringing your shoes
differently than how you’re told.
People always thought I was
extremely shy and withdrawn as a
child. The truth was, I was afraid of
doing anything to embarrass my
father. 8
When Dad was around, which
wasn’t much, he was the disciplinari
an. He could make you feel smaller
than the eraser on a pencil for the
simplest of blunders - like making
gouges in the peanut butter jar rather
than removing it in smooth, even
increments.
His tirades weren’t directed only
at his children, either.
I can’t tell you how many nights I
was kept awake as a child listening
to my parents screaming at each
other until the wee hours of the
morning.
It wasn’t just Dad, either.
Mom wasn’t too bad when Dad
was around. She relied on him to
dole out the discipline.
Dad went on a lot of “temporary
duty” assignments while he was in
the military. He’d go off somewhere
like Thailand or Korea, usually for
90 days at a time.
But when he was gone, she was
often unbearable because her disci
pline was more physical in nature -
and more unpredictable. We never
knew for sure what types of behavior
would get our asses kicked.
Then Dad would come home and
be upset with the behavior of myself
and my brothers and sisters, then
blame my mother for not being strict
enough with us.
And fight with her some more.
Then toward the end of then
marriage, he started taking unac
companied tours overseas and living
in the barracks at stateside duty sta
tions while keeping his family
tucked away in small-town
Nebraska.
He had me stay in his barracks
room one summer as a 12-year-old
so I could work with him at his part
time job cleaning an office building.
The SOB even introduced me to
his girlfriend. And spent the nights
with her.
As I learned later, it wasn’t his
first experience with adultery. Hell,
he even borrowed substantial sums
of money from at least one of his
previous mistresses.
Eventually, he couldn’t stand
being around any of us any more, so
he left - in the middle of the night -
without so much as a word.
It wasn’t until last summer that
my life became so unbearable I had
to do something about it and discov
ered what had been the source of my
agony for so many years.
Relationships suffered horribly. I
was terribly depressed.
For a whole host of reasons I
won’t go into here, I finally got
myself into counseling to try to find
out why I was so damned unhappy.
(No, I’m not crazy - and I reject
the notion of being stigmatized by
the ignorant attitudes of people who
think that everyone who receives
mental health treatment is somehow
deficient. If anything, it makes us
smarter.)
What l learned about my sell is
that because of the abuse and aban
donment issues I’d harbored for so
long, I couldn’t trust anyone enough
to allow them to get close enough to
hurt me.
Abuse and/or abandonment vic
tims go through life with a protective
bubble around them. They don’t let
anyone inside, for fear they’ll get
hurt, or worse yet, give their love to
someone only to be abandoned by
that loved one.
If you’ve ever watched the MTV
show “Loveline,” you‘ve probably
heard Dr. Drew Pinsky talk about
abuse and abandonment issues. Dr.
Drew is particularly adept at identi
fying callers with abuse or abandon
ment issues.
These callers engage in all kinds
of self-destructive behaviors. They
allow themselves to be victims.
They let people abuse them sexu
ally and/or physically. And they
don’t have the necessary self-esteem
to be able to tell themselves that they
deserve better.
And those are just the ones who
call.
The ones who don’t call are the
abusers. They were victims in their
formative years. The only difference
is that they’re caught up in the same
vicious cycle of abuse the victims
are, only as perpetrators of abuse.
I’m not just making this all up as
I go, either. One of the leading
experts on the issue of abuse is a
man by the name of Stephen
Karpman, at least according to a
friend of mine who was a victim of
some pretty severe abuse as a child.
She told me about Karpman’s
Triangle.
Rarpman theorizes that victims
of abuse fall into this vicious triangle
whereby they remain perpetrators,
victims or rescuers - for the rest of
their lives.
Rescuers try to help victims
escape their perpetrators.
I’ve often wondered why I was so
attracted to the legal profession.
Maybe I understand it a little better
now.
It’s kind of like being the ulti
mate rescuer.
Wherever I may be in Karpman’s
Triangle now, I know one thing for
sure - I’m happier now.
I’ve learned a lot about myself
and how I behave in relationships.
Being able to understand the root of
the problem helps me be more open
and trusting now.
By the way - there’s a fifth “A.”
It’s for acknowledgment. Only by
acknowledging that there’s a prob
lem can the healing begin.
