Part II Day 264: November 10, 2010 (the samsonite man gets called on his life)

My good friend Jefferson Beavers, who knows me better than anyone, called B.S. on my last post, saying he doesn't buy that I want to settle in Tuscaloosa, and he wants me to get over my idea of having a "normal life" (what is "normal"? he says). Jefferson knows, like the rapper Fashawn from my hometown of Fresno, that I'm a "Samsonite Man" and probably always will be:

Part II Day 259: November 5, 2010 (birthday lunch with the poor, and rolling nowhere . . .)

Sometime in high school, we were asked what we planned on doing after graduation, and I sarcastically answered, "I'm going to die." It was an undeniable truth, is still true, but it masked the fact that I lacked a plan for living my life. In some ways, I still do. You see, I grew up skateboarding, and our only ambitions included getting sponsored and traveling as much as possible. We admired anti-heros and vagrants (a few close friends even called ourselves "Team Vagrant"), the homeless we encountered around Fresno, and the apartments in San Francisco that housed up to nine semi-squating skateboarders. We slept on fellow skateboarders' floors or in people's garages, waiting for the day it would be our turn to move to SF or hit the road on a real company's skate tour.

I tell you all of this because someone recently asked me why I was interested in homeless people. And since I've been reading Ted Conover's book about railroad riding tramps and hoboes (tramps work, hoboes just ride, bums do neither), Rolling Nowhere, I think he puts it more succinctly than I can, when he writes, "I grew up with a romantic vision of hoboes as renegades, conscientious objectors to the nine-to-five work world, men who defied convention and authority to find freedom on the open road." And in my own way, I've accomplished the same thing, traveling the roads of North America, working jobs without alarm clocks or inflexible schedules, and never living in one place more than two years straight. And what has that gotten me?

Today is my thirty-seventh birthday, and while I've traveled everywhere, I've gone nowhere. I'm working part-time as an instructor at at university (who would have ever thought that could happen?) with no health insurance and no job guarantee, not even for next semester. If I didn't have the savings and family I have, I would be on the edge of abject poverty. Maybe that's another reason I'm interested in the poor (and the rich). So today, I've decided to spend my birthday lunch among the poor of Tuscaloosa at the Community Soup Bowl. (To tell you the truth, I have always felt more comfortable around poor people than the rich. There's no formality, no pretension.)

The scene in the Soup Bowl is similar to my earlier visit, with mostly older black males scattered about the cafeteria tables. An elderly white woman serves me a tray containing boiling hot chicken noodle soup, two packs of Saltines, and an overcooked square of cornbread. I pick a Styrofoam cup of apple juice off the counter and take a seat near an older black man who eats with his right hand and holds a crutch with his left.

Again, I'm struck by the sense of community around the dining room. The effervescent black woman who runs the dining room sits and chats with a man. Each person who enters says hello to a few other men around the room, and they genuinely inquire about one another. "You doin' all right?" a recent arrival asks the man at my table. He nods his head and says a slow, "Yeah." But from my perspective, he isn't. While many of the men wear thrift store-like clothes or blue collar work shirts, the kind for plumbers and mechanics, this man's dirty windbreaker and T-shirt betray his possible homeless state. And he needs a crutch to walk. And bread crumbs, the kind a wife would wipe off an oblivious husband, are all over his face, which looks like a Susan Clayton sculpture. He's screwed, I think, but I'm glad he has a place for community and food.

In Conover's book, a tramp tells him that "a fellow could get along if he simply knew the cities and their free resources," utilizing the "Sally" (Salvation Army facilities), the "Willy" (Goodwill stores), and the St. Vinnie's (St. Vincent de Paul). But while citizens often complain of people abusing our system of charity and welfare, it only allows you to "get along," and tramping or poverty is not a glamorous life that many would want nor choose to live. As Conover concludes,"If we're not going to make room for tramps inside society, we can at least make allowances for their presence outside it. We can repeal laws against victimless crimes such as public intoxication and vagrancy, and we can make sure that no one is denied food, warm clothing, and shelter, all which are basic human rights.

"That these things have not been done already can be explained by the way most of us still see hoboes as a race apart, strangers whom we have no need to know and no way of knowing."

That last part reminds me of what I wrote in my last post about the problem of de facto segregation in our cities and not caring about people we don't know. In opposition to that spirit, I came here today hoping to have a conversation with a few people, but I'm feeling too shy, too contemplative on this birthday I never thought I'd see. (I survived the rock star age, 27, but this is my Vincent van Gogh year.) When I finish eating, I walk up to the counter to speak to Amy, the woman who runs the joint. She doesn't recognize me, maybe because I've grown a beard, and she asks me if I need seconds. I tell her I came by a few months ago to volunteer, but never heard anything from her. I ask if I can help, but she says she has more than enough help, which I think speaks volumes to Tuscaloosa's community, driven by Christian charities.

I leave wondering where I go from here. Like the tramps in Conover's book, "plans [are] simply possibilities," not necessarily "something you made and carried out." My life so far, like this project, has been an essay, an experiment in living. But, as Conover says, "sometimes you can get enough of experimenting. Sometimes you want something normal and dependable." I'm hoping to stay in Tuscaloosa for several years, to build my own sense of community, and work toward those things I know I want: a home; a love/life partner; a published book; a stable job; possibly a post-apocalyptic child; and more wonder and travel . . .

Part II Day 223: September 30, 2010 ("we don't talk about race in Alabama," but we do in Tuscaloosa!)

Position: Community Participant in a Forum on Race Relations in Tuscaloosa

When we talk about race in America, we are also inevitably talking about economics. And when we talk about economics, we are also talking about education. These were all subjects raised at tonight's community forum on race relations in Tuscaloosa, AL. I was impressed that this town––through efforts from groups such as Tuscaloosa Race Relations Initiative, Just Us, Tuscaloosa Education Network, and One Tuscaloosa––is having this conversation, because when I moved here, I heard an instructor quote a student as saying, "We don't talk about race here in Alabama." I don't know of other communities anywhere having this conversation (I'm sure there are, I'm just too lazy and dumb to look into it), but it should be happening everywhere.

After arriving at Central High School, I was seated at a cafeteria table with an interesting mix of people from the community: A male African American doctor; a white male college student from the New College self-guided curriculum program at the U of A; a white female nurse; a female African American who is a professional in her 30s; a white female retired teacher; a man from India in his 60s, who has lived here for 35 years; a white female graduate student studying education; and a distinguished African American gentleman who graduated from the U of A in the 1960s.

The man who entered the U of A in 1966, when he was just one of six African American students (integration, and Governor Wallace's infamous stand, was in 1963), is a successful man (I didn't catch his career) who believes government cannot solve problems, but, rather, Alabamians themselves can decide to change their state and the problems that plague us by channeling our resources and efforts into positive things. He pointed out that Alabama decided it wanted to be great at football, and now they're number one, because Alabamians pool their resources in order to accomplish this. He said that there's too much concentration on race and not enough on these bigger problems, such as those outlined in the article from the Tuscaloosa news I linked in my last post. He also thinks, as some conservatives will say, the problems begin inside the homes, with the parents. He seems to subscribe to the school of "If I can accomplish this, then so can you."

The difficulty with his arguments are that you cannot legislate what goes on inside people's homes, but you can focus resources on education, which, as it's been shown in the southern state of Kerala in India (scroll down on the Web page for this example), can help alleviate many problems, such as lowering birth rates and improving child health, which are huge problems in Alabama.

But we live in a country where 18.2% of African American males are unemployed (national average is 9.5%) and a state where the African American population makes up 26% of the residents but only 12% of the students at the University of Alabama. Add to this that the poorest and worst performing schools are usually the ones with the tannest children, then you see when we're talking about race, we're talking about economics no matter how much you want to believe everyone has an equal opportunity in this great nation. Read one of Jonathan Kozol's books, such as Savage Inequalities or The Shame of the Nation, and you'll be pissed off about the "education gap" too.

But my friend is correct, because we can choose to change the situation, but only if we pool our resources and pump talented people and resources into our poorest and tannest schools. As the late comedian Bill Hicks once said, "Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, into a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and, instead, spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would do many times over––not one human being excluded––and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever." So to answer my friend, educated people change what goes on inside and outside their own households, and you can legislate and enforce real equal education.

As we moved around the table, the African American doctor said the problem is that white people don't know what it's like to be black. I wanted to tell him, "Hell, white people don't know what it's like to be white, because we've never understood the position of privilege our skin affords us." (Most of us haven't read Tim Wise's wonderful book White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, where he does a great job explaining white privilege to us.) The doctor said he's had his children invite the white neighbor's children to swim in their pool several times. "You think they've ever swam in my pool? No." He also said he has a white neighbor whom he waves to every day, but the man never waves back. He confronted him one day about his lack of waving, and the man said, "Well, I don't know you."

And there's the problem. There is not enough interaction between the races. Sure, there's a ton more than there was in the 1960s, but, by and large, we still live in incredibly segregated neighborhoods and attend segregated churches. If you're not friends with people who don't look like you, why would you ever give a shit about them? So I raised my hand at the end of the forum and asked if they'll be organizing any informal social events, like happy hours at bars and whatnot (because this is where real change and deals and friendships happen). I said, "You know, I had some great conversations tonight, but I didn't get to speak to those people over there, or the people in the back, and I don't know if I'll see the people from my table again." Because, after the forum, everyone got in their cars and went back to their own parts of town, to their own worlds clouded with their own problems, and we forgot about the bigger problems we face as a culture and community.

Part II Day 221: September 28, 2010 (the "homeless hunter" finds disturbing news in Northport)

Position: The Homeless Hunter of Tuscaloosa

Before I set out on my mission to find the homeless camp under the Northport Bridge this afternoon, the words from my conversation with the poet Tim Skeen a few days ago haunted me: "Are you going over there alone? You're a brave man." And this is from a Hurricane Katrina Red Cross volunteer and an ex-army M.P. who performed clean-up duty on the German Autobahn; we're talking body recovery and watching people burn to death in their cars.

I put on what my brother Joey calls my "Whitesnake jeans"––my rattiest pair––and pull my driver's license out of my wallet and tuck it into my holey pockets, along with my camera and notebook. I don't want to carry money or credit cards, but I figure it's a good idea to have I.D. in case something bad happens or I get harassed by the police.

The bike ride over the bridge is nerve racking, because, even though there's a protected walkway, the four-lane bridge shakes with the weight of trucks and cars, and the rusty chain-link fence between me and the Black Warrior River below rattles, like it's all going to come apart. I make it across and turn right to head under the bridge. I pass the salivation-causing smells of Dreamland BBQ (the "fake" one, as people call it) and hear what sounds like urethane skateboard wheels clacking over sidewalk cracks on the other side of the raised bike path. For a minute I get excited, thinking maybe there's a hand-made cement skatepark, like Burnside in Portland, under this bridge. But when I reach the bike path, I realize it's just the echo of cars click-clacking over the small surface gaps on the bridge above.

Not only does the fantom skatepark not materialize, but there are no blue tarps covering scrape wood and shopping carts, no barrels for fires, no crates for sitting. No homeless encampment at all. There is only the overflow parking lot for Wintzell's Oyster House and some lawn.

I figure I must be mistaken, and I take the bike path east to continue my search. There's a parklike area and some schools but no homeless camp. I head back west, thinking the homeless must be under the railroad bridge to the west. I find the perfect spot for a small homeless camp––it even has graffitied walls––but there isn't a homeless person to be found.

The bridge continues overland a ways, so I decide to ride into downtown Northport and find the bridge's end, where the homeless camp must exist. I cut down a dirt path under the railroad bridge and onto Main Street, eyeing the bridge behind the industrial buildings for signs of the homeless. Nothing. I turn left on 5th St. and find the end of the bridge. To the south lies thick underbrush, and on the other side of a fence, a park which looks like homeless heaven. Even though it has a wooden picnic table, several "No Trespassing" signs mark the area. I think, If you have to go hunting for the homeless, then the town doesn't have a homeless problem. I decide this is the end of the line and the end of my search for today.

I ride back into Northport, the downtown of which looks something like Andy Griffith's Mayberry. (This is where people move to send their children to good public schools, so I've been told.) The downtown is a mishmash of art galleries, children's boutiques, a day spa, and expensive furniture stores, not to mention the best breakfast place in Tuscaloosa County, City Café.

It's the kind of town where the small hardware store is 101 years old (if these walls could talk, I don't think I'd want to hear what they say) and I expect to see Floyd the barber in the four-chair striped-pole barber shop.

Ironically, in this idyllic downtown, the Tuscaloosa News shouts a cover story from the newspaper stand next to the barber shop: West Alabama Lags Behind in Kids' Health. It turns out Tuscaloosa Country ranks 36th in children's' health, which measured "low birth weights, infant mortality rates, the number of births to unmarried teens, the number of children in single-parent families, children in poverty, and high school graduation rates." The most disturbing of these statistics is the high infant mortality rates; according to the article, Tuscaloosa County ranks 59th out of 67 counties, with 12.5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, twice the national average of 6.7 per 1,000 live births.

And tomorrow's (September 29) edition of The Birmingham News will carry this cover story about how Alabamians are falling deeper and deeper into poverty. According to the article, "In 2009, 17.5 percent of the people in the state––804, 683––lived below the poverty level, well above the national figure of 14.3 percent and a 13.1 percent increase from 2008. . . . Of those, 340,000 lived in deep poverty, which is income below half the poverty level. " But even the rich aren't fairing well, as the number of people making over $200,000 per year in the state dipped from 2.3 percent in 2008 to 2.1 percent in 2009. That's 9,197 less rich people. So where are the homeless, Tuscaloosa?

Part II Day 196: September 3, 2010 (living in a song, rubber necking on the turkey necks, and locating the homeless)

I’ve been places in the world––Auvers-sur-Oise outside of Paris, France, where Vincent van Gogh is buried; the sunflower-filled countryside of Pisa, Italy––where I’ve felt like I was actually living inside of a painting for a short time. At the Community Soup Bowl, a free soup kitchen in Tuscaloosa, AL, I feel like I’m living inside of a blues song. I sit between two African-American men whose accents are so thick, the only lines I understand are when the older guy in front of me says, "Man, I’m so hungry today," and when, after saying it again a few minutes later, the other guy next to me says, "You eatin' like a bear today."

The female dining room volunteer stops by and asks the older man how his wife’s doing. "Hard-headed," he says. They have an exchange that I can’t follow, then, as she’s walking away, she says, "I’m gonna hafta come over there an’ talk to her ass." He looks at me and says, "Hospital ain’t nothin’ to be messin’ with." I nod in agreement, and continue eating my meal of chicken salad, peas, corn, Saltine crackers, mixed salad, and a Styrofoam cup of fruit punch. The old guy says, "Don’t tell me I’m gonna eat all this." He pauses. "I ain’t gettin’ no seconds." (People are allowed to get two plates of food, and some do, but you'd have to be really hungry to want seconds.)

When I arrived this morning, the dining room was almost exclusively African-American men of various ages. Since then, a 55-year-old white guy with prison tattoos and his wife came in, a few African-American women, a pair of Latino laborers, a couple of white women who looked like possible meth addicts, and an entire African-American family--tomorrow is the daughter's thirteenth birthday. Surprising to me, many of the people were overweight.

Amy, the kind diminutive white woman who runs the kitchen, was talking about how she couldn't feed kids healthy meals when she was in charge of school children somewhere: "They wouldn't eat the green beans or other vegetables I made. They wouldn't even eat mac 'n' cheese because I made it with real cheese. No wonder we have an obesity problem." When she said that, the man serving the peas and corn turned around and said, "We've got an obesity problem 'cause we're fat." We all laughed.

I called the other day to ask about volunteering, and Amy said, "We're on Greensboro, right between the Piggly Wiggly and Church's Chicken." I've only heard of Piggly Wigglys through Steve Yarbrough's books, but since I arrived at the center early this morning, I decided to check this one out.

Somewhere along my bikeride over here, I passed an invisible color line in town; maybe at 15th St. With the exception of one white customer, everyone in the Piggly Wiggly was African-American. I strolled the aisles, enjoying the air conditioning, and when I reached the butcher's section, the raw meat "family packs" with bright orange stickers caught my eye: turkey necks, neatly arranged in rows; pigs' feet, four or five per pack; and some dark red bits labeled "stew meat" all sat wrapped in clear plastic. I'd never seen anything like it.

When the door of the Community Soup Bowl opened, Amy took me into her office. She said they serve between 100 and 150 lunches daily, seven days per week, but that today would be slow because people receive their Social Security and disability checks on the first and third of each month. "We'll be busy again on Monday." She tells me about a few of the 29 homeless agencies in town, which were mentioned in this article in Tuscaloosa News about the Homeless Advisory Group, who counted "223 homeless people in Tuscaloosa, including 41 children" this past January.

(I've also found out about a strange program that my bank, Albama Credit Union, does called "Secret Meals for Hungry Children," where they surreptitiously stuff food into needy children's backpacks at school. Seriously. You can read about it in this article from Tuscaloosa News. The Secret Meals program says that 20% of Alabama children live below the poverty line. Paradoxically, Tuscaloosa's 8.6% unemployment rate is below the 9.5% national average, as well as Alabama's average of 9.7%.)

But, as I asked in my previous post, where are all the homeless people? Amy says the people not living at the Salvation Army's facility or the VA Hospital live under the Northport Bridge on the Northport side of the Black Warrior River (apparently, I was looking on the wrong side of the river) and behind the Wal Mart on Skyland Blvd. on the south side of town. I'll probably check out the Northport homeless camp on Sunday.

In the meantime, it feels like a tight community here in the Community Soup Bowl. None of these people seems homeless--two guys even wear their flourescent worker vests--but you never know. As when I arrived, there are only African-American men left in the dining room. They all know and greet each other by name as a new person walks in or someone leaves. The old man in front of me says to a tall thin elegant man, who's name would be "Slim" if this were a novel, "Just keep walkin’ like you don’t know no one." When the tall man, wearing a nice shirt and fitted pants and a baseball hat and sunglasses, smiles, the old man says, "What’s up, pimp daddy?”

Not only does the Community Soup Bowl provide meals for whomever walks in the door, the Alabama Retarded Citizens group comes in to wash the dishes every other day. They are a jolly bunch, and their presence and enthusiasm brightens the kitchen. The men in the group all shook my hand when I walked in--one said he hadn't seen me in a long time--and now that they're leaving, one of the men gives all of the women volunteers from various churches hugs and the men, including me, handshakes.

When I finally go to leave, Amy shouts out, "Be sure to tell your students to come here and eat. They can write about it." As she told me before, everyone's welcome. So come on down and meet your neighbors, Tuscaloosa.

Part II Day 184: August 22, 2010 (in search of the homeless of Tuscaloosa)

Position: Part-time instructor and homeless hunter.

Last night at the Alcove, Dave Madden, the new nonfiction faculty member in the University of Alabama's MFA program, commented on the lack of visible homeless people in Tuscaloosa. I concurred, saying I've only seen maybe one man that looked homeless since I've been here. According to this outdated Tuscaloosa News article, the local branch of the Salvation Army only has 68 beds, and the VA Hospital, which "serves most of north and central Alabama," only has 48 beds in their domiciliary unit. Unlike many major downtowns in American cities, you just don't see many homeless people here.

"They're all down by the river," a local lawyer, protested. "I can see them from my office window. It's a real problem down there."

So this morning, around 8:30 a.m., I headed down by the Black Warrior River (Tuscaloosa is a portmanteau of the Choctaw words tushka, meaning "warrior," and lusa, meaning "black") to search out and possibly talk to homeless people. I assumed I would find a small encampment but didn't. I spotted this one artifact––which could be construed as evidence of a homeless lifestyle, but could just as easily be a lazy man's lunch––near a park bench:

My next mission is to make my way over to the Salvation Army center. Stay tuned . . .

Part II Day 176: August 14, 2010 (jerry's nuts and busing out of town)

Position: New Tuscaloosa Resident

"I'm pretty sure I saw a boiled peanuts stand back there," I tell my newfound friend Annie, a first-year MFA student at the university. She's driven me to the outskirts of town on Hwy. 82 in order to help recover my boxes I shipped out from California. Greyhound said it would take about 4 days for my boxes to arrive, but that was before they shipped one of them to Illinois by accident. Two days ago, I walked five blocks from my house in blistering heat and humidity to claim my boxes at the downtown Greyhound station only to learn they'd moved to this new location, a BP station outside of town.

When I go into the gas station, I see the Greyhound desk occupying a small area in the back. Outside, a bus is either picking up or dropping off customers, the majority of whom are black. After I claim my boxes, which aren't stored in the back but sitting right out in the open by the gas station's front door, I meet Annie outside. "This is stupid," I say. "Why the hell would they put the Greyhound station way out here? I mean, isn't the entire point is that Greyhound is for people without cars? It looks like mostly poor black people in there. The downtown location would have been much more accessible."

When we turn the car around on Hwy 82, I tell Annie I'm not sure where I saw the boiled peanuts guy. "I love, love, love boiled peanuts, "Annie says. She grew up outside of D.C. and the peanuts remind her of summer family trips down south to the Carolinas. "I think I saw him back by the gas station. I know I saw an old guy putting out several boiled peanuts signs––they said "Ralph's boiled peanuts" or something––but I can't remember where I saw him." Back by the gas station, we see the stand: "Jerry's boiled peanuts."

Jerry is a large older man, sporting a yellowish-gray-haired ponytail, a crimson colored muscle half-shirt that exposes his hairy gelatinous belly, and a pair of shorts and sandals. His blotchy skin is red from the sun, his nose bulbous from drink. His fingernails and toenails are partially split and discolored from a fungal infection. His blue eyes look squeezed together by his baggy eyelids and brow skin. In front of Jerry sit two mucky boiling pots hooked to propane tanks. A single well-used glove rests on each pot. Small Zip-lock bags of what look like dirty wet peanuts are arranged on a cooler.

Annie tells him she just loves boiled peanuts. "Well, I've got regular and Cajun," he says in a thick Alabama accent. "The Cajun ones is a little spicy but not too spicy." Annie tells him she's tried to boil some at home but with poor results. "If you try to boil the dry kind," Jerry continues, "it'll take you about eight hours. You need to get them green. And even then, it takes about two hours." We continue discussing the finer points of peanut boiling, and Jerry says, "I got the same people coming by here a couple times a week; they're eatin' a lot of peanuts. I eat––I do eat my own product, about a bag a day, I'd guess."

We tell Jerry we're new to town. "Oh you're gonna love it here. I been here, oh, about a couple years now, and I love it. I'm really looking forward to football season." I tell him that it seems safe here. "It’s a great town," he says "You could walk around any neighborhood in downtown at night and be . . . well, maybe not every neighborhood, but you could walk around down by the river and be perfectly fine. I plan on staying here.” I mention the stupidity of the Greyhound station relocation, and Jerry says, "A cab ride would cost you eighteen bucks just to get out here. You could easily of jump on a city bus when it was in downtown.”

Annie asks him what brought him from Montgomery to Tuscaloosa. "Well, it was a bit of a relocation situation," he says. He rubs his large rough hands, which look like, at one time, they could have crushed a man like a miniature origami orangutang. But now his pudgy fingers are wrinkled and bent inward with the signs of arthritis. Jerry takes a long uncomfortable pause, the kind a man takes before breaking down and sobbing or admitting something terrible happened in his past. Annie assumes it will be something about prison. "I . . . uh . . . I . . . it was an alcohol problem."

I tell him that can be tough. "When you're down," he says, "it keeps you there." He looks up, and in a tone that sounds like we need convincing, he says, "But my life has completely turned around. Been about three years sober. I don't know what y'all believe or nothin', but the man upstairs helped me out. I mean . . . I wasn’t much of a Bible thumper . . . well, I’m still not much of a Bible thumper, but I know He did this for me, because I didn’t have the power to do it myself." Jerry looks us right in the eyes and his sincerity is heartbreaking. He seems like a character out of a Johnny Cash song, perhaps the "Kneeling Drunkards Plea."

"I'm not making no excuses about drinking. I've had some physical problems, but I'm not blaming that. I was in Vietnam, and I'm not blaming that, either. Up in Montgomery, I had a great spot. Took me time to develop it, but I was making $600 a week. Clearing! Of course, I’m not makin' that kind of money here. I need to develop this spot. I've asked the landlord to move this school bus so I'll be more visible. I think he's going to do that for me." Jerry turns around and points to a mobile home behind some trees. "I live right back there in that mobile home." He used to have his stand on the other side of the BP station, but the gas station manager told him to leave after BP customers complained that he was soliciting them. "I wasn't doin' no such thing."

"You know, you'd think it'd be hard to screw up a boilin' peanuts operation," he says, talking about Montgomery, "but that's exactly what I did. One day, I woke up flat out on the ground looking up at two police officers. I had tucked a wine bottle under my head as a pillow before I passed out. A friend from AA vouched for me, and that's the only reason I didn't end up in jail."

Jerry is exactly the kind of character I was hoping to meet in Alabama, but, like many of the other residents of this area, I'm disarmed by his overwhelming kindness. In Australia, he'd be called a "battler," a guy who constantly has hard luck but battles it our for life, holding on anyway he can. And his boiled peanuts are delicious, especially the Cajun style. "Be sure to tell all your friends I'm out here," he says.

If you're ever out on Hwy. 82, south of Tuscaloosa, be sure to stop and buy some peanuts and have a chat with Jerry. Don't worry, he'll do all the boiling and talking.

Part II Day 173: August 11, 2010 (losing hope and life in tough economic times)

Position: Part-time Temporary Instructor

EDD Check: $250 per week ($0 left in award balance)

I'm not poor, nor have I ever been. I've lived on couches and felt the burning pain of hunger, but those were by choice, and I always had the resources and power to end those situations. What I can't control is the lack of self-worth I've felt collecting unemployment. You may think it's wonderful to be home all day, doing whatever you like, but you're limited by the sparse income and sudden lack of energy brought on by depression. Your life loses structure.

In these hard economic times, it's no surprise that in my new home of Tuscaloosa, AL, a small college town of 78,000 residents, the suicide rate reached a new record last year––31 dead––and is set to eclipse it this year (20 already dead by July, 31) . While people choose to cash out on life for different reasons, this article in the Tuscaloosa News quotes Dr. Beverly Thorn, the chair of the University of Alabama's psychology department, as saying that "hard economic times could be at the root of some of the cases." Four times as many men in this town committed suicide this year than women, most often by a gunshot wound. The article opens with a man in his thirties shooting himself in the head in his home and being discovered by his parents, but never talks about his economic situation.

While I assume the higher suicide rate among men in hard economic times is due to the loss of one's ability and social/instinctual need to provide, that cannot be proven. And since only seven of the twenty suicides this year left notes, and the article doesn't disclose the contents of those notes, we may never know how poverty or a loss of employment directly correlates to suicide. By reading Urdo Grashoff's strange collection of German suicide notes, called Let Me Finish, I've learned that lost love can be just as responsible as lost wages for suicide and general economic standing doesn't determine the likelihood of suicide. Rich people kill themselves as often as poor people.

What I've also discovered by moving to Tuscaloosa sans personal transportation is that living in a city designed for automobiles can prove unmanageable for those who cannot afford a car. I've only been here less than a week, but riding my bike in 100 degree heat across town (20 minutes each way) to buy needed supplies at Target, such as a pot in which to cook oats and rice, can make anyone feel suicidal. One must rely on the kindness of strangers or new friends with cars in order to survive. At least I have that option. I can also afford a car, so I feel sorry for those who can't. They must feel trapped in their homes.

As you can tell, I'm struggling to find a new angle on poverty here to write about, but that's not the point (suggestions are welcome, though). For me, the point of this "experiment" has been to highlight the plight of the poor in our country and to develop a culture of volunteerism in my own life, which has sadly been lacking until this point. As soon as I get settled and my classes are humming along, I shall begin finding ways to volunteer and continue writing about the poor. Stay tuned . . .

In the meantime, here is some Gil Scott-Heron singing about my life:

Part II Day 163: August 1, 2010 (saying what you have and what you are, before saying goodbye)

Position: Volunteer

EDD Check: $250 per week ($250 left in award balance)

Hours Volunteered: 3

Money Raised for Bhutanese Family: $1,300

I knew saying goodbye would be difficult before we arrived here, but I had no idea how difficult. I've accepted a part-time teaching position at the University of Alabama for fall, and I must move to Tuscaloosa by the end of this week.

When we enter the Bhutanese family's apartment, the familiar quilt is laid out on the floor, grandma sits in her place on the couch, and the mom squats between the kitchen and dinner table, peeling potatoes over a bowl on the floor. The father disappears into the back room and returns with his note pad, ready for the lesson.

In my absence, Etel has been teaching them the verbs "to have" and "to be." Etel and I run them through the items they have: "I have four children"; "I have a sofa"; "I have a table," etc. After we cover most of the items and people in the room––"I have a husband"––we move on to the expansive verb, "to be." We start with physical descriptions, which, because of our lack of preparation, leads to awkward and funny moments. It's easy to describe the father: "You are tall," followed by, "You are thin." The kids translate the meaning of thin, and we all agree that the dad is tall and thin.

When we turn to the mom, we can only describe her as short. "I am short," she says. The body type for her is a little more difficult. Etel turns to me and says, "What's the word for being between thin and fat?"

I stumble and say, "Normal?"

The mom already knows the opposite of thin, and she announces, "I am short and fat." We all laugh, including the kids, but it sounds awful. "No, no," Etel says, "you are thin," which isn't quite true either. The mom has an average body for a short Bhutanese woman, neither thin nor fat, but she's definitely roundish. The mom laughs and repeats that she's short and fat, and Etel, unlike Cosmopolitan Magazine, assures her she's thin.

We move on to conditional forms of "to be," such as "I am hungry" and "I am warm," which they quickly understand. They struggle for a minute with the negative use, adding in "not," before finally getting it: "I am not cold"; "I am not hungry." The oldest daughter has been in the kitchen this whole time cooking, and I, personally, am very hungry.

When we finish the lesson, we move to the couch and the mom folds and puts away the quilt. The daughter serves us fry bread and samosas and tomato curry paste with cups of water, since we've said we prefer not to have coffee and tea today. Etel, as usual, barely eats anything while I chow down, and the family takes notice. "You don't eat," the mother says.

"I'm not that hungry," Etel says and points to her stomach. The mother tells Etel that she is thin, and then grandma speaks up from across the room. She says something in Nepali, and then points at her belly. We don't understand, so in order to be more demonstrative she lifts her shirt and sagging breasts to reveal her bare, flabby stomach. The kids translate: "She says she is fat and you are thin." We love the grandmother's sense of humor, even though we can't understand her, and we're just glad she didn't expose her breasts.

Etel reminds the oldest daughter again how we've collected money to help her pay the relocation loan. She looks "sigh" again, but is very thankful. Etel hands her an envelope with $100 and says, "This is to make your first payment."

The kids ask Etel if she can help them with the new apartment they're trying to move the family into, because they don't understand what's going on. Etel calls the new landlord and sets up an appointment for the next day. When she's done, I broach the subject of my move. The family looks confused, so I explain I received a teaching job. "But you already have a job with the IRC," the son says. We explain that we are volunteers, that we don't get paid, and he's incredulous. "I thought you got paid by the IRC," he says. "We have volunteers at school, so I know what that is."

I manage to say, "I'm very sad," but can't hold back the emotions. I walk over to the door, sit on the floor and slip on my shoes while staring at the wall, and then walk outside to the end of the apartment walkway. I watch the kids soccer game across the street and try to compose myself, but I can't. A Somali girl bends down at the small BBQ next to me and lifts the lid. Unrecognizable cuts of meat cover the grill. She jams a large knife past the meat and stirs the coals. "What kind of meat is that?" I ask. Beef.

When I get myself together, I return to the apartment. While I was gone, the youngest daughter brought out a map and asked Etel to show her where I'm moving. "It's far," she said when Etel pointed to Alabama on the map. I sit back down on the couch, and the mom stares at me with pain in her eyes. I'm trying hard to hold it together. "It's very sad," the son says.

"Yes, I'm very sad," I say.

When we go to leave, I shake the son's hand, bow to grandma and say "Namaste," shake hands with the youngest daughter, and then hug the mom and oldest daughter, before I head for the door. Damn, this is hard. They make me promise to call and e-mail them, and I say I will.

Tomorrow, Etel will return and take them to the new apartment, where they won't understand why they can't leave their old apartment without a 30-day notice and why the new landlord––who greeted them by saying, "Does anyone speak English here?"––won't hold the apartment until the end of the month for them. It's all so confusing to the Bhutanese family, and the old landlord won't budge. "30-days is California law," he'll say, "and I'm tired of them saying they're moving out, they're staying, they're moving."

What he may or may not know is that the landlord at other apartment they had lined up for $895, changed the price on them at the last minute, saying it was now $1,200, the same amount they're paying. I've never really understood what slum lords are, but now I know. They overcharge for crappy apartments in crappy parts of town and take advantage of people like the Bhutanese and their confusion.

After their failed attempt to set up a new apartment, Etel will drive them back to their old apartment, and the mom will turn to her and say, "I am sad Eric go. I learned so much from him." And that breaks my heart.

Part II Day 148: July 17, 2010 (dividing carrots by streets, and the white shoes that nearly took mine away)

Position: Soryteller

EDD Check: $250 per week ($750 balance left in award)

Money Raised for Bhutanese Family: $1,300 (only $100 left to reach our goal)

Mexican Interlude Part II:

Theft is the product of desire. As in you have something I want, not necessarily need but want, and I either don't have the means to obtain it or the willpower to avoid the desire. Theft isn't easy to explain. Some people steal glasses from bars, even when they can afford to buy them, their judgement ruined by desire.

But there is also this element of dangling carrots in people's faces, the "haves" creating desire in the "have-nots." In cities like my hometown of Fresno, the carrots are separated from the carrot-less by distance and main thoroughfares––Herndon, Belmont, Hwy 99––and neighborhoods are mostly segregated by de facto. That's why major cities, such as New York, are shocking to me: the people with the most carrots live very near those with the least, though border streets keep them semi-separated (e.g. 110th in Manhattan).

With a large American and Canadian ex-pat population (10-12%), San Miguel de Allende is an anomaly in Mexico. While many parts of the country have descended into a drug war hell of deaths and decapitations, San Miguel remains blissfully high in the central desert. It's retained its colonial luster, and gringo dollars keep the economy moving, beer prices high, and the streets relatively safe. But the strange thing about this town is that while there are "good" and "bad" neighborhoods, many people have built mansions in the midst of poor neighborhoods, ignoring the common courtesy of unspoken segregation. Sure, from the outside many of these palatial spreads look inconspicuous behind their ten-foot high walls and spiked gates, but like tinted windows, we know who's inside: someone with lots of carrots.

Under unfortunate circumstances that I don't want to get into, I end up staying in a beautiful studio apartment in a section of nice San Miguel houses bordering the poor neighborhood of San Antonio, where crime is on the rise.

The first night after being out, I arrive back at around 3:30 a.m. (bars don't seem to have official closing times and it's easy to lose track of time). I take my bar smoked T-shirt off and hang it outside to air out, then sit down at the computer. Though I've heard the story of how a local man mixed up in drugs was recently decapitated (he was the exception not the rule), how a newspaper baron and his wife were kidnapped from here three years ago and he was held for ransom (dangled too many carrots), and how four years ago a serial rapist targeted foreign women (Americans), I feel relatively safe.

That's why when I hear the gate downstairs open and footsteps on the stairs, I think nothing of it. The neighbors must have been out late. And since they stopped and jangled my doorknob, they must also be drunk.

I look out the door window and only see a pair of white Adidas ascending to the third floor (I'm on the second), and my suspicions are confirmed: drunk neighbor. I return to the computer, but then I hear the footsteps descending the stairs. I meet them by my door, and just before I peer out, the metal screen on the window next to the door gets punched in: Boom!

Holy shit! I think, someone's coming inside. I yell, "Órale, vato," and slam the door-like window shut, hoping I crush hands or smash a face.

I hear the white Adidas scramble down the stairs and out the gate while I run to the kitchen window facing the alley and yell, "Policía, policía!" In two seconds, I no longer hear the Adidas slapping the cobblestone rocks of the streets. I grab a full tequila bottle the previous occupant left, and open the front door, looking to smack a head if he returns. I'm too scared to descend the stairs into the darkness and make sure the gate is secure.

I pace and then sit, shaking and unable to calm down. A friend from my school days, a lawyer living in Thousand Oaks, California, reads my distress on facebook, and talks to me through the instant messenger "Chat function" until I can sleep.

Tomorrow night will be worse, as I will anticipate a second attempt and awake every half hour. I will try sleeping with the TV and lights on. I will place a steak knife on the nightstand––to what? Commit murder in Mexico? I speculate on whom the robber was: probably the poor teenager around the corner who watched me move in with my oversized hiking backpack and laptop carrying case.

I grow skittish, and the next day, while I'm reading in the Jardín, a teenager and his friend, wearing white Adidas, will sit down next to me, and I'll want to confront them. Like a missing lunch in a classroom, everyone is now suspect. But white Adidas are just popular shoes right now, because there will be more kids and more Adidas in the Jardín, and any pair could belong to the mid-morning marauder just as easily as they could not.

And this paranoia, this sense that I'm no longer safe, is the price we pay, the carrot holders, the danglers.

Part II Day 143: July 12, 2010 (the story of Sidney, the voice of God, and his life in Mexico)

Position: Storyteller

Money Raised for Bhutanese Family: $1,175* (see note below)

Mexico Interlude:

Two years ago, my friend Sidney went to Mexico with an engagement ring in his pocket. He didn't do this to surprise his girlfriend on the trip. He didn't even have a girlfriend, nor did he have any prospects of finding one. Though he was a 45-year-old who didn't look a day over thirty, women were not necessarily attracted to him. Some even said he was repulsive. And living with his 80-something-year-old mother in Houston probably didn't increase his odds at finding marital bliss late in life.

Being from Texas, Sidney could be considered a victim of his own racist and homophobic culture. He often says things that the more sensitive among us would find offensive, especially out of the mouth of anyone besides Sidney. You see, there's a child-like innocence about him, a pureness of heart, that makes his statements seem as harmless as the curious white child who inquires if black people are made of chocolate (true story from Bill Riddlesprigger––R.I.P.) or another child who once asked me why my gums were so big (they just are).

When Sidney came to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, two years ago, he brought two main questions along with that ring: 1) Could he find a Mexican wife (he announced his intentions to every Mexican woman we encountered, including the middle-aged bank teller)? 2) Would it be possible, since he is poor, to bury his dear mother in Mexico for less than he could in the U.S. (he inquired at a local casket dealer)? Sidney would often rant about the injustices in the U.S., about how medical bills bankrupted his elderly parents, and how his mother said Americans want to build the border wall to keep Americans in, not Mexicans out. I would listen to his complaints and nod my head.

After a month in Mexico, Sidney's questions went unanswered. But a year later, he received the answer to at least one of them. He returned to San Miguel, and while on a trip to Mexico City, he saw a pretty Mexican girl sitting in the bus station at Queretero. As one version goes, Sidney heard a voice, presumably God's, tell him to go and talk to the girl. He did. Only God knows what was said between them, and they parted ways with a promise to stay in touch.

Though an admitted technophobe, Sidney religiously sent and answered e-mails with his lady friend in Mexico after his return to Texas. Four or five months into their heated e-mail exchange, he asked her to marry him. She said yes. And after proving he was baptized in the name of Jesus, though the certificate was from a Mormon church, a large Catholic wedding ensued in Mexico, attended by all of her family and none of his. Even though he only speaks as much Spanish as she speaks English, which is very little, he moved to Jilotepec, an hour outside Mexico City, to live with her family.

While living in Mexico, his dear mother died last winter in the care facility in which she lived. Unfortunately for Sidney, no one notified him of her death for almost a month. By the time he returned to Texas, their Pakistani landlord had thrown out all of his mother's possessions. This meant he had nothing to remember his parents by. No nicknacks, no grandfather clock, not even pictures of his father, who served in WWII. Sidney felt this action was heartless and speculated about how the Pakistani family was able to afford the building in the first place (illegal arms sales in Pakistan being his initial guess).

Before returning to Mexico by bus, Sidney, who used to deal in antiques, sold off most of his possessions and antiques and resigned himself to a simpler life in Mexico with his pretty, 32-year-old wife. "I like nice things," he said in his soft voice. "Not because I'm homo or nothin'. I just like nice things." But his nice things were gone.

While he rents a decent two-bedroom apartment for $200 a month in Mexico, he hasn't been able to make much of a living. He had a job teaching English at a night school, but his wife objected out of jealousy (she thinks he likes the school's proprietor). "I ain't thinking of no other women or nothin' like that," he says. "She's jealous. That's just how Latina women are." And since his wife's flat stomach is now gestating and bulging with a baby, he must find a new way to provide for his expanding family. He's thinking of moving them to the border town of Matamoros, Mexico, and taking temp work over in Brownsville, TX, commuting daily by bus. I told him that's probably not a good idea.

Despite his troubles, Sidney says to me, "You need to get you a beautiful Mexican girl. Or maybe even just a pretty one. The thing about Mexico," he says, "is that there isn't any shame in being poor, because almost everyone is poor." I think that's what I find oddly appealing about Sidney's story, because I live in a culture where the subtext is that everyone is expected to be rich or famous. And if you don't at least have some modest success, as defined by those parameters, then you're made to feel like a failure.

(*Note: I'm impressed and flattered by all the kind donations we've received to help our Bhutanese family repay their relocation loan. Thank you all so much. I'm touched. We only need about 300 more dollars)

Part II Day 135: July 4, 2010 (the caring manager, downsizing apartments, grandpa's departure, and unpronounceable sounds of good credit)

Position: Volunteer

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 170

EDD Check: $250 per week (with $1,250 balance left)

Money Raised for Bhutanese Family: $595

Hours Volunteered: 2.5

The Bhutanese grandmother is out on the apartment complex's balcony when Etel and I arrive. We greet her, and Etel points to her own mouth and asks about the tooth that was causing the grandma pain. The grandmother makes a pulling motion from her mouth, as if the dentist extracted her tooth the old fashioned way, with pliers. "Much better?" Etel says. The grandma smiles.

As we walk into the apartment, we're followed by a man I assume is one of their Somalian neighbors, until I hear him speak. "I want to talk to Nari," he says with a soft voice and American accent. "I'm the manager," he tells us.

Nari, the oldest daughter, emerges from the back bedrooms. The manager says, "The owner would really like to keep you in here. He's willing to work with you on the price." This is the first we've heard about any moves. Nari tells him the apartment she's looking at is $895 a month. "Oh, well, he won't go that low. It's too bad. We really like having you around."

The manager looks at Etel and I and says, "They're probably the best tenants we've ever had. Look at this place; it's like no one ever lived here. They take their shoes off, so the carpet looks like new. But they don't need the extra bedroom since the grandpa died. He was a nice man. It was sad," he nods toward the grandma, "they used to go everywhere together. I never saw them apart." He looks at the daughter and says, "They were together, what, sixty-something years?"

"Did he die of a heart attack or something?" I ask.

"Yeah, a massive heart attack," he says. "I tried to revive him, but he never regained consciousness."

There is a minute of funeral silence. "Do you know CPR?" I ask.

He looks at me as if I've assumed a black man wouldn't know CPR. "Yeah. I was a medic in the army," he says with pride. I picture him bent over the frail, elderly Bhutanese grandpa, blowing air into his unresponsive lungs. I assume the family had no idea what this kind manager was doing to their grandfather. I can only imagine how horrific the scene was for everyone, as the grandfather's body lay still.

We move on to the lesson for the day, which includes reviewing the parts of the human body. The mother is very good at naming body parts––lips, mouth, nose, head––but both the mom and dad struggle when they're asked to write some of the words down. They also have trouble pronouncing some of the sounds they don't have in Nepali, such as the "th" sound in "teeth." I keep putting my tongue between my teeth to show them how they have to lisp the sound. It's as if their tongues won't go into that position. They begin growing a little flustered, so we ask them to tell us some body part words in Nepali in order to show them how hard it is for us to pronounce some of their sounds.

The grandmother, who normally alternates between napping on the couch in the background or sitting in a kitchen chair and staring blankly at our lessons, becomes animated when she hears the Nepali words. She points to her toes, leg, arm, mouth, and hair in rapid succession and says the words, and we try to repeat them. We all laugh. We continue on with the lesson, but grandma keeps naming body parts in the background, until the dad tells her to stop. She returns to silently sitting on the couch.

When we're done for the day, the oldest daughter comes out from the bedroom and asks us to look at an official form. It's a questionnaire for continuing their welfare benefits. I fill it out for them, and we say we'll mail it, since the deadline is tomorrow. It would be unfortunate if their payments––and, therefore, their ability to pursue happiness––were delayed do to the celebration of the Declaration of Independence.

Etel asks me to explain to the oldest daughter that we want to help her with the IOM loan repayment. I tell Nari I spoke with the IOM people, and that if she doesn't repay the loan, it will ruin her credit, and if she ever wants to buy a car or needs a school loan, they will deny her.

"Oh, no," she says, "I don't want to have bad credit." It turns out she completely understands her situation and is going to use the difference between the rent at their new apartment and this one to start paying down the entire family's debt. We explain that we've started collecting money from family and friends to help her pay the loan even faster, since she won't begin working for another year (her medical assistant training lasts two years).

"I'm sigh," she says.

"What?" we say.

"I'm sigh."

I look at Etel, who says, "Oh, you're shy. Say 'shy.'" The daughter tries, but she can't make the "sh" sound. I spell out on paper the difference between "sigh" and "shy," but the "sh" sound isn't in her range. "Don't be shy," Etel continues, "we want to help you." The daughter is very humble and thankful, and says, "I want my grandmother and I to both have good credit." We don't tell her that an 82-year-old woman doesn't need to worry so much about credit; we just act like grandma will live forever.

Part II Day 124: June 23, 2010 (the unemployed philanthropist gets outbid by the girl from brazil, and I eat like a starving artist)

Position: Philanthropist

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 159

EDD Check: $250 per week

Money Raised for Bhutanese Family: $370

The IRC's First Things First school, where our Bhutanese family's mother goes during the day to learn English and other life and work skills, is holding a fundraiser this evening. The flier doesn't say much more than the open house at the school grounds will include two sessions, music, and food. I assume we're going to eat some great food, listen to some music, and drop $15 or so in a cash jar.

So I'm a little surprised when we sign in that we're handed auction paddles with a number on one side and a picture of a refugee child on the other, along with a list of items on which we can bid. The items aren't things you take home, but things you can buy for the school. The list includes everything from a $10,000 playground at the top all the way down to $9 worth of diapers, which is probably what I'll end up bidding on. The school has to make $25,000 worth of upgrades and improvements to gain certification as a childcare facility, which will then make them self-sufficient and eligible for reimbursements and other forms of funding. (You can read more about the school and donate here if you like.)

When we sit down, the school's coordinator talks about what the goals are, and then a couple former students, African women dressed in long skirts and black Muslim headscarves, tell their stories about getting jobs after "graduating" from the school. Before the auction begins, the coordinator tell us to help ourselves to the food table, where there's Ethiopian rice, tofu spring rolls, and Indian samosas. It's about six o' clock, and I haven't eaten dinner, so I can't take my eyes off the food table, which is on the opposite side of the event. "You always look so desperate around food. Why is that?" Etel says. I have a reputation for sustained attacks on food tables at parties––well past the point of being full. I don't know what it is about appetizers on tables, but I lose all self-control.

(Here I am caught in the act at Etel's birthday party the very next night)

When the professional auctioneer begins the bidding process with the $10,000 playground, no one is surprised that bidding paddles don't rise. People in the small crowd of about 50 even chuckle. In a reverse move on how normal auctions work, he drops the bidding price to $5,000, then $2,000, then $1,000, then $500, and still no paddles rise. He says, "How about a hundred bucks? Can I get anyone to give me a hundred dollars for that playground?" Etel raises her paddle, being the first bidder. I look at her, surprised.

"What?" she says. "I gave myself a budget of $200." Well, I had no idea. "What did you think, that you were going to come to a fundraiser and not spend any money?" I tell her I thought maybe I'd give ten to fifteen dollars. The bidding moves on, and a young man drops $500 on another item. People begin bidding hundreds here and there, and I'm impressed. I get caught up in the moment, in the spirit of the thing, and want to bid. I peruse the list and think maybe I can bid on an $85 item.

When the time arrives, I hesitate, and someone else bids on the $85 item. The aucioneer asks if anyone else also wants to bid $85, and he'll "move the money around." I decide it's too much, but I see a $50 item (a crib, I think) on the list, and decide that's more reasonable for me. He asks for bids on the $50 cribs, which they need three of, and my paddle raising is met by eight or more other people. I guess fifty was the magic number. Etel leans over and says, "Fifty dollars is pretty impressive for a guy who's unemployed."

Maybe it's not the wisest move for me right now, but in the big picture––where I spend money on much dumber things––I can afford to help the school, which does great work. Plus I feel like I scored some hero points with Etel, who finishes by bidding on bed sheets.

With the auction done, a Burmese man begins playing beautiful music on his saung, a Burmese string harp, and I head straight for the food table. I impatiently wait while some children dish rice and samosas onto their plates. I go light at first––one chicken samosa, one spring roll piece, and a little Ethiopian rice––but when I see a man putting more food out, I return for seconds. I also eat at least two of the small desserts being passed around by Somalian women. Etel looks at me downing my second helping of food and says, "So desperate."