Part II Day 20: March 1, 2010 (how conservative instincts keep me from feeding the poor)

Position: Volunteer

Days Officially Unemployed: 46

I'm slacking on feeding the poor. Well, the various charities to which I'm volunteering are slacking. Tomorrow night I have my first orientation at a canter in downtown San Diego, and this Saturday I have an orientation in Oceanside. I've also contacted a charity that delivers food to homebound elderly folks, and even though they were quick to respond by e-mail, the coordinator never called me. Today I received an e-mail saying she's going on vacation soon, and they don't train while she's on vacation. I never thought feeding the poor would be so difficult or, more accurately, require so much effort on my part.

Last week I thought maybe I'd walk down by the Cardiff laundromat and buy some homeless people lunch and ask them about their lives. But I haven't put out the energy, and I wonder why. Even though I'm still waiting for my own government cheese to show up (in the form of my first unemployment check), I can't justify my lack of effort to feed the poor.

And then I read this seemingly unrelated CNN article about liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity and higher IQ scores. I wasn't so much concerned with the study as I was about this telling statement:

"'Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with,' [James Baily] said.

"Given that human ancestors had a keen interest in the survival of their offspring and nearest kin, the conservative approach––looking out for the people around you first––fits with the evolutionary picture more than liberalism,' [Satoshi] Kanazawa said. 'It's unnatural for humans to be concerned about total strangers.'"

And I think that's my problem: feeding the poor doesn't necessarily concern my day to day life, while I was monetarily rewarded and could pay my rent and take trips, for feeding the rich. I need to switch off my instinctual, conservative brain and start listening to my compassionate, liberal heart. I'm hoping, as backcountry rangers are "rewarded with sunsets," that I'll be rewarded with feel-goodedness from feeding the poor.

Part II Day 8: February 17, 2010 (you can have this Lent in my pocket)

Position: Volunteer

Days Officially Unemployed: 34

I've decided to stay in San Diego for now rather than run back to my hometown of Fresno. While I was in Fresno, I attended a Greek Orthodox church service with my mother, and the priest spoke about Lent (which begins today), the need for personal sacrifice, and the importance of helping others. He quoted Matthew 25:31-45, where Jesus sits on his throne of glory judging all the people, separating the sheep from the goats. He tells the sheep people, who will enter the kingdom of Heaven, "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me." The sheep people, who had never encountered Jesus before, asked him when they did all of this, and he responds, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me."

The Greek Orthodox priest then encouraged members of his flock to volunteer during Lent, to help those in need, as well as making self-sacrifices (I decided to give up alcohol for forty days and am fasting until sunset today). I only tell you this because the establishment I contacted yesterday, here in San Diego, to begin volunteering this week, called me back today to say they needed an advance notice of at least a week if I want to volunteer. They also said that on the weekends they have so many individuals and groups volunteering, that they book them a year in advance. A year!

With all these people wanting to help the poor, it begs the questions: why are there still so many poor people? And why do people want to help them?

I think the first question can be answered by a quotation from Joseph Campbell's collaborative book, The Power of Myth, where he says, "People ask me, 'Do you have optimism about the world?' And I say, 'Yes, it's great just the way it is. And you are not going to fix it up. Nobody has ever made it any better. It is never going to be any better. This is it, so take it or leave it. You are not going to correct or improve it.'" It's the same response William T. Vollmann received in his book, Poor People, quoted in an earlier post, when he asked, "Why are you poor?" and one woman echoes many when she says, "Just destiny."

Sure, war and poverty are part of the human experience, but I think you can work in your town, your job, your neighborhood, and your family to make things a little better, right? 

As for the second question, I always assumed it arises for many people from what I would call Christian longing to be a sheep rather than a goat, to enter the kingdom in the afterlife rather than hell. In other words, out of self-preservation rather than a basic longing to do the humane, or right, thing. But I'm sure people's reasons are as varied as the religions of the world, so I will be posing that question to my co-volunteers at the San Diego Center for the Poor (name changed to protect privacy).

Part II Day 1: February 10, 2010 (feeding the poor)

Position: Volunteer 

Days Officially Unemployed: 27

It appears my expulsion from the Garden of Rancho Santa Fe is permanent. After two phone calls with the pizzeria owner and no definitive return call from him, I'm moving on to phase two of my project: Feeding the Poor.

I arrive at the orientation for Casa Pobre (name changed to protect privacy) in downtown Fresno ten to fifteen minutes early. When I pull up to the compound, I'm a little shocked to see the blue tarps, camping tents, shopping carts, piles of wood, and other debris along the sidewalk that denote a homeless encampment. Men stand about or sit chatting. While Casa Pobre's mission is to feed, clothe, and provide assistance––medical, dental, drug rehab, and daytime shelter––to the destitute, I didn't expect that the homeless would actually set up camp right outside its gate. Warm-clothed homeless people wander like slow-moving zombies through the street inside the open gates. Outside the fence, kitty-corner from the homeless encampment, people sit along a low wall smoking and staring at passersby.

I hesitate at the stop sign, then make the left turn into the middle of this scene. I roll through slowly, see the sign for Casa Pobre's parking around back and think of getting the hell out of here. Holy shit, I think, I've never seen anything like this, except maybe a homeless encampment in Los Angeles. I follow the signs, trying not to return the stares of the loitering homeless people, and pull into the alley behind the main building. I find the guarded volunteer parking lot and ask if this is where I park. Yep. When I get to the back door of the building, a sign says to leave cell phones and cameras in the car (they don't want the distraction nor people taking pictures and posting them on MySpace and Facebook). I return to the car and put my cell phone under the front seat. Now I have no way of telling what time it is.

I enter the building and wander around the front two rooms, which look like a mix between what you'd find in a 1970's classroom and a prison cafeteria: a series of round tables with chairs; a few bookshelves; pale yellow walls in one room, red walls in the other. A handful of men with green badges shuffle tables around and prepare for opening the front doors while a black man finishes feeding his young daughter; she holds a doll with the same skin tone as her. I'm told by a green badge man to wait on a bench for the coordinator.

I sit for ten minutes or so, while the homeless and destitute come walking into the pale yellow room. Mostly a diverse group of men (old, young, crippled, black, white, Latino, Native American––the baseball cap with embroidered, multi-colored feather's a dead giveaway), and a few women, file in and take seats at the tables before being told to stand so the green badge men can move the tables out of the way for a circle of chairs. Many people wear heavy coats and beanies or hoods. Volunteers aren't allowed to wear beanies. The people mostly sit in silence or have quite conversations with someone next to them before a woman enters the room and tells the new people they have to stand and tell everyone why they want to join the group. I stand up, getting looks from those around me, and walk over to the woman to tell her I'm here to volunteer. A green badge man walks in at the same time and tells me to follow him, that I'm the only volunteer here for orientation.

I'm walked to Esperanza's (not her real name) office and she takes me through the volunteer guide before walking me around the building.  She explains that the green badge men are "residents" who live here and are part of the drug rehabilitation program. The red badge workers are "community service" volunteers, which means they're working off court ordered community service in lieu of jail time or fines. Volunteers such as myself wear blue badges.

When we enter the large kitchen area, I notice some of the men have prison-style tattoos: not well planned or executed designs scattered around their arms and up onto their necks. They nod as we pass by. One prison tattooed guy chops white onions with deft knife movements, while a dorky, average white guy about my age wearing running shoes and a blue badge seems uncoordinated with his knife. That's going to be me, I think.

Esperanza shows me the oversized walk-in refrigerators, the donation area (all expired food is given to a farmer for his livestock), and tells me about the temporary, "hard-shell housing" out back that replaced their tent city, and how people can't live there for the long-term. She says some people are discouraged from living there because they don't allow them to drink or use drugs on the property. Casa Pobre doesn't judge people, either, she says, and they offer their services to everyone, even me. (I might have to use the free clinic services.)

When we arrive back in the red room to finish the tour, maybe a hundred people have gathered in the dark to stay out of the cold and watch a movie on the large screen TV. Pulp Fiction is today's featured film. I thank Esperanza for her time and tell her I'll be back to volunteer soon. 

As I drive out of the compound and into what my dad would call "the demilitarized zone," men across the street sitting on the low wall cup their hands in a way that makes me think they're sharing a crack pipe or weed. When I reach the corner, a person wearing a jacket and hooded sweatshirt passes by doing the zombie walk while holding a paper bag containing a 24 oz. beer can. He walks toward the homeless encampment where a large woman sits on a crate and a tall black man and a white trucker-looking guy stand before her by their wood pile and tents, talking. It's only 10:30 in the morning and will be a long, busy day around Casa Pobre.

Day 249: February 5, 2010 (armed robbery, cowboy greg, and the great big wallop)

Position: Unemployed

Days Officially Unemployed: 22 

Life looking for work isn't going well. I've applied to everything from local restaurants in Encinitas to teaching gigs in South Dakota and a beverage rep job in San Francisco. The search continues as the economy sags. I have about exhausted all my contacts and filed for unemployment. After wading through the bureaucratic paperwork of the Economic Development Department, I now find myself in Fresno, where I grew up. The bad economy has intensified the violence in this town. Right near Fresno State's campus, where I write this post, there were three cases of armed robbery in November, one on January 7, and another two weeks later. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I think I'll be moving in with my brother in Clovis at the end of the month, where I'll squat in his soon-to-be-foreclosed house with him.

My main reason for coming to Fresno, besides dropping of a resume at Fresno City College, doing book research and testing the job waters here, is to offer emotional support to my mother, who placed her husband and mother in an Alzheimer's care facility in the past week. I spent the day over there today, and we sang songs with Cowboy Greg, an old, tall, slim country singer who is unapologetically patriotic and very Christian. 

Before Cowboy Greg showed up, we warmed up our vocal chords with some sing-along Karaoke, while the Black, short-haired, bubbly activities director bounced around the room, encouraging the residents to sing while offering them warm hugs. She's great. Once Cowboy Greg got going singing classic country songs, he told corny jokes––"I was driving with my wife and we saw a jackass out in the field, and I asked her if it was one of her relatives, and she said, 'Yeah, through marriage.' Ha"––and ended by singing hymns ("Amazing Grace" and "Can the Circle Be Unbroken?") before walking around the room and thanking each resident with a handshake or hug. It was a gesture that made up for Cowboy Greg's simplistic insistence that we "wallop" our enemies in the current wars and pay for the damage later, like we did in WWI and WWII. 

The point is, Cowboy Greg was a first-class entertainer for his elderly audience. And during the show, several of the workers circulated around the room and sat or held hands with residents. There was a sense of family and safety about the place, especially since most of the residents were homogeneously white. The world outside, rainy today, didn't exist, and we were all going to a perfect heaven that Cowboy Greg painted for us with words and obscure John Denver songs. But if you knew what the monthly rent was in this wonderful place, you'd wonder what kinds of hell on earth other, poorer people with this same disease end up entering Heaven from. I'm thankful my family has the resources for this kind of care and entertainment; I just wish everyone could hear Cowboy Greg and buy into his vision, by and by, Lord, by and by.

Days 227-241: January 14-28, 2010 (state of the unemployed address)

Position: Unemployed

Days: 15

I have been cast out of the Garden. Thursday, January 14, was supposed to be my first night back at work after my trip to South America, but I received a surprise, late morning call from the owner informing me my services were no longer needed in Rancho Santa Fe. I've appealed the decision, and I await in exile. 

In the meantime, I've begun looking for work elsewhere. I'm applying to long-shot teaching positions for the long-term and restaurants and unskilled labor positions for the short-term. My house painter friend, who is usually a guarantee for some work, doesn't even have a position. As I ask around at restaurants, using all my local connections, I'm hearing the same story: sorry, we're just not hiring. I'm being faced with the reality of this economy; my Rancho Santa Fe bubble has been popped.

I've also begun a third semester Spanish class at the local community college, where I hope to teach English. I ran into a student named Barry (not his real name) who works with his mother's Rancho Santa Fe real estate company. I asked him how things were in the "biz." He said things are bad, but he believes we've seen the bottom. He added, "Foreclosures are unheard of in Rancho Santa Fe, but we currently have sixty-six distressed properties." I asked him if the prices dropped dramatically, like in other parts of the state. "Oh yeah," he said, "I've seen properties that were bought for nine million dollars that are now worth four million." Those numbers astound me. While I've known family and friends whose homes lost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in value, I can't comprehend how it feels to lose five million dollars. The stakes are much higher when your rich. 

If you'll bear with me, I'll continue posting blogs, updating you on my search for work in this economy, and let you know if I'm admitted back into the Garden to feed the rich. Stay tuned . . .

Days 212-220: December 30, 2009-January 7, 2010 (even in death the rich will have it better than you, sort of [photos included])

Position: Tourist

Destinations: Montevideo and Colonia, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina

Total Spent on Buses/Boat: $253

Total Hours Spent on Buses/Boat: 33 

After an overnight, twenty-hour bus ride from Florianópolis, Brazil, to Montevideo, Uruguay, my girlfriend and I spend New Year's Eve with her second cousins. They break out Johnnie Walker whiskey (whiskey is really expensive in South America––an $18 bottle Jack Daniels ranges from $58 in Brazil to $26 in Argentina), liters of beer, bottles of wine, various meats piled on a cutting board (and eaten with shared forks), mixed nuts, and a stack of these wonderful, thin, crustless sandwiches, called sandwiches de miga. 

Though Uruguay is supposed to be a poor country, they know how to celebrate. The young residents of Montevideo hit the streets midday New Year's Eve for a street party. People play drums and shout and sing. Almost everyone carries a green plastic bottle of inexpensive cider, which they drink and splash on each other, and then throw the empty bottles at buildings or into the streets (you can see pictures on this blog––be sure to scroll down through all the pictures). Also, when you're walking down the sidewalks, residents dump buckets of water from buildings onto unsuspecting revelers and tourists alike, washing or baptizing you for the New Year, I guess. And the streets are littered with people's daily calendars, which they've thrown into the street like parade confetti. In late afternoon, everyone goes home and the streets look abandoned.

                                                   

Then, at midnight, the city explodes with fireworks ( fuegos artificiales). It's not like the U.S., where people sit around watching an isolated, choreographed fireworks show or light off a few firecrackers and Whistling Petes, though that's done as well. It's more participatory, and everyone lights their own skyward bound fireworks around the city, which has an incredible war zone effect. The explosions last a straight fifteen to twenty minutes, during which time some residents emerge from their homes and burn their wall calendars in the streets. Such a cool, symbolic gesture.

A couple days later, my girlfriend goes to visit her grandmother and uncle in Trinidad, and I head for Colonia del Sacramento, then Buenos Aires. Before I leave Uruguay, I email Daniel Chacón (books by this author), a frequent Buenos Aires visitor, to ask him about cool places I can check out. He emails back, telling me I can just come visit him and his wife, Sasha Pimental Chacón (book by this author), because they're in Buenos Aires right now. I'm telling you all this because when I meet up with them they take me to Cementerio de La Chacarita where the contrasts between the rich and poor couldn't be sharper.

Just past the neoclassical entrance to the cemetery the visitor is greeted by a neighborhood of wealthy family tombs, complete with sculptures and yellowish, brick sidewalks. It's unquestionably beautiful, but, as Sasha points out, a little excessive for the dead, who don't need these elaborate coffin houses.

                               

After being reprimanded for taking photos by a security guard, Daniel says he's not interested in this section of the cemetery; he wants to show me and Sasha "the Bronx" of the cemetery. So we walk. Through a park-like section with white crosses, tall trees, and mosquitoes that attack us (the suburbs); then through what looks like a strange park with cement ventilators sticking out of the lawn and staircases leading into a post-apocalyptic underground section. Down here, we wander through hallways of semi-rusting, filing cabinet-like walls that house coffins (I guess this would be the lower-middle-class apartments).  

                                                   

When we emerge, I photograph the coffin elevator, which looks to be out of service for now.

                                     

We keep walking toward the back of the cemetery, where we take time to inspect the partitioned "Berlin Wall" that houses family ashes.

                             

These less expensive and smaller apartments for ashes are in various states of disrepair, some you can't even read anymore, and there's a whole section of the wall supported by wooden braces. Pigeons rest in the apartment doorways, and some marble wall tablets are broken, revealing wooden boxes of ashes and spiderwebs inside.

                      

We follow the wall to the right around the edge of the cemetery, and finally arrive in "the Bronx": a completely unkempt area of hilly dirt, littered with weeds and broken crosses. This is where the poor have come to rest, in death as in life.   

                    

The only consolation for the poor is that they've been returned to the earth, while the wealthy hover on shelves above or below the ground, never quite returning to their source. What they don't realize is that everything fades, even red velvet chairs and ornate coffins. Their money might have bought a little more time above ground, but, as you can see, everything eventually turns to dust. 

                                               

Days 198-211: December 16, 2009-December 29, 2009 (lobster on your salad?; compare and contrast, Brazilian style)

Position: Traveler

Destination: South America

Drinks on Plane: 4

Round-Trip Airfare: $100

Total Time Spent on Planes (RT): 26 hours

 

I've taken a month off to travel to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina to see the countries and meet my girlfriend's family. As you may remember from my day 28 post, my brother is a pilot for Continental Express, and I get his travel benefits. While this is great, I spend half the day in San Diego trying to catch standby flights. I arrive in Houston and anxiously await at another Continental gate to find out if I've scored a seat for my ten hour flight to São Paulo, Brazil, where my girlfriend's parents and brother live. 

I'm ecstatic when the gate agent hands me a ticket with seat 3K on it. First Class. I'm even more excited when I settle in, order a Jim Beam and ginger, and then realize no one is even going to sit next to me. As the coach passengers file past, I get that weird privileged feeling again, thinking the passengers must be speculating about my occupation and ability to fly first class. In my mind, I usually pretend to be a famous author, but I know when I walk through first class to the coach seats, I don't think anything about the first-class passengers except that they're wasting money. 

I get the usual perks of first-class (the hot towel, the free Heinekens served with a real glass, the real silverware, plates and cloth napkin with dinner) but this time we're presented with a restaurant-like, four page dinner menu that spells out the five-course meal, and includes four main course choices (I choose the Southwest stuffed chicken breast). During the salad course, I'm asked if I'd like lobster on my salad. Of course I would. After the main course, they present me with a cheese and fruit plate, then, get this, roll out a metal dessert cart with all kinds of ice cream options. Even though I'm already stuffed, when they announce all the available toppings for the ice cream––sauces, nuts, whip cream––I say, "Yes, please." The flight attendant also asks if I'd like a cognac with dessert. Why not? Pass the Courvoisier. The downside to all this overindulgence is that my sinuses are three-quarters stuffed, so I'm only experiencing food textures (the lobster wasn't such a good idea), an occasional strong taste, and I'm now totally bloated. Which means I can't sleep almost the whole flight, am too tired to read, and end up watching The Time Traveler's Wife and flight data between cat naps.

I also experience a fair amount of flight anxiety, not about the flight itself or the idea of crashing, but from knowing when I land I'll be in a foreign country, thousands of miles from home, where I've been told it's dangerous––my only reference point is City of God––and I don't speak the language. I experience this feeling even when I return to countries I've been to before, like Mexico and Italy. And when I land, I'm usually fine. (Strangely enough, the only time the anxiety never went away was when I landed in a place that I do speak the language: Australia. But that had more to do with my recent divorce at the time than the country itself). 

When the plane turns for its approach into São Paulo, and I see the size and extent of the city, my anxiety kicks up a notch. But when I land, like in Mexico or Italy, I instantly feel relaxed and fine, and my girlfriend and her mother are there to greet me. After spending almost two weeks in this massive, traffic-choked city, I realize something. People here are living out the human tragedy/comedy the same way they do all over the world. People fall in love; they make wedding videos; they divorce; they eat meals (especially meat, lots of meat); some people are rich, many are poor; people go to hospitals for hurt fingers; that woman is sleeping with that other woman's husband; people die from natural causes and car crashes and murders; some people rob other people; a man spreads his seed, and when he dies he leaves children all over the continent . . .

In a massive city like São Paulo (population, 11-19 million), though, life is altered by fear of violence, and the contrasts are magnified. Those with money hide behind taller fences, gates and armed security guards; those without live in shanty towns (favelas), their houses constructed of pallets, scrap wood and tarps. Those with money don't usually flaunt their wealth like in the States, instead choosing to drive modest, compact cars. Those without money take whatever they can from those that have money, usually by force. This makes the rich prisoners of their own wealth. But like anywhere else, the everyday people are kind and generous and gracious, and they live out their lives walking the streets to work, relaxing in the parks, or eating (lots of meat) at one of the many restaurants. 

While I spend a short amount of time in a wealthy man's house, a business friend of my father's, I never spend time in a favela; I only see one or two from the highway. But I learn something very interesting from that business friend; he says many earnings reports in Brazil are fictions, and it's unwise to invest money here. Own a business, fine, but don't invest, because he's been at board meetings where the financial officer went around the room asking the executives their expenditures for the year, and that's what the financial officer reported as their earnings. Cover what you spent. The rest isn't the government's business. They do nothing for us. 

America has it's own business fictions, such as Enron, Arthur Anderson, and the recent bank failures, and I sometimes feel investors are unwise gamblers at the mercy of wrongly motivated executives, many of whom are more interested in their own wealth than the company or country's economic health. And even those these types of fictions and corruptions are just magnified in Brazil, they're coming up as a country (not to mention they have the Soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016).  

I also spent time in a young couple's nice, high rise condo, where I ate a wonderful pasta meal and sipped red wine a few blocks away from a favela. And that young couple, their son asleep in his crib, had an infectious optimism and sense of hope for the future. My girlfriend says this is the spirit of the Brazilian people, that no matter how bad things seem or are, they have hope. And they keep on living . . .