Part II Day 92: May 22, 2010 (refugee beach day, food lost in translation, and fear of a fake blond planet)

Position: Driver/Beach Goer

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 127

Hours Volunteered: 3.5

EDD Check: $250 per week

We had agreed that no one would bring food, that we'd all eat before we went to the beach, so we could easily make it through the afternoon. But that's not what happened. Today is the official IRC beach day, when tutors and their families will all spend time together at Coronado beach. Last night, Etel stayed up until 2 a.m. with her Brazilian friends making vegetarian empadinhas––miniature pot pie-looking pastries filled with palm hearts, olives and cheese––and Argentinean tortilla made with eggs, peas, potatoes, and carrots. I am in charge of buying apples, waters, and Cokes, which I do.

When we arrive at the Bhutanese family's apartment, not only am I surprised to see the mom dressed in new jeans, a button up shirt, and a jacket (Western clothes), she has a backpack stuffed with their own Cokes and food. Down at the cars, we decide the women will go with Etel, the men will ride with me. Our ride is mostly silent, while Johnny Cash's older, American V voice croons about lost love and God. (I hit them with the more upbeat Cuban sounds of the Buena Vista Social Club on the way home.)

As we drive over the Coronado bridge, the father and son strain to get a good look at downtown San Diego and the massive aircraft carriers idling at the Navy base. Seen through their eyes, the world looks new and amazing, even to me. "Pretty crazy how big those ships are, huh?" I say. Then, I'll try to imagine what it was like, especially for the grandmother, to board the plane to America, not knowing if you'll ever see your country again and knowing you must adjust to this new one. (On the way home from the beach, the son will tell me he's never been to downtown San Diego, and I'll promise to take him sometime.)

As soon as we get the quilt spread out at the beach, the grandma, sitting cross-legged, points to the ocean and puts her hands together in prayer. "I think she wants to go pray in the ocean," I tell Etel. When we first met the family, we asked them if they'd ever been to the beach, and they told us they had, because when the grandfather died shortly after their arrival in America, they needed to immerse themselves in water to pray as part of the mourning process. In Bhutan and Nepal, they would have done this in a river.

Etel and the father gingerly help the grandmother to her feet and walk her into the ocean. I run back to get my camera and I miss the prayer and the throwing of gold coins into the water, but I shoot some good pictures of Etel, the grandma, and father reemerging.

Once we're settled back on the quilt, the Bhutanese mom hands us warm Cokes out of her backpack and then breaks out flat fry bread and curry paste and puts them on plates for us. Etel says she's not yet hungry, but I dive in. The food is excellent, as always. While the grandma, mom, and I are eating, Etel pulls out her South American food and says, "I made this for you. It's from my country, Brazil." The mom smiles as we push the plastic Snapware containers of food toward her and the grandma and encourage them to try it. They have clearly never see anything like this. They both slowly remove empadinhas from the container, examine them, and then take a small bite.

Their faces immediately go sour, but then they smile, trying not to betray their distaste for the empadinhas. We laugh and Etel tells them they don't have to eat them. They pretend they'll continue eating them, but Etel sees the mom dispose of them on the sly. The grandmother, feeling adventurous, I guess, even tries the tortilla, which she says she likes, but she only eats one small cube. I devour the empadinhas, which are dry but super tasty, and the tortilla.

All around us, spread across a small section of beach, Vietnamese, Somalian, other Bhutanese families and the American tutors share food. Etel decides she should take her fare around for the others to try, and I join her. The Americans, our palettes used to exotic foods, love Etel's empadinhas.

A relative of our family (everyone seems to be a "cousin"), calling us both Teacher, invites us over to their blanket to share food. They say they'll try Etel's food, but every one of them has the same reaction after the first bite, like they bit into a poo sandwich. We laugh and tell them it's okay, but one of the fathers, who speaks decent English, says, "No, Teacher. I like it." We laugh, but he insists on finishing the whole thing while the others spit theirs out. They feed us vegetarian samosas in return. One of the daughters, who spit out her empadinha, eats Flamin' Hot Crunchy Cheetos, which seems to be a favorite American junk food of the Bhutanese.

I spend the rest of my beach time playing football with our family's son and his cousins. I enjoy showing each one how to grip the ball to throw it with a spiral. Some get it, some don't, but we have a blast. The son of our family struggles with throwing a tight spiral, but he catches everything I throw at him, even doing dramatic jumps when catching easy passes, like I would. That's it, I think. You get it.

Around one o' clock, right after the sun comes out, the families begin packing up and heading for the bus. We drove our family, so we tell them we can stay as long as they like. They pack up, anyway. In the car on the way home, the youngest daughter asks Etel if the yellow-haired people at the beach are real or fake, meaning she isn't used to seeing blond hair. It makes sense; outside of relief workers, she wouldn't have seen many blond people in Bhutan or Nepal, and where she lives now and attends school the children are everything but blond.

It's great seeing these small revelations: the specific palette of the Bhutanese, which embraces Flamin' Hot Crunchy Cheetos and Cokes but rejects empadinhas; the grip that suddenly makes a football spiral rather than flutter; the 19th century seriousness with which they pose for pictures; and the fear of a fake blond planet.

Part II Day 86: May 16, 2010 (learning Hinduism through metal figurines and belly buttons, a walk to the store, and free food for the rich)

Position: Volunteer

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 121

Hours Volunteered: 3

EDD Check: $250 per week

For today's lesson, we decide we'll walk the Bhutanese refugee family to their local store and name food items for them in English. But before that, while we're waiting for the son to get home from his Christian church, we decide we'll go around and ask each other questions in English. Etel and I begin with basic questions, such as "how are you today" and "how was your week," to which the father answers "good" but sounds like "goot." We tell the youngest daughter to ask her father a question in English, and she blows our minds by asking, "How much chicken do you want?" Her father, going along with the role playing, his daughter being the butcher, says he wants two pounds of chicken.

This leads to a discussion about meat, and the parents say they don't eat chicken, only goat, sometimes. "But I saw chicken in your freezer," I say. They tell us it's for the kids, that they like chicken, but that none of them will eat beef because it's sacred in Hinduism. The daughter begins an explanation, which is as frenetic and enjoyable as a Jimmy Hendrix guitar solo, of their religious beliefs. (Sorry, I'm listening to Hendrix while I write this.) She runs to the bedroom and returns with metal figures of gods and their goddess spouses, shouting out their names, which I can't follow. Her descriptions are so quick and confusing, we think cows are god, or a representation of god, and people are born of dots on their foreheads or through their belly buttons. The parents don't know enough English to clarify what the daughter is saying, but they keep nodding their heads in agreement with her descriptions, anyway. This we know: married women wear a dot on their hairline. I think.

The son returns from church and, after some discussion, decides he'll come with us and the parents while the little sister stays home with the grandma. As we walk down the street, I point to things and say the words, which the parents repeat: cars, sidewalk, fence, etc. Once we're in the small, cramped store, I point to items, and the parents easily identify them: oranges, tomatoes, lemons, bananas, and even avocados, which they say they have in Bhutan. The mom knows "milk" but shrugs when I show her a rectangular block of packaged cheese. I soon realize I'm blocking the aisles for the local customers, who are mostly Somalis, and bumming the Middle Eastern store owner out by touching everything for our lesson. While we're naming items, the son picks out three small bags of spicy potato chips (flaming Cheetos and "fire" chips are their favorite) and the dad picks out a large bottle of apple juice, which he says his mother loves, and six, 35-cent packs of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum. We tell the son that chips are bad for him, and he says his teacher tells him the same thing. He buys them anyway.

Lesson failed.

When we get outside, I ask the dad, who is holding the receipt, how much everything was. The son puts his hand on the receipt and says, "Two hundred and thirty-eight dollars left." I lean in and realize the receipt is a balance of some kind, possibly of their monthly welfare account. I tell the son that corner stores like that are more expensive than grocery stores, which is a revelation to him. "We go there because it's close." I said I know, that's why they call them convenience stores, but they charge for the convenience.

Back at the house, we're all seated on the quilt overlaying the floor, and we talk more about food. The mother says, "I'm sorry, Teacher, but I don't like shopping." She describes, in her broken but understandable English, that she prefers the old way of picking and gathering crops as opposed to going to stores and buying it in packages. (Turns out, she knows what cheese is––she used to make it herself––but it was completely unidentifiable in rectangular plastic.) "We don't have stores," she says. I announce that I hate shopping too, but must admit I'd be lost without them. The parents tell us about all the animals they had in Bhutan, and how the father sometimes traveled to India to work on farms.

"You're a farmer," I say. The dad nods, and everyone smiles. Then what the hell are they doing in San Diego, we think, landlocked in urban hell? Etel and I can't help but think they would have been better off settling in Nepal, somehow. Last week, it came out that they have another daughter who ran off and married in the refugee camp without their permission. She now lives with her husband in Denmark, and I assume they'll never see her again. (When we ask them how many children they have as part of our lessons, they always say three, not four.) It will be tough enough getting reunited with the mother's sister out in New York, where the mother's parents are arriving soon from Nepal.

We talk about possible jobs in the future, and the mom says she wants to care for children, to be a nanny. I think about possible connections in San Diego for nanny work, but everyone I know lives up north near me, which is 24 miles and hours of bus rides away from City Heights, where the Bhutanese family lives. I appreciate our country's attempt to help these families, it even makes me a little proud, but this whole situation is crazy and screwed up, the transition nearly impossible. When they get cut off from welfare, the mom will have to single-handedly earn enough money to support five people, because the dad's going to stay at home and care for his ailing mother. Even living in the poor part of San Diego, paying rent and eating would be impossible for a nanny who speaks limited English.

When Etel and I put our shoes on and get ready to leave, they say, "Wait, Teacher," then bring out a plate of pea and potato samosas, some fried flatbread, curry vegetable paste made of tomatoes and cauliflower, and coffee for Etel and tea for me––"since you don't drink coffee, Teacher." We watch an Indian movie, partly in English, partly in Hindi, while enjoying the food and drinks. Of course, Etel and I feel terrible for eating their food, since we assume they have so little. But this is what makes their culture great: they share what little they have. They even pack a plastic bag from the 99 cent store with the leftovers and add more from the kitchen before we leave. We protest, but they insist.

When I get home, keeping in the spirit of the gesture, I share the leftovers with my brother, my roommate, and the neighbors while we watch hockey on T.V. They all agree the food is pretty damn good, even cold. I feel like I've been transported out of time and space, into this different reality where I live, twenty-four miles from City Heights. It's discombobulating, but my memories from today, the mutual compassion we shared, and the food smells filling my house are what keep us connected. Namaste.

Part II Day 78: May 8, 2010 (rolling with Mr. D, diabetic lunches, last meals, and a one-legged candy lover)

Position: Volunteer

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 113

Hours Volunteered: 1.5

EDD Check: $250 per week

I arrive at the Oceanside Presbyterian church early, so I walk around to find the bathroom and the spot where the Meals on Wheels truck rendezvous with the route drivers. I'm to ride along with Mr. D today to learn the Oceanside route and begin subbing next month. By the time I find the truck in the large church parking lot, Mr. D has all his food loaded in his red pick-up and is ready to roll. He looks like a computer programmer in his mid-forties, sporting a thick '80s mustache and a salt and peppered, parted, regular guy hairdo. We ride to the first house in awkward silence, with not even the smooth sounds of soft rock to break the tension.

We arrive at a mobile home park and head right to number 123. Mr. D half-knocks on the screen door in the carport on his way in, comfortable with his route of twelve years. Mrs. C is ready, seated at her low kitchen counter end, which is covered in mail, prescriptions, newspaper, and whatever else old people keep on their counters. Mr. D is moving quick. He's got the fridge open and pulls out what looks to be a fat plastic pen and a Diet Pepsi. He hands the pen thing to Mrs. C, and then pulls out a glass and fills it with the Diet Pepsi. "Whoa, your meals are stacking up in here, Mrs. C," Mr. D says when he sees four or five frozen Meals on Wheels meals inside the freezer. Mrs. C seems confused and ignores him while she fiddles around with a prescription box before extracting what looks like a small, clear plastic, syringe head holder. The diabetic label on the food we brought should have clued me in on her condition and what the pen-looking thing and syringe head are for. He asks about her son, wishes her an early Happy Mother's Day, and gives her the standardize Meals on Wheels Mother's Day card. We're out the door, and Mr. D is inside his truck and starting it before I can even get in.

We whip around the corner to another mobile home in the same park. Mr. D makes me help him check the food, then we're into the house without knocking, since the screen door allows the residents to see our presence, and Mr D loudly announces "Meals on Wheels" at every door before he barges in. Once inside, Mr. D is putting the meals on the counter and introducing me to a husband and wife in their eighties. The husband stands near me in his white T-shirt and shorts or underwear, but doesn't reach out to shake my hand. He smiles. He's thin and not only is his skin loose and marked with liver spots, his forehead has a crusty skin barnacle. His wife sits on the couch reading the paper, and since she's wearing shorts, I see her exposed legs, which look like loose skin draped over bones. The mobile home is tidy but has the smell and feel of the grim reaper's impending arrival. He might be coming this week, but at least the couple will go out together.

Once we're back in the truck and speeding up what Mr. D calls "the expressway" but is only Highway 76, I ask him if we should be concerned about Mrs. C's meals stacking up in her freezer. He tells me it's not a problem, because Mrs. C's son is her caretaker and comes by daily. But she looked so alone and sad, I thought.

After a short time on the expressway, we cut through a few streets in coastal Oceanside into a predominately Mexican neighborhood. The streets are lined with weekly yard sales that include clothes spread over dying lawns and tables with toys and bags of pork rinds, or chicharrónes, in clear bags. We pull into a the parking lot of a large, run-down apartment complex, park, and get the food out. We walk into the middle of the complex, where a Snoop Dogg song bumps from a neighbor's apartment. The note says the resident we're delivering to is hard of hearing, but I'm sure that even if she can't hear Snoop Dogg's dirty lyrics, she can feel his beats.

An elderly black woman in a well worn nightgown and hole-riddled head sock cracks open the door. Mr. D asks her if she wants us to bring the food inside, but she either doesn't hear him or doesn't want us inside, so we hand her the food through the small opening she's allowed. She thanks us and says it's good work we're doing, which, of course, makes me feel useful and my time well spent.

On our next delivery, Mr. D pulls into the parking lot of a nice apartment complex and says it's a nightmare to park here. He leaves his truck in a red zone and says, "We'll be out of here in no time," and he means it. We power right into the man's apartment, and Mr. D has the food in front of the man before I can even realize the guy is sitting in a wheelchair, has one leg, and looks like a gray-bearded, pony-tailed, Vietnam Vet, biker dude. Mr. D hastily introduces me while I stare in amazement at the man's pile of candy and snacks on his coffee table, which is clearly his main post-up spot. The man says nothing to me, and Mr. D turns and is out the door before I can really say hello. "I think he recently had a stroke and can't talk," Mr. D says once we're outside the man's door. "Jesus," I say. "Yeah," Mr. D agrees. We're back at Mr. D's truck, which he's again started before I'm even inside, when he tells me, "I've been cussed out at this place before for the parking situation. 'I'm trying to deliver food to your neighbor,' I tell them. But they don't care."

"Old people," I say, like that explains it all.

Mr. D powers on, gunning it up streets and testing his brakes at stop signs. The man is on a mission, and I admire his determination. Our route is short today, since half of the ten customers have posted a "Do Not Deliver" message to their address page. For our final delivery, we pull into a solidly middle-class neighborhood where all the houses are decent sized and the yards are all well maintained, except the house we're delivering to. The walkway is dirty and weedy and there are old, dusty bits of cardboard here and there. An elderly white woman, looking like she's dressed for church in her light-brown pantsuit, answers the door and says, "I thought maybe you got lost," which is the kind of lame thing I'm used to hearing while delivering food to the rich. Her stairs and floors are bare, in the midst of being re-carpeted, but Mr. D has the food on the counter and is out the door before I can ask about the remodel.

On the way back to the church, Mr. D asks me if I'm comfortable with the route. I lie and say yes. The truth is, I'm still a little shaken up from what I saw, and the breakneck speeds at which Mr. D maneuvered the route and the houses has me wondering if I can match his feat. But, quite honestly, the job seems much more important and meaningful than delivering pizza to the rich. I just hope the elderly are understanding if their food isn't so hot.

Part II Day 71: May 1, 2010 (tagging household items, a partial home tour of the poor, and lunch in Eritrea)

Position: Volunteer

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 106

Hours Volunteered: 2

EDD Check: $250 per week

When Etel and I arrive at the Bhutanese family's house, they already have the quilt we used last week to sit on laid out across the floor. The oldest daughter enters from the back room, walks into the kitchen, then presents us with a tray containing two mismatched coffee cups of warm rice milk. It's delicious, something like warm horchata, minus the cinnamon.

I ask to use the bathroom, and this is the first time I see any part of the house other than the front room. The bathtub is home to large plastic containers filled with wet clothes, which, I assume, means they've been doing their laundry in here. A small cup sitting on the old sink holds the family's toothbrushes, which are well-used and worn out. While we're mostly here to tutor the family in English, seeing objects like the frayed toothbrushes makes me want to share what I have, to use my own money to buy new toothbrushes, but I don't know what the protocol is for such a gesture.

When I come out of the bathroom, we jump right into the first activity, which is having the family members––except grandma, who watches from her perch on the couch––write down the household item words they know on Post-It notes and stick them to the item. For one of his turns, the dad writes "soup" and then walks off into the back of the house. Later, the younger daughter brings out a bar of soap on which the dad placed the "soup" Post-It. I explain the mistake, and now it's the daughter's turn to disappear into the back bedrooms. She returns with an unopened instant Ramen noodles in a Styrofoam cup. "Yes, that's it," I say, and we show her dad. The Post-It note idea is a hit, and by the time we're done the T.V., radio, couch, oven, walls, and several other things, including the soap and soup, have been tagged.

For the second activity, Etel works with the children using the portable dictionaries we bought them, and I sit with the parents at the kitchen table having them draw small pictures of household items I name. We use the pictures to play a form of bingo where I describe an item and tell them a number, and they have to put the drawing on the bingo space with the corresponding number. While we're doing this activity, I notice a small cockroach crawling on the wall. Then, another one, followed by two, ant-sized, baby cockroaches. My instinct is to smash them, but, like the parents, I ignore them and continue with the activity. The family doesn't seem to share our same abhorrence of cockroaches, because a few weeks ago the kids asked Etel what cockroaches were, and when she pointed out one on the wall by the T.V., the kids shrugged and said, "Oh," like their familiarity made them friendly.

At one point today, I'm trying to explain the difference between the oven and the stovetop, that there are two words for these different sections of the oven, so I walk the parents over into the kitchen. They stare at me blankly, then smile. I open the oven and pretend to put something inside. "For cooking food," I say. "Hot." The mother nods and smiles some more, and I notice that spiderwebs span from the oven door to inside the oven. They obviously aren't using the oven.

I move on to the stovetop, where an empty, dented green pot sits with the residue from our warm rice milk. I point to it and say "pot." Next to it is a pressure cooker, which I also simplify to "pot." Sitting on the counter is the most used item in the house, where they do most of their food preparation: the rice cooker. Between the rice cooker and the refrigerator, a microwave sits unplugged. The couple knows to say "micro" to describe the microwave, so I have them write out "microwave oven" on Post-Its and put them on the appliance.

Before we leave, the oldest daughter tries to give us the usual Cokes, but we thank her and say we're fine with the rice milk. She seems confused and leaves one of the two Cokes for us. When we're all done, I put the Coke in the fridge, where a handful of vegetables and a semi-wilted bunch of lettuce sit among the empty shelves. Since I did a quick, impromptu lesson with the younger daughter earlier, describing the difference between the refrigerator part of the fridge and the freezer, I know the freezer contains only two miniature, frozen chickens and a tray of ice cubes. Again, I think how strange this world must seem to the refugees––the freezer, the oven, the microwave––and how crappy it must be to have no means for making a living, to completely rely on the kindness of strangers. But there's also something appealing to me about the simplicity of their diet, since I've spent my own time eating an oats-rice–salad daily meal routine, have given up on microwaves (not necessarily by choice, but I don't miss it), and I'm more horrified by overstuffed fridges than sparse ones.

After we leave and are driving back toward University Heights, we decide to stop and eat at an East African restaurant Etel's been wanting to try. It's called Asmara Eritrean Restaurant, and the food is from the little-talked-about country of Eritrea, which is sandwiched between Ethiopia and Sudan. Similar to Ethiopian fare, the veggie sampler platter is served in small mounds of different items––"lentils cooked with onions, tomatoes and hot peppers, a tumeric-scented cabbage, a carrot-and-potato mixture, and a velvety stew of collard greens and spinach"––on a large, spongy, and mostly flavorless, pancake bread. You can read an accurate review about the place in this San Diego CityBeat review. Etel and I sip Ethiopian beers (they were out of the Asmara beer from Eritrea––the server/owner said it's hard to get) and snack on the sambusas, spicy "triangles of flaky pastry that hold a lentil, onion and jalapeño filling," while three white women, who speak in San Diego-ease ("totally") and have adopted African children, sit at a nearby table and say borderline offensive things to their one-year-olds, such as, "Does this smell remind you of home?" making me wonder if the adopting of African-children-trend started by Angelina Jolie and Madonna is more helpful or harmful for the kids.

Etel and I talk about a possible move to New York City and what that would mean for us. Thinking about all the interesting places there are to eat and see in New York, Etel comments on our recent rash of San Diego adventures, saying, "I've never had so many stimulating experiences like I've had lately with you." She knows I'm down for anything, and I love that she it, too. Yes, New York might fit us just fine.

Part II Day 64: April 24, 2010 (Somalia Diego, feeding English to the Bhutanese, and underground tacos)

Position: Volunteer Tutor and Taco Lover

Number of Day Officially Unemployed: 99

Hours Volunteered: 2

California Economic Development Department Check: $250 per week

Morning:

If we hadn't just left my girlfriend's apartment and driven east on El Cajon Boulevard from University Heights, I'd swear this wasn't San Diego. City Heights isn't the neighborhood tourists or transplants or residents come to "America's Finest City" to experience. In other words, it's not Seaport Village, Mission Bay, nor Pacific Beach.

Dark African women––dressed in colorful, flowing Muslim gowns that hide their heads and even their feet––seem to float down the streets. Old black men wearing taqiyahs, the round, embroidered Muslim hats, sit on crates and loiter in front of markets. The stores along this stretch of El Cajon Boulevard and the parallel University Avenue are a mishmash of Mexican carnicerías, Vietnamese Phở shops, Chinese salons and markets, and a couple African restaurants.

Etel and I arrive at the apartment building of the Bhutanese family we're tutoring in English, and I feel like I'm reliving a scene from Blackhawk Down. The two-story, orange-beige building is run down, the cement steps crumbling, and Somalian refugees walk the courtyard hallways or peak out of their apartments at the foreign visitors: us. When we came last week to meet the Bhutanese family for the first time, the International Rescue Committee, whom we're volunteering through, sent a Somalian woman to serve as our facilitator, though she didn't speak Nepali or Bhutanese. It was a nice, seventy-degree afternoon in San Diego that day, but the apartment was closed up and stuffy, feeling like, as my girlfriend described it, a "curry sauna."

Today, the window is open and the apartment is much cooler, though the smell of curry still dominates. The father, always sporting a beanie, and his fifteen-year-old son sit at the kitchen table and scoop a spicy rice dish from silver bowls into their mouths by hand, while the mother busies herself in the kitchen. A chubby man they say is a cousin sits next to the father and son but doesn't eat. The 82-year-old grandmother, her nose pierced by a small, golden sundial-like piece of jewelry, sits on the couch near another cousin, age 7, and nods and smiles at us. The oldest daughter, 21, who has inherited her father's crossed-eyes and speaks the most English (but lives elsewhere), has stopped by to say hello and eat. The son, 15, and youngest daughter, 11, will be participating in our tutoring sessions. By looking at the family side by side, you would swear that no one in this house is related (grandma and dad are taller and thin and almost look Afghan; mom is short and looks Native American; the oldest daughter, Indian; the son and younger daughter, possibly Latino).

The story of Bhutanese refugees is as confusing as the family's genetic expressions. The refugees are ethnically Nepali, and they historically moved from one small country sandwiched between China and India––Nepal––to another one––Bhutan––in the 1800s. Even though Bhutan is often listed as one of the happiest countries on earth (they even rate their wealth by a Gross National Happiness scale instead of a Gross National Product scale), the Buddhist majority decided they'd be much happier without the Hindu minority ethnic Nepalis, whom they imprisoned or sent to Nepal, a country who also doesn't want them. Enter refugee status. And Western efforts at resettling them.

The family has been here eight months, and while the children are in school and learning English quickly, the parents are struggling. (That's not to say the kids have it easy; the fifteen-year-old boy is experiencing the awkwardness that is high school, times ten. Even though he's handsome and dresses in hip clothing, he says kids make fun of his accent and can't understand him.) Etel and I decide she'll work with the kids while I work with the parents. I push them through two hours of awkward phonetics––they know the alphabet but not the sounds letters make––while Etel creatively has the kids doing word puzzles and playing a game naming body parts, animals, and other items based on a chosen letter: "L" leads to answers such as "leg" and "lion."

Though the family seems to have an endless supply of Cokes (they kindly offer us each one when we visit, and the dad has two today), the sparse furniture of their house speaks to their poverty. It's hard to imagine two worlds more different that the valleys and mountains of Bhutan, where the family had over 30 cattle, and the outer city of San Diego with their Somali neighbors. While we haven't bothered to ask the family if they have everything they need food-wise and whatnot (Etel and I decided they need a dictionary), they rely on their bond as a family to see them through this tough transition, and there's something very moving about that.

Afternoon:

Last weekend, while at a fortieth birthday party for one of Etel's Mexican friends, the family told us about an illegal restaurant a Mexican woman runs out of a home. And would we like to go sometime? How about "hell yeah" we said.

After our morning tutoring session with the Bhutanese family, Etel and I make the necessary arrangements to meet her friends at the house that "serves the best tacos in San Diego." While the east San Diego neighborhood is clearly poor, each house having a low chain-link or wrought-iron–fenced yard, people's perceived fears far outweigh the reality on the ground: it's not that bad. When I ask Etel's friend, who is from Mexico City, what neighborhood we are in, exactly, she whispers, "I don't know. We just call it 'the ghetto.'"

Though Etel and I park out in front of the house, we have to walk down the street and enter through a graffiti-tagged alley where an old black man and his younger, tougher-looking buddy work on an SUV's running board. Rob, the white husband of Etel's friend, meets us in the alley and walks us into the carport area, which is protected by a sliding, slatted chain-link gate. Inside, a Mexican family eats at a long picnic table. Rob ushers us into the back patio area of the house, where two more tables are shaded and hidden by worn, blue tarps that raise and lower in the soft breeze. Etel's friends speak a mixture of Spanish and English at the table, lending even more authenticity to the experience: it feels like we've crossed the border and are having lunch in Mexico.

Rob's sister-in-law gives us the rundown. We can order tacos, tostadas, sopes, or enchiladas with either potatoes, chicken, beef, or shrimp, and each costs only $1.25. The sister-in-law also tell us why, even though people bug the woman of the house to open a real restaurant, she prefers to keep her business off the grid. Besides the hassle of getting a business license, dealing with the health board, and paying taxes, payroll, and rent, she prefers to cook at home and keep the prices of her tacos inexpensive. She says she doesn't want her tacos to be $3 each, which she thinks they'd be if she went legit. She wants her food getting to the locals, the poor, and her ability to feed the neighbors has kept them quiet about her busy little home restaurant (sometimes there can be up to a 45 minute wait).

A few weeks ago, two cop cars rolled down the alley, and the woman became very nervous. She told everyone eating that if the cops should come inside, tell them it was her birthday party. And who wouldn't want to celebrate this place? The tacos and tostadas are wonderful, served watery with spoons, which Etel's friend claimed was "real Mexican style, spoons only!" I had already crammed most of my deep fried (duro) taco down with my hands before I realized the watery broth was there to soften the shell and cause you to use the spoon for eating.

It's a weird experience, because I want to proclaim the greatness of the food to everyone, to brag about the matron of the house being the Harriet Tubman of the underground taco world, but I have to keep the location secret and just admire this woman's ability to earn a living to feed her family while feeding the poor. Amen.

Part II Day 57: April 17, 2010 (the First Lady blesses the garden, famous Somalian refugees, and distinguishing between what does and doesn't get in)

Position: Volunteer

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 92

Hours Worked: 2

This morning, my girlfriend, Etel, has brought me to New Roots Community Garden in City Heights for a regularly scheduled volunteer day. The garden was set up by San Diego's chapter of the International Rescue Committee on 2.3 acres of city-owned land for local immigrants and refugees, and it's worked by 80 immigrant farmers. Each family gets its own, small plot to organically grow whatever crop they want, ranging from prickly pear cactus, or nopales, to strawberries and other foods from around the world. I'm excited, because it's been a lifelong dream of mine to learn organic farming, and I'm thinking that volunteering at the garden might not only serve to help immigrant and refugee families but will help my own education.

Etel and I arrive a little late, so we miss most of the garden tour, led by Bilali Muya, a Somalian refugee who works at the farm as a part-time educator. Muya is beaming this morning, fresh off of being the tour guide for Michelle Obama's visit on Thursday as part of her national campaign against childhood obesity. When he finishes our tour, Muya shows some people yesterday's Union-Tribune article, in which he's pictured with the First Lady, and says, "I'm famous," in a thick Somali accent.

While the First Lady's visit was meant to highlight healthy food alternatives for poor children, it also highlighted the gap between being an important, rich woman and a poor immigrant or regular person in the United States. As you can read in the Union-Tribune article, to protect Michelle Obama, her visit was an invite-only event, and many immigrants and neighbors were kept out of the garden and practically locked in their yards by the Secret Service (which has its own interesting history). Hardly a good lesson in true democracy, but, nonetheless, a great lesson in American timocracy.

This morning, there must be close to fifty volunteers, consisting mostly of white people, ranging from children to old men, and a few young Mexican-American men that are part of a MAAC project program. The development coordinator has us break up into groups of ten and move off into different parts of the garden. At least two of the volunteers in our group belong to a Meetup.com group called "Do-gooders Who Drink," composed of people who head to a local watering hole for a beer after they volunteer.

Muya leads our small group out of the garden and into the neighboring area, where a small stretch of natural grasses and trees border a creek. He takes us over to a large mulch pile in the field, which, he explained earlier, helps keep snails and other unwanted pests out of the garden. When he talked about the mulch, he took on the role of the snail and twisted and squirmed as he explained how the sharp edges of the mulch particles would stab into his body and make it unpleasant to slime across. He tells us to weed a small area between the mulch pile and the garden's Cyclone fence, so we can spread the mulch and connect it with the other area, covered in an older layer of sun-faded mulch.

As with every group project that's not well organized, instructions are sketchy and misunderstood. Our group of ten quickly rips through the entire area, weeding the strip from the mulch pile clear out to the road. The dusty, herbal smell of the pulled weeds takes me back to my childhood of weeding our yard in Clovis, and shoveling the mulch later will remind me of shoveling horse manure out of our old barn for twenty-five cents a wheelbarrow full. Though it's hot, it feels good to perform some manuel labor out here, to get close to the earth and its smells.

While Etel and I carefully remove the black and white striped snails we find and throw them out into the brush toward the river as we weed, a teenager nearby has interpreted their "pest" status as a call to genocide. Every time he, his brother, or his mother finds snails, he gathers them into a small pile and crushes them under his oversized tennis shoes. Since ladybugs' diet of aphids makes them beneficial to the garden, they receive the same teen's admiration and careful transfer. He's learning the important distinction of what we want kept out of the garden and what we want to let into the garden.

As we continue pulling weeds and spreading the mulch, we encounter earwigs, pinacate beetles, and a large cockroach in the mulch pile. While these bugs are unpleasant and make some people squeal, I'm more worried that someone's going to accidentally find a rattlesnake in the deep grass we're tromping through.

While we weed, Muya tells us that he's from the minority Bantu tribe in Somalia and how they're recent immigrants to the U.S., and how he was a farmer over there and misses his land. It's strange to think about how people from all over the world––"Somalia, Cambodia, Burma, Uganda, Congo, Kenya, Mexico, Vietnam, and Guatemala"––and from different backgrounds––farmers, shepherds, etc.––have been plopped down in urban San Diego and are now sharing this small wedge of land and the neighborhood of City Heights.

After we spread most of the mulch and many of our volunteers have disappeared, I take a short break with Muya, whose been working his way around to the different groups, and we search the nearby, oversized bush for bee hives. We don't see any, but the bees are buzzing in and out of two areas within the bush.

When we're almost done spreading the mulch pile, the development coordinator comes out and sees what we've done. She's incredulous, telling us she only wanted a four-foot wide mulch path between the garden fence and the field. "I can't believe they did this," she says, as Muya, looking like a scorned child, turns to survey the mulch spread thin over the entire weeded area. The five of us volunteers that are left spend the next half hour or so grumbling and raking up the mulch and shoveling it into a trash can and wheelbarrow, then hauling it over to the fence to create the path.

While I'm shoveling mulch into the trash can, I have my back to the bee-infested bush. I feel a bee land on the back of my neck. As someone who has harvested honey, I would think I could control my natural reaction, which is to freak out and swat at the bee. I hurry away from the bush and continue brushing my shoulder with panicked swats. I finally calm myself down, even though I can still hear the bee on my back, and I calmly ask the snail crusher's brother if I have a bee on my back. "No," he says. The problem is, I can still hear and feel the bee on my shoulder, which means it's inside my shirt now. I'm waiting for the burn of the inevitable sting, but rip my shirt off over my head anyway. The bee flies off, and both of us are left mutually unharmed.

By now, Etel and I are sweaty, dirty, and possibly sun-burned, so we're ready to go home and clean up for our afternoon visit with a Bhutanese refugee family, whom we'll be tutoring in English and cultural adjustment. While we haven't had any direct contact with the "poor" we're helping, except Muya, it feels good to volunteer. Our task today may have been menial, but it was necessary, and it allows the refugees and immigrants to concentrate on the important work while they're in the garden tending their crops. I need to get further involved, so I can learn more about organic farming and crops while continuing to help feed the poor.

Part II Day 49: April 9, 2010 (lying about hunger, starvation by the numbers, and distinguishing between need and want)

Position: Conference Attendee

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 84

I'm spending the week in Denver to attend a writers' conference, and my friend Jake and I find ourselves smoking cigarettes outside of an Irish pub on this Friday night. I don't normally smoke cigarettes, and I don't inhale, but we've had a few beers and I decide to join Jake for a smoke to keep him company.

We're standing here, appreciating what Steve Almond calls Denver's "fancy, barren downtown," when we're approached on the sidewalk by an overweight black woman showing no signs of inanition––exhaustion from lack of nourishment. She tells us she and her daughter, who is not present, haven't eaten in two days, and she asks if we can give her money for food. While her story is almost plausible, since, according to this ABC Channel 7 News report, 60 percent of the homeless in Denver are families with children, Jake and I say we don't have any money for her. She says she's pregnant, too, but then asks for a cigarette. Jake says no.

I ask her what kind of homeless shelters they have in Denver, and she says, "Not very good ones. They've got nothin' for women." I tell her I find that hard to believe, because many cities have shelters set up especially for women and children. She says that's not the case in Denver. But the truth is, even though the Denver metro area has a slightly higher estimated homeless population than San Diego––9,091 to our 7,892––they have several "soup kitchens," including Food Bank of the Rockies, Metro Food Bank, Rose of Sharon Food Bank, and Thornton Community Food Bank, and they have at least twenty-one homeless shelters or services, such as the Denver Rescue Mission, The Father Ed Judy House, and several that specifically serve women and children, such as The Gathering Place, The Family Tree, and The Women's Bean Project, all of which can be found on The Homeless Shelter Directory (who knew it existed?).

While I'm tempted to tell the woman an interesting fact about the human body––it can survive 4 to 8 weeks, and even up to 25 weeks considering her body fat, without food––I tell her I have Clif Bars in my backpack that I'd be happy to share with her. She refuses and walks off. I guess she is either caught up in the euphoria that can come through starvation or she wasn't all that hungry.

Jake says, "Man, you handled that well. She obviously wasn't looking for food." I tell him I've been volunteering at a homeless shelter and there are usually resources for the hungry in cities like Denver. I tell him about how the San Diego facility stresses independence, that you're not supposed to give residents smokes or money, that they have to earn it. And I tell Jake that I haven't seen many homeless people who look like they're actually starving.

I can't even find reliable statistics about any people starving in the U.S., though different sources peg it anywhere from 1-120 per year (you can find an interesting forum about the subject over at, oh, God, Fox News's Sean Hannity page––don't say I've never sighted a conservative source). Even worldwide starvation death statistics vary widely, because, according to World Hunger Notes, many deaths attributed to starvation are also counting undernutrition as the underlying cause in deaths from diarrhea, malaria, pneumonia, and measles. Which I guess they should. According to this United Nations report, entitled "The Right to Food," 826 million people suffer from malnutrition, the worst areas being Asia (24%) and sub-Saharan Africa (34%). "Most of the victims suffer from what the Food and Agricultural Organization calls 'extreme hunger', (sic) with an average daily intake of 300 calories less than the minimum quantity for survival."

The report doesn't define what the minimum number of calories are for survival, but during my own 4-day low calorie experiment I mentioned elsewhere in this blog, where I got down to around 700 calories per day, I experienced nausea, euphoria, and, according to my friends, I looked "gaunt." I had the privilege of stopping my experiment and eating whatever I wanted, so I can't imagine the feeling of continued, abject hunger and starvation. I know this: it's nothing to take lightly, and it's nothing to lie about. And the next time you're on the phone with the pizza guy, don't tell him you or your children are starving and need pizza, tell him you're a little hungry and want pizza. He'll understand. It'll be there soon.