8th Continent Soy Milk!! (warning: this entry is loooong)

I wish I could somehow describe to you all that I feel within right now.
I mean, I know I'm a volatile person (haha, i hope that's the word I mean??) but man. I have had so many different emotions running through me today on my first full day living in Immokalee.

Here's what I honestly feel:
I feel scared, uncomfortable, like saying AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH and then making all my strange noises I make when I don't know what else to do, I feel angry, I feel compelled to create change, I feel hopeful because of God's justice and love, I feel fearful at the same time that I won't ever see real transformation, I feel ignorant, I feel glad that I am not in a 9-5 job that I hate, I feel grateful and privileged to be here, I feel scared that I am going to miss something I need to learn or see, I feel entitled, I feel sad because I miss Tampa and my friends, I miss Miami and my mom, I miss my friends in DC, I miss my cousin in Oregon (ok, so, I just miss people).

When I was driving down here yesterday and then got off the exit from I-75, I almost wanted to get back on and keep driving south to go home to Miami. I kept asking myself what I was doing, and then I laughed at myself. I wasn't just getting off an exit to get gas. No, I was getting off an unfamiliar exit to come live somewhere, in a place like I have never been before.

In spite of all my fears, I am glad I listened to God and I am glad I came.

I don't understand how I can really live life if all I do is stay safe. One thought that has been constantly running through my mind is that when a person really decides to follow Jesus in a radical way, you are no longer playing it safe. There should always be that tension. Anywhere that Jesus could call me would never be safe or all cupcakes and meadows. I have felt a lot of tension in life the past several years because of my decision to follow Jesus. This is not an easy call. But more than anything, I have felt His love, His faithfulness, His grace and there is a great joy in following Jesus. I cannot even begin to describe it. There is a great joy in living radically for God. There is a love you find like none other in the whole freakin universe.

So, Immokalee....I am living in a house that used to be a convent (guess all those jokes about going to be a nun in Chile finally caught up with me! haha). It's really pretty on the inside. I'm sharing a room with an SFA (one of the organizations I'm working for) staff named Melody Gonzalez. I've met her twice before and she is incredible. She moved to Immokalee after she graduated from Notre Dame three years ago. Our room is covered with her posters about the downfalls of free trade, Diego Rivera art, and posters advertising past marches and rallies of the CIW (the Coalition of Immokalee Workers). In this house/convent, also live one of the co-founders of the CIW, Lucas Benitez, his wife Veronica, and their son, Itzael (I may have misspelled that). He is about a year and a half old and he definitely may be one of the cutest kids ever. I like kids enough and I've never lived with one long term so this should interesting. I think I just bored easily because they can't talk much back to me at that age. I like good conversations. :)

I haven't met Lucas yet because, well, he's in freakin Geneva! He actually flew out there yesterday to meet with the good ol' folks of the United Nations to discuss human rights violations in the United States. In case you don't know this, the CIW has played a large role in busting several slavery rings in Florida the past decade. These were slavery rings made of undocumented immigrants from Latin America who basically were sold into indentured servitude. I feel privileged to be able to spend time around people like Lucas who have had such a big hand in work like this. It really amazes me that someone from a small, mostly unknown town like Immokalee is in Geneva with the UN, such a powerful institution in the world. That really did something to me to learn about that.

So it seems like my work days will be mostly like 10 am-7 pm, but this place is seriously laid backed. But everyone here is very serious and passionate about their work. And everyone speaks Spanish and some are also fluent in Portuguese and Haitian Creole. It's incredible. I am so happy because I understand so much more Spanish than ever before and I know that I can speak better than ever before. I'm going to try and practice as much as I can. It was so great to sit around in the office and hear everyone go back and forth with Spanish and English (really, it's just like being home again). I got to sit in the office with the staff and read through an Oxfam report about migrant farm workers and talk with Melody more about things I didn't know about, like more about the slavery rings, etc. Then a journalist from Orlando came into town and I went out on a walking tour of Immokalee with two of the CIW staff.

The walking tours never cease to boggle my mind. Just being in Immokalee makes you wonder how such poverty can exist in the supposed land of opportunity and freedom. All I could think about was how Naples is only 40 minutes away from us, in the same county and it is one of richest towns in the whole United States. We also border Broward County (where Ft Lauderdale is). My family lives only a few miles from the Broward county line so I am familiar with the area. How the heck does that kind of wealth and world exist so closely to this one? How the heck did I grow up only an hour and a half from Immokalee and I never knew it existed until around two and a half years ago? How did I grow up so close to modern slavery never knowing it was going on? How did one side of the coast find their supposed Latino American dream of wealth and prosperity and the other just kind of got screwed over and forgotten?

We stopped at the up and coming new offices of the CIW (just barely a block away from the current ones) to show the journalist around. There is now a new community radio station there, too. Well, the station, Radio Conciencia- La Tuya, has existed for some time now and has really served the Immokalee community. We sat down to talk for a while with one of the DJ's, Norberto. I just sat on the couch and listened to him to talk for I don't know how long and you have no idea how this conversation just freakin destroyed me in so many ways inside.

In a lot of ways, it just destroyed me.

It was like everything I learned and read in college came to life right in front of me at the moment. Not that something similar like this hasn't happened to me before but wow. When it happens, it happens. Norberto is originally from Oaxaca (southern Mexico). (Sidenote: many of the residents of Immokalee come from indigenous communities of southern Mexico and Guatemala, where small farms are highly valued). When he was back home, he had a coffee farm and that was his livelihood- he was a coffee farmer and he also farmed beans and corn. Norberto was never rich but he always had enough to feed his family.

Then 1994 rolled around and NAFTA came into effect.....(the North American Free Trade Agreement, in case you're not familiar with it).

Norberto explained how NAFTA pretty much put him out of business., as it did to many small farmers in southern Mexico over time. Corn imports from the US were much cheaper and he couldn't make a livelihood because all the prices of corn and coffee got jacked up. It was the same story I had read about for presentations I made in class while in college and here was a statistic right in front of me.

Except that Norberto is not a statistic. He is a human being, someone created purposely by God, a man, a person like you and me. As he sat there and told us about how he had to leave his wife and 5 children behind and how he hasn't seen them in 3 and a half years, the reality of all this hit me hard. I wanted to grab the pillow off the couch I was sitting on and scream into it.

It just made me so angry because so many people miss things like this. So many people are so quick to bash immigrants, to degrade them, to accuse them of "invading our land" and "stealing our jobs", when it's US, the people of the United States, who elect certain people into power and then allow them to create unfair trade policies that destroy other peoples communities.

Who the heck really wants to leave their wife and their family that they love so much? Especially from Latin America, a place where family is HIGHLY valued. Norberto told us, though, that even though he misses his family like crazy, he is happy that his children are able to attend school now because of the money he sends back home. His family has food to eat.

Shoot, but at what cost??? At what freakin cost???

He told us his youngest daughter is now 8 years old. That means he hasn't seen her since she was 5. So because of something as poorly planned as NAFTA and because of greed and because of the love of money and the lust over it and because of complacent citizens and consumers like ourselves, someone like Norberto was forced to leave his homeland and miss out on his daughter's childhood.

I could not even imagine not being able to see my mom and my sister for three years.

And this is WHY i get frustrated when US citizens don't exercise their right to vote. Then you will hear so many people complain about issues they do not even take the time to really understand. There are layers to every issue and we need to take the time to educate ourselves and see what lies underneath.

I'm so tired of exploitation, of oppression. I refuse to sit back and just let things go on. Jesus did not ever just sit back, He was not complacent!

I feel so privileged to be here. Pray that I stay open to learning. Pray that I often have encounters like I did today that turn my thought processes upside down.

Also, just to put this out there, I really struggle with wanting to separate myself from the "rest of the US" at times. But I am just as guilty in so many ways, I have spent years being a socially unconscious person. My clothes still come from maquiladoras, my produce still comes from a sweatshop in the fields.....

but how are going to create something new?

Maquiladoras were not part of God's plan for human beings!

OK, I know this was super long. I'm just trying to process everything I have seen and felt in just one day. Mad props to you if you got this far.

On a happier note, I had an amazing experience in Winn Dixie today. (There is no Publix in Immokalee, it feels really strange, honestly). I found my favorite kind of milk!!!!! Dude, I have been looking for this milk in Tampa for months and for some reason, it just doesn't exist there anymore. I am serious, I went out of my way several times to different grocery stores to find it...NADA. And where do I finally find my 8th Continent Lite Soy Milk?? In Immokalee, of all places!

Oh yeah....there's no Wal-Mart here, either (like in the Philippines). Yay! I despise Wal-Mart. :)