Our days

Pics are art work from around El Paso 

There are 4 assignments for volunteers at Annunciation House: AM shift, PM shift, lava, and overnight. Throughout the day we get lots of help from our guests in cooking and cleaning. Mostly we use Spanish to communicate though google translate has been helpful with Russian and Portuguese. We had a Haitian family here but they used Spanish as they’d been traveling for so long (and my creole is not up to usable standards). 

AM shift starts at 6am getting ready for the day. Stocking the bathrooms with shampoo, soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, and paper towels. Helping prepare breakfast with guests—deciding what to have with what we have…often eggs and tortillas this week. Then clean up the kitchen and comedor (dining room). Get supplies for bathroom cleanings. Then checking in other things that need to get done and asking for help, checking in with guests as to their plans for moving on, getting to go bags (snacks and water for the journey) ready for guests who are leaving, preparing for new arrivals, etc. then getting lunch ready. 

PM shift starts at 2 pm and goes through anything that didn’t get done in the morning as well as preparing dinner and assigning or finding volunteers for the next days chores. 

It’s a busy day. We find out about new arrivals around 10 am through a text, though sometimes they arrive earlier than the text message! With new arrivals we take down some demographic info: age, home country, name, where they want to go. We give them a room (unless they are planning to leave the same day), tooth brush, towel, sheets, clean change of clothes—not a lot of choice in fashion but they are clean. Let them know when meals are and try to answer questions. 

Lava is Spanish for wash. So this is laundry duty. For the towels, sheets, and blankets if guests who have moved on. We collect them in a big trash can that is strapped to a dolly and drag it 2 blocks away to another house to use the washers and laundry lines there. Once it is all hung up in the lines, you bring back what had been hung the day before and put it away. The next days person will collect what you took and hung up. My first day was 5 loads of laundry! And that’s the norm from what I’ve been told!

The overnight shift is just being in call for middle of the night emergencies. We unfold a cot in the office and sleep there. So far (knock on wood) I haven’t been needed in the night. 

(I like to be at the border because the people are happier and always hoping to live better, to be better, and to rise above and achieve everything because here the people are good and everything is different

Everything everything is different

At the border

At the border

At the border