Chile Rellenos con Velia

A guest named Velia left the house yesterday to stay with a friend; we will miss her for many reasons, one of which being her exquisite cooking. Before she left, she taught me how to make one of her favorite things…Chile Rellenos. Below is the recipe from my memory, in vague quantities as if you were making them for the 50 people Annunciation House. ENJOY!

Chile Rellenos (stuffed peppers):

One dozen eggs
Half a big block of cheese
A few onions
A handful of salt
50 Poblano peppers, or green anaheims
A lot of oil
A big bowl of flour

First take the peppers and cook them directly over the flame on the stove until they become softer and have a burnt outside look. I couldn’t do this properly without burning my fingers, but I wish you luck.

Take each pepper once it is cooked over the stove, and scrape off all of the black burnt parts that you would not want to eat. This step is messy and time consuming. I suggest music and a trash can nearby.

Once the peppers are cleaned of the burnt parts, dig your finger into any part of the pepper and make a small (1/2-3/4 of the pepper) vertical incision. Then clear out the seeds from each pepper.

Now the peppers are ready to be stuffed.

Shred the cheese and chop the onions finely. Mix the cheese and onions together in a bowl.

Now the stuff is ready for the pepper. Make the following assembly line…

From left to right: Peppers, cheese/onion mix, bowl of flour, empty platter or plate.

Take the pepper, fill it with the cheese/onion mix, fold one side of the slice over the other to hold in the cheese, roll it in the flour trying to cover it all, and place it on the platter.

Now, the stuffed peppers are ready to be dipped in batter and fried.

To make the batter, separate twelve egg whites and mix them in a bowl until you can hold the bowl upside down and they won’t fall out. Of course this is much easier if you have some sort of electric mixer. Then, add the yokes to the mixture, a small handful of salt, and mix well.

Heat up a good amount of oil in a pan, take each pepper by the stem, dip it into the batter trying to get as much on as you can, and place it in the oil filled pan. Quickly splash the oil onto the stuffed pepper in order to cook all sides. Flip as necessary. Once each pepper is golden brown, it is complete!

When Velia and I made these I made a small error. I had put leftover peppers, completely unprepared, next to the prepared peppers ready to be fried. In the excitement of the frying process, I by accidentally grabbed an unprepared pepper, dipped it in the batter, and tossed it in the pan. It was until a guest spit it out on his plate, and loudly proclaimed, “there’s nothing in here but seeds,” that I discovered the error. C’est la vie!

Raul is waiting for his Chile Relleno!

Doubt and American Pride

Doubt in my work here and overbearing American pride are, to my dismay, occasionally alive within me. Often times these thoughts fill me with anger, confusion, and a cynical mindset. It is incredibly difficult for me to ascertain what of my doubt for compassion and what of my immense American pride is legitimate or valid, and what of it is the result of that which I have absorbed from a potentially twisted society in my nineteen years.

When I interact with guests, get to know them, spend hours working with them, receive rare rudeness, disrespect, or lack of appreciation from them, become exhausted on their behalf; a painful mindset of skepticism and cynicism creeps into my energy. Sometimes thoughts begin to circulate in my mind such as, “She doesn’t need this shampoo,” “Why doesn’t he have the respect to say thank you when I open the door?” “Why has it become expected that I will just hand out food?” “Why won’t he do his chore correctly, when that is all we ask of him?” Or even things as bad as, “Why did he come all the way from Honduras just to sit in the sala all day?”

To ground myself and understand how ludicrous these thoughts are, I project them on myself…compare it all to me. Do I really need the shampoo that I use? Do I say thank you every time that I walk into my home? Do I say thank you every time I take food out of the fridge? Do I always do chores around the house fully even though that is the only thing my mom asks of me? Is it OK when I waste days sitting around, even though I have the privilege to take advantage of so many options? The answer to all of these questions is no.

Why then I wonder, is my mind able to resent these qualities in the guests, but accept them in myself? Is it because I somehow feel like I have earned the right to these qualities? Or that because the shampoo I take, the door I open, the food I eat, or the time I spend is more ‘mine’ because my family ‘earned’ it? Is it because I think I have earned what I use?

Above, some guests pose with proudly decorated
zombies who roamed the paths during a 'Music
Under the Stars' event at Chamizal National Park.

To be frank, I have hardly earned the right to anything…I was just born extremely lucky as a citizen of the US and to a loving family that can provide for me.

It seems that the essence of the dynamic that I find myself uncomfortable with is the very dynamic which I strive to build; a power dynamic in which I am not treated like a superior. Why then, am I resentful of this balanced power dynamic once it exists? Why do I take pleasure to being called ‘Mr. Dan,’ while I know the distortion it creates? Who do I think I am to say that anybody doesn’t deserve what we provide, the very basic services? Who am I to cling to power and separation, while at the same time I try offer solidarity. How do I let this ambiguity exist within me?

I write this all because I want it to be known that in me, these thoughts do exist. I too experience moments of doubt and distrust. I too project blame on the immigrants and on the economically marginalized Americans. I do experience these thoughts. They exist in extreme ambiguity, in contradiction with my thoughts and energy of solidarity and compassion. But the thoughts that prevail, and that I know in my gut are right, are the ones that are compassionate, trusting, and rooted in solidarity. The rest, are that of a palimpsest from a society and a childhood filled with privilege, ignorance, and an unhealthy pride and unyielding sense of deserving. I know that the doubt and distrust—manifestations of fear and of privilege—are on the wrong side of truth, and with effort, should be erased from my life and cultural lens’.

This is all so confusing to me, I can only imagine what you are going through trying to sort through my splattered thoughts on this page.

To contradict myself more, I feel an opposite argument…Although disillusioned at times by our government, I constantly find that I am incredibly patriotic, incredibly proud, and incredibly hopeful. Sometimes I wonder how I can remain this way while witnessing so much pain and suffering that the US has caused, but in the end, patriotism, pride, and hope is very much a part of me.

At the bottom of it all exists patriotism, pride, with equal frustration, pain, and compassion. If understood correctly, I think that all people can maintain each of these feelings in a positive way. I finally have learned to cherish this ambiguity and allow my pride, patriotism, and privilege, to interact happily with my compassion, concern, and offerings of solidarity. After all, nothing here is mutually exclusive, as long as I can figure out how to use all of these deeply rooted views and emotions together.

A Parallel I Pick At

In the blog ‘options,’ I wrote about the need to turn people away at the door. A striking parallel came to my mind today and made me skeptical that I may be in the middle of hypocrisy.

The United States, if you think historically, is a nation of immigrants or refugees. As time has passed, this nation has created structures and laws to provide order and/or prosperity. Because of these structures, we must turn people away at our borders, even if they are in need.

Annunciation House is a house of refugees and immigrants. As time has passed, this house created structures and rules to provide peace and order in the house. Because of these rules, we must turn people away at the door, even if they are in need.


Through thinking about this parallel today I was able to determine for me, what justifies turning people away. I tried to grasp what situations constitute a scenario where it is OK to turn away somebody in need.

At first, I couldn’t think anything but that these were exact parallels between the US border and Annunciation House’s front door. I was shocked. I kept saying to myself, “are we incredibly hypocritical? We turn people away in need and at the same time, are often outraged by the US turning away or deporting people in need.

A view of Mexico from the roof of Annunciation House, which is eleven blocks from the border. A guest's shoes are included drying on the roof, where laundry is routinely washed and dried.

But as a sifted through it more, I was able to ascertain differences between the natures of turning people away. Annunciation house and the US both have structures in place. The difference is what the structures are designed to do. At annunciation House, all of our rules exist to keep the house safe and comfortable for the guests. In the US, do all of our laws exist to keep the citizens safe and comfortable? Maybe. But there might be more.

Are our laws also in existence to make us prosperous? To give us advantages over other nations? Do some of them have roots in a fear of another race and culture taking over ‘our’ land? I think it is safe to say, that the answer is yes, which is OK, and very natural for a nation. But then my question is, is it justifiable to turn away people in need in order to continue our agenda of being prosperous and richer and stronger than the rest? I personally think not.

I finally arrived at this: It is not that turning people away, even if in need, is inherently bad or unacceptable. Instead, it all depends on the way that people are turned away, and the reasons they are.

Thankfully, our immigrant rich history has shown that we can achieve both compassion at our borders and the prosperity that we seek.

Dreaming American

Today when I sat down with a guest, he began explaining to me his process to make a life for himself in the US. He said it is all about, “waking up each day one step further than you were the day before.” He explained that, “everyday I try to improve. I try to be a better person. I also try to get closer to my working permit, closer to a state ID. I try to get closer to the day that they will take this tracking monitor off of my ankle. Everyday, I think, I am getting closer to being successful,” he continued confidently, “right now, things are hard, but you have to squeeze the fruit to get the juice, and one day, I will have the juice.” All of this is intensely hopeful and positive, and it does indeed seem like he is taking steps forward each day. But a grave question was echoing in my mind as he spoke these words. How long can this productive pattern continue for a black man in America with deportation orders, no money, no family, and limited English? Will there eventually be a wall that he hits, where the opportunity he came for in America is no longer available? Can he achieve the potentially fabled American Dream? I simply don’t know.

The American Dream is one idea that many people in this country appreciate. Our culture seems to hold its notion close to our hearts and carry it high with pride. It is the American Dream, that hastened—if not caused—the white settlement of America, and it is that same American Dream that inspires people from all over the world to uproot from there home and seek a better life today. The American Dream manifests ideas of opportunity, freedom, and to some, relief from suffering. Whether this manifestation is accurate, I simply don’t know.


What is it about our nation that allows for the American Dream to occur, if it does indeed? What structures exist to ensure its possibility? What actions do we need to take to maintain or improve these structures? It seems to me that the idea of the American Dream is dependent upon a scenario in which race, class, and family connections are not of central importance to ‘success.’ Meaning that someone of a minority race, from a poor family, and with little connections can find ‘success.’ To what extent does that scenario actually exist? To me, the American Dream is all about acceptance. More than just the acceptance of people that are different from ourselves, but also the acceptance that people with ‘less’ have a right to ‘more,’ that people who suffer have a right pursue happiness, that people who are starving, have a right to find food, that people who are dying to live, deserve a fair chance. The idea of the American Dream is what could provide that chance.

But there is a sobering catch, a contradiction, and an assumption built into the American Dream that has become rooted deeply in my views during my life as a citizen. The notion of the American Dream includes projected views of the poor and of poverty. If we say that, “In this country anybody, if they try hard enough, can create a better, richer, and happier life,” what then are we inherently saying about those who are not making it, those who live in shelters, those who can’t make their lives better, happier, or richer? Through the prism of the American Dream, we are spinning blame on those in society that aren’t making it, because after all, anybody can make it if they really try, so those that don’t, must not be trying. Right? I feel strong traces of these thoughts engrained in my mind, and I am constantly trying to understand them and move away from them. Just because the opportunity to rise from poverty may exist in some small way, does not mean that those who do not find that some small way are failures or have anything less than the dignity of all people. For most people it seems, and to no fault of their own, the American dream will remain that way, just a dream.

If we as a nation were committed to the American Dream, the idea that anybody can make it, then we would not accept the idea of homelessness and poverty in our country. But we explicitly do accept homelessness and poverty as OK and as a seemingly eternal part of our system. By including money for shelters, food stamps, etc. in our federal budget, we are thereby admitting that we don’t have a system that works, or a system that can keep people out of poverty and away from hunger. It is in fact being complacent, and accepting of the fact that our system cannot support our people.

Above, three guests pose on a couch in the sala on the first day of school.

Immigrants don’t come to the US asking for food, a better job, housing, or anything else, they come asking for a chance to find these things within our system. I think they deserve the chance. We as citizens must not forget our roots in this country, and what allowed us to be here, we must not deny the very notion of the American Dream that brought us here, for those that are seeking it today. If we can’t know that the guest that I sat down with today can find a good life, and get the juice he dreams of from the US if he continues to take steps ahead each day, then I think we have lost the spirit of that idea which we keep close to our hearts, and boast high in the air; the fabled American Dream.

I am one American, one of many, that is dreaming of an American Dream that can become an American reality. Am I being unrealistic in this hope? I simply don’t know.

My Somalian Brother Salomon

The Statue of Liberty, the widely known symbol of US Immigration, reads:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


A week ago today we received a call and learned that a Somalian man had been dropped off by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and was stranded at a gas station. We called the pay phone at the gas station, reached Salomon, and told him that Sarah (a fellow volunteer) and I would pick him up soon. At the Chevron, when we found Salomon, a gigantic smile emerged from his thin face. As he extended his arms for hugs he said, “Hello! Thank you so much, thank you so very much! I am Salomon.”

On the drive home, Salomon explained to us part of his story. When he was in Mexico trying to cross and seek asylum, he was scammed into buying a fake ID that he was told, “always works.” Salomon spent his last $100 on an ID that he believed would complete his long journey from Africa. With the ID he walked on to the crossing bridge, waited in a long line, and eventually he nervously presented his clearly fake ID to US customs officer. Salomon spent a few weeks in jail for false documents, and then six months in immigration detention. The night we picked him up was his first taste of the United States outside of detention.

We began to tell Salomon a bit about Annunciation House. He asked curiously, “Is this place that you will take me…like detention? Will I be able to leave?” Surprised by this question Sarah answered, “no way Jose!” After we told him a bit more he humbly asked, “Well what is the cost, because I do not think that I can afford all of that.” He exuded gratefulness when we told him it was all free.

Breaking a moment of silence Salomon asked, “Excuse me, I have a question…what is it that I can do to be a productive member of this great society? I do not want to be a nuisance…I want to be helpful. When I was in detention I promised myself that never again would I be in a place like that.” Chills went up my back when I heard these words. Here is a man who has spent 6 months in detention for the ‘crime’ of escaping violence in Somalia, and somehow he holds no resentment to the US, but simply wants to be helpful. We explained to Salomon the process of acquiring a work permit, then social security, and then a state ID. He wanted to start the process when we got home that night at ten, but I said we should get some rest and start in the morning.

Since then, Salomon and I have gotten to know each other better. To my surprise one morning, Salomon began speaking Spanish with other guests in the house. When I asked him where he learned he explained, “Brother Dan, you see, when I was in detention I lived in a room with many many Mexicans. Each day I asked them to help me, and I would write Spanish and try to speak it. After a few months, I could speak with them. They were very very good people.”

Salomon later explained to me why he came to the US. In Somalia, his dad died when he was really young, and his mom died a few years ago. He was living on his own when his friends became involved with piracy. They kept encouraging him to “come on and make money with us” and he continued to refuse because he says, “ I didn’t want to be a part of any crime.” It was when Salomon got shot in the arm that he decided he needed to leave Somalia to save his life. First he took a boat for two months to South Africa. Then he flew to Bolivia, then to Guatemala. From Guatemala, he crossed the border into Chiapas, the southern state of Mexico, and took busses north until he reached Ciudad de Juaréz, El Paso’s neighbor city. Then he crossed with the fake ID.

Once in detention, Salomon lost his asylum case even though he said, “I showed them my bullet wound and told them everything, but maybe they don’t believe me.”

This story seems to be painfully ironic. Salomon could have chosen to join the pirates, and may well have been a part of an attack on a US ship. Instead, he chose to uproot his life and journey to the US, to become a “productive member of this great society.” As a nation our response was to react to his decision with six months in detention, denied asylum, and a deportation order. The irony is intensified when you compare the way Salomon was treated upon his arrival to this country to the ideals that we as a nation hoped to stand by stated on the Statue of Liberty.

Salomon only remains in the US because Somalia will not accept deportees. However, the deportation order will forever loom over him, and if things change in Somalia someday, he will be put on a plane and sent back. For now though, Salomon is working hard and smiling lots. I am incredibly humbled, inspired, and grateful to have somebody like him in this country.

Here is an interesting link to an article about a current asylum case very similar to Salomons which will have tremendous implications on future asylum seekers. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125081039222347885.html

options.

The difference between rich and poor can be defined as the difference between having many options and having little options. Furthermore, poverty can be described as a state in which a person has very little options in their life.

Annunciation house was started in 1978 to serve the poorest of the poor, to serve the people who have no other options. Essentially it was created to be able to say “yes” to the person at the door looking for somewhere to stay and a place to rest but that had been continually hearing “no”. Inherently, and unfortunately, there is often a need for us to say “no” as well. For me, this is a hard part of the job.

Yesterday when I was on my morning shift from 6am-2pm, I had to turn away 4 people seeking a place to stay. One I could smell alcohol on his breath, one was clearly lying, and two had other options. By looking at whom we have to turn away, and who we can welcome in I can better understand what our goal is as an organization and what it is that we try to do.

When somebody comes to our door, our goal is to help them find another option, and do it with love and compassion. This goal can be very short term or very long term. If they have other options when they knock on the door for the first time, we will make a phone call if necessary, or give them a map to wherever they need to go. Sometimes, even though people have other options, they prefer Annunciation House, and this is where it gets really hard. A man came to the door yesterday and after a long conversation it was clear to me that he was lying and potentially drunk, I went to grab a map that would take him to the Opportunity Center, another nearby shelter. When I handed the map to him, he quickly tore it into pieces out of anger, and threw it onto the ground in front of me. Seeing that, I said two things two myself; the first was, “I wish we could have taken him” and the second was, “Well, that is why we couldn’t.” If through a conversation at the door we learn that a person really doesn’t have any other options, then we invite them into the house, get to know them better, share the house, share the food, and do what we can to help them find or acquire more options. This point is where the real, tiring, heavy, challenging, and rewarding work begins with each guest. It may take a day, a week, or three years, but it ends when a guest can leave the house because they have made or found for themselves a better option.

Absorbing the heat

I walked out of the airport a week ago squinting my blue eyes against the sun, wearing a long sleeve flannel shirt, and thinking about the next five months—excited to experience the relationship between the politics and the people of immigration. After a quick drive through the sun-soaked streets of El Paso, I arrived at a two-story brick building, wedged like a "V" in a fork in the road, called Annunciation House. It has been the home to thousands of migrants in the past 30 years, and will be my home for the next five months. In my first week here, I sought to absorb all that I could...the rules, the stories, the names, the times, and of course, the heat.
The first thing I realized was that Texas in August is not the time or place for long sleeves, but instead, a place where pale skin and light eyes (not native to the land) need modern adaptations like sun screen and sun glasses to get by. And then I began to realize that the relationship that I had anticipated between the politics and the people is far from how I imagined.
I expected that the people would be constantly, and overtly, connected and aware of the politics. I pictured a relationship where the people would be angry, glad, or at least aware of the policies in place, because for many migrants the policies control their day-to-day lives. But what I have observed is that people are generally more confused than aware of the policies. I for one certainly am.
There is clear ambiguity in the relationship between a typical immigrant and immigration policy. An immigrant is so close to immigration policy in the way that it controls them, but so distant from immigration policy in the way that they might have an effect on the process.
For example one guest at Annunciation House, who took a boat from Somalia to Spain, Spain to Brazil, Brazil to Mexico, and then arrived in the US in January, has witnessed this ambiguity very directly. At what seemed like the end of a long journey, he arrived at the US border and asked for asylum. That moment, a new journey began. Without asylum, he was kept in a detention center until June, at which point he was ordered deported, but because Somalia will not accept deportees, he found himself arriving at a two story brick building, wedged like a "V" in a fork in the road, called Annunciation House, in a situation of immigration limbo. Since he has been here, he has been wrestling within the constraints of immigration policy. He has applied for a work permit, and now, can do nothing more than wait, follow the orders given to him, and continue to charge the tracking device that has been secured to his ankle. The extremity of ambivalence in the situation is palpable. I try to imagine having my life dictated, to the extent of day to day operation, by a system that is so far out of reach and so mysterious to me. Herein lies the reason why immigrants might not care to know about the details of or even general information of immigration policy; because whether they know about it or not, they will still be at its mercy. This ambiguity of an immigrant's incredible mercy yet vast distance to immigration policy took me by surprise.

A view from the roof of the house of the Mexican flag hanging over Chamizal Park in Juaréz, MX.

The sensation of surprise happens often here. I encountered a great surprise yesterday when I was making banana bread with some niños from the house. A grocery store in the area lets us do a pick up once a week of produce that they can no longer sell. This week, there was a lot…particularly a lot of brown bananas. The kids picked out 12 brown bananas, peeled them, and smashed them through their fingers into the mixing bowl. Next came the salt, then the sugar, then came the flour. I carefully looked through all the choices in the house bodega and came out proud with a bag of whole-wheat flour. We measured 3 cups and poured them into the mixing bowl. As the kids began to mix and I went to grab the eggs I heard, “ahhhhh! Hay animales!” I turned back, looked in the bowl, and sure enough there were tons of “animales” or little black insects in our banana bread efforts. Quickly the kids began scooping through the mix and pulling out handfuls of sugar, salt, flour, and animales. Although this helped lessen the insect ratio, it ruined the other ratios, and we were left with a random mixture of flour, insects, sugar, salt, and bananas. As a team we decided to start over, which other than wasted ingredients, had few implications.

Other things that have surprised me in my week here contain far greater implications. I was surprised to learn that just since the beginning of this year there have been more than 1,000 homicides in Juarez (El Paso city’s counterpart south of the border). That’s compared to 17 homicides in El Paso this year. These numbers can be compared to the total US military deaths in the Iraq War: 4,331 or the total US military deaths in Afghanistan: 694. If you have read these numbers quickly, I would say take a moment to recognize the disparities.

The weight of stories, numbers, and deaths on the border is immense. I will end today’s blog with what will probably be in my mind as I fall asleep tonight.

A guest looked me in the eyes today, and said to me that in his homeland of Honduras, “they kill people like they kill chickens. There is no difference to them.”

Where your mind takes you from there is unknown to me, but I bet it will be active for some time.


Please comment if you have any questions or thoughts.
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