Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Everybody is from somewhere – the story of an immigrant couple
August 8, 2008

“Our life is so much better now than when we left Mexico 25 years ago,” the visitors to the Sibley Nature Center told me. The husband works in construction while the wife works in retail. “I have a master’s degree in English from the University in Vera Cruz,” she told me. “My husband had a successful “tropicalismo” band there while I was working on a doctorate. We were both political activists and some of our associates “disappeared.” As a result, we decided to come to the United States, and we did so illegally with a five year old child.”

The couple had dropped by the Sibley Nature Center for several reasons. When they first came in they plunked down several quart jars that held insects. One jar held a robber fly that looked like a bumblebee, while another held a moth that looked like a wasp. “We have a little vegetable garden that we work in every night. We caught these because we decided they were not what they seemed.”

Another jar held a Jerusalem cricket. “We caught this one in the sanddunes early in the morning last weekend. Our youngest son likes to ride 4-wheelers. He had been out to your center with his school and his class had learned about sanddunes. He remembered seeing a picture of this creature and that you told a story about it, but he did not remember the entire story. When we got home found the picture of it on the Sibley website, and also found the story. We wanted to tell you how much we like the website – it is great to have so much information about our home at our fingertips.”

The couple had also brought several plants in plastic sacks, and some had their roots wrapped in wet paper towels. “This came up in our garden, but we did not plant it. It just keeps on growing, and now it is four feet tall, so we just clipped off some of the top.” When I told them it was a shrub known as seepwillow and that the seeds blow into town from the south from along Monahans Draw they told me they lived on acreage in Ector County.

“My family were farmers for generations,” the man told me. “Where we once farmed is now part of a giant farm that exports its produce to the United States. Mexico has to import food to feed its own people. I like to garden, and I believe my kids have turned out well because I make them help me. As we work, I tell them stories about growing up in Mexico, so I think they value what the United States has to offer. Our oldest child remembers our home in Vera Cruz.”

He continued, “It was one room, 15 feet by 15 feet. Five other families lived in other rooms around a central patio, The bathroom was shared by all. The electricity came from a single light bulb hung in the middle of the ceiling. We cooked on a table-top range hooked up to bottled gas outside the door. In the patio was a “fregadero,” a concrete sink with ridges on the bottom, that everyone used to wash their clothes. Clotheslines stretched across the patio. We built our own furniture out of unfinished lumber. There was no ceiling – just the roof.”

At this point in the conversation the first paragraph of this essay occurred. She then steered the conversation back to another plant. “We had some gravel hauled in for the road to our house, and this came up along the edge of the road. When we were walking the other evening I brushed up against it and it left some welts on my ankle.” I told her that ‘stinging cevallia’ was more commonly found west of the Pecos River, and had found it in Midland County only once (near the Claydesta Post Office.)

“What about this strong smelling plant?” she asked, and showed me a beautiful purple horsemint. I told her, “I know ranchers that put this in a blender along with water and make a spray to keep the flies from bothering their horses. We had two plants grow here on Sibley property for the very first time in 27 years. Usually it grows in draws and barditches.”

He noticed a notebook on a worktable into which a volunteer had been filing tearsheets of Sibley MRT articles. “We have copies of stories about our activist group,” the man told me. “The bigger newspapers in Mexico are controlled by the government, as is television. There was no balanced reporting.”

The wife sighed, and he laughed. “She gets tired of hearing my soapbox about what the United States has meant to our family. Years ago we left a country that is corrupt at every level – bribery is a way of life. All of my brothers left Mexico and her siblings live in the United States, too. We sent them money to help them leave. We are Americans now. We have family all over the United States. One of my nephews is studying to be a doctor, and two of hers are policemen. Not one member of any of our siblings' families is on any form of public assistance.”

She handed me the last plastic bag. “This has tiny red berries and white flowers that are shaped like a pepper’s. Is it a pepper, or something else? Even though the berries are like that of a chilipetin, it does not grow like one. The plant is like a vine, but it does not have the tendrils of a vine.” I told her it was a white nightshade and that I knew several people that grew it as an ornamental. “The birds love it, so it comes up in people’s yards. Comanche Trail Park on the south side of Odessa often has it growing under the trees.”

As the couple left, the woman complimented the work that the Sibley Nature Center does. “I emailed all of our family and told them to visit your website. My niece is a teacher in a small town in Idaho and she told me that she was going to start a website like it. I think every region in the world should have such a website.”

When we hear compliments such as that, we believe that the Sibley Nature Center is fulfilling an important role in the community, and it inspires us to do more!