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I woke up alone for the first time in seven days with absolutely nothing to do. 

Being back at home, it feels weird waking up without the rush of getting ready and moving around my teammates in the morning. No hotel breakfast or chatting about our plans for searching for the day, no vitamin C packets that we would drink every morning, and weirdest of all, having nothing to do. It feels wrong to not be going out and starting my day with the people I have been around for a week.

I find myself reflecting a lot about our trip. I am so proud of all of my teammates and everything we were able to accomplish over this short time. We successfully made a recovery and helped clear multiple areas of land in our searches on the ranches. Of course, the work we left in Falfurrias is never complete, and there will always be the ‘what if” feeling. What if we spent one more day, what if we searched a mile further or even just walked 20 more feet… There will always be a “what if” feeling, but we have to focus on what we did do, and use that to better prepare for future trips. Whenever I find myself thinking “what if,”  I try to think about how successful our trip was, and what if we had never gone? It is easy to get caught up in the “what ifs,” but there will always be something more we could do or could have done. It feels wrong to be here in Indiana, in my home with my heater on, with access to water, food and everything I need. Sitting here, knowing there are so many people that do not have those things, and thinking about the people who risk their lives everyday coming to the United States in hopes of a different life. 

The day feels heavy in my heart. I wish we could have stayed longer, but there will always be the idea of one more day. I am forever grateful for the days I was able to spend in Falfurrias. I learned so much about the wildlife, the area, the food, the culture, the people who live there, and more about the political climate and economy in South Texas. I was able to learn so much from Don and Ray, who are out in the field year round searching for the missing. 

Although I will never truly understand what it is like for the people risking their lives to get into this country, I was able to see the artifacts they left behind, and how hard it was to find them. How socks, belts, bags and shoes were abandoned in the brush. Not in an open field or on a path, but underneath thorns and branches surrounded by cacti and scorpions. How food cans and bottles were left in spaces you could only crawl to get into. How the barbed wire fences were pulled down and articles of clothing were stuck in bushes. Even seeing all of those things, it is still impossible to understand how many people have made that journey and what each journey entailed. Where we were, there is no such thing as just crossing over. This trip not only opened my eyes to the situation, but changed my perspective on things I thought I knew. Although we were only there for a short time, I know this trip will stay with me and my teammates for a lifetime. 

Frankey

When I woke up Thursday morning at 6 AM, I was completely alone for the first time in a week. Not only was I alone, there was no reason for me to get out of bed. For some this would sound great, but it was a little disconcerting to me. Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something right now? Wasn’t there some place I needed to be? Of course there are things I need to do, like laundry or grocery shopping, but the drive to get my self to do anything was just not there. This past week, I had been driven by my own goals on top of my team’s goals and that was incredibly empowering.

As I think about my own hardships, they seem surface level and small. I sit here, reconciling that I feel alone in my apartment that has all my things: food, water, and a cell phone that could connect me to whoever I wanted in a second, when we just spent the week searching for migrants who have gone through the hardest physical and emotional labor that I could imagine. Experiencing just a fraction of the environment they face has opened my eyes. It takes three days to travel through Brooks County on foot, and during this time you cannot stop or you will get left behind. I knew this going in, as I knew we would be looking for the remains of these individuals, but knowing it and seeing it has hit me differently.

I am privileged to be able to return to Indianapolis easily by airplane and that I can go back to my life as a student, things that seem simple to me that can be complicated by the migration process. If they successfully make it through Brooks County and beyond, they have to rebuild their life in a completely different country, likely without speaking the language, where a lot of people are hoping for their failure. The rhetoric surrounding migrants and their path north can be extremely negative because people don’t truly understand what is happening. Or they don’t see these individuals as actual people. Derogatory terms are used to not only belittle their experiences, but to other them as a group of people. I do not know why the individual that we recovered decided to cross the border, but I do know that they were loved and had people looking for them. Doesn’t that sound like every other person you know? No matter the circumstances, if you lost a loved one, wouldn’t you want someone to care enough to find them and return them to you?

I find it difficult to think about my own feelings surrounding our trip when there are individuals we did not find. This trip was a considerable success, as we helped Don and Ray clear a lot of land and assess whether or not certain pathways were still active, but I can’t help feeling like I missed something. This feeling was discussed by our team at length as it is something that we all struggled with, but here I sit, still wrestling with the idea that I could have done more. I want to continue to do more, even back in Indianapolis, over 1,000 miles away. If there is one thing I learned from this trip, it is that this is the work that I want to do and that I will continue to do more.

– Lilly