It’s April, so it means my wife and I would sign up again to deliver water to the tanks in the southwest Arizona desert in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It’s one of our favorite volunteer projects — helping what’s called “Humane Borders,” a humanitarian effort on the state’s southern flank.
We deliver water to blue tanks strategically placed so, should migrants from Mexico cross the parched and hostile desert in that corridor, the water could be the difference between their living and dying. The water is made available in 50-gallon tank positioned on their sides with spigots that can be turned on to refill jugs.
For one month every third month, my Tempe church is responsible for sending a small team each Saturday to Ajo to pick up the customized truck equipped with a large plastic tank, a set of five-gallon jugs, two wheelbarrows, tools and chlorine tablets. We have five teams, primarily married couples, who are often joined with one or two others on each trip. We drive to Maricopa to Gila Bend and then to Ajo. There we pick up the truck, service it and drive 30 miles on Highway 85 to Organ Pipe.
There we back up the truck, under a canvas spigot at the maintenance yard behind the Monument headquarters and put 150 gallons into the tank, throw the truck into overdrive and head on roads to the tanks. For one station, we fill the jugs and put two or three of them in each wheelbarrow and push them over gritty desert terrain, up hilly paths and through sandy washes to the tanks. There we test the tanks’ water for the proper chlorine level and fill each tank to the brink. We gather any trash in the area and take that back with us. In mid-summer we leave as early as 5 a.m. from Tempe so we are not working in the afternoon in the desert.
In June and during the summer months, our corridor has five stations in the desert — some deep in the desert with hard-to-follow paths. We bounce over rough terrain. Sometime the truck crawls to get over rough landscape, pass through arroyos and squeeze past prickly brush, cactus and trees.
During the trip, we never have seen migrants. This Saturday, outside the park, the Border Border had apprehended three men and had them in handcuffs. A helicopter buzzed overhead.
The Arizona State University graduate student accompanying us, who was born in Mexico, found a tuna can and about eight Mexican coins in a shady area while we were doing. Several times we have found discarded bicycles, plastic gallon jugs and clothing. The Bible says:
“They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.”
— Isaiah 49:10
Founded in June 2000, the program is based at First Christian Church in Tucson, whose senior pastor, The Rev. Robin Hoover, is president. The first Humane Borders water station was set up March 7, 2001. I have taken part since January 2005, and my wife joined in 2007. The non-profit organization operates on about $200,000 annually, most of it from churches and corporate sponsors, although the Pima Country Board of Supervisors provides some help.
Still, records show that from Oct. 1, 1999 to Sept. 30, 2007, there were 1,138 migrant deaths in the desert. Humane Borders’ symbol is appropriately water pouring from the big dipper or the “drinking gourd” from the slavery abolitionist movement.
There are about 65 of us drivers, but Humane Border has about 10,000 volunteers. Combined there are 70 trips per month May to September to fill the tanks. It is reduced to 30 trips monthly October through April.
The Associated Press on April 9 reported that despite a 25 percent drop in Border Patrol arrests along the border, deaths in the dessert had gone up.
“The number of migrant deaths along the roughly 2,000-mile border increased by nearly 7 percent between Oct. 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, though apprehensions of people crossing illegally from Mexico into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California decreased in the same period from a year ago, the patrol said,” AP said. “Migrant rights groups said the number of deaths directly correlated to increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Our church is assigned the Saturdays of January, April, July and October. For our team, it is a 10-hour commitment to make the trip in our own cars to Ajo, get the truck ready, handle the task, and return home. . When equipment problems arise, new flags need to go up after fierce winds or we get lost finding stations, it can be a 12-hour day. But always fulfilling even if we never see those we serve.
