Roses & Thorns

Wednesday June 4, 2009

Today, I went out of my way to be overtly and obviously nice and outgoing to the crazy lady. We had found out why she had the staff as her thorn. She said that she didn’t like the way we said “can you help me with this” or “if you can, I need you to do ‘whatever]” she said that we should be more respectful and aware of people and their skill and comfort levels, we shouldn’t tell people to do things, instead we should say “if you want to and don’t mind doing so, there is this task to do.” Umm ok. If we don’t ask people to help us or to do something, a lot of the times nothing gets done. Especially with high schoolers, they would be more than happy to stand around and just watch. And people came out here to work and help, not to just be here.

So this morning we were loading the trailers, I was passing out the wood to load in. I handed her a 4 foot 2x4 and said “are you going to be comfortable carrying this, [is this in your skill level]? (The brackets are what I said in my head).

Anyway, we went out to Potato Creek to install some windows and paint some trailers. But all morning, after loading the trailers, it was raining. It wasn’t hard rain; it was just never ending rain, so we couldn’t really do our work. We waited around for the rain to stop, at about noon we left to go to a work site some other crews were at with Mike and Chris to see if they needed help. We got there just as they were eating lunch, so we joined them. After lunch, they told us they didn’t need any help. So we went over to see how Jerry was doing at Antoinette’s house. We got there, helped for a little while and then they were finished, so we helped pack up his trailer. Everyone was getting soaking wet, you couldn’t walk up the ramp to the trailer because it was all mud: it was like a slide. Everything was packed up, so we left.

Tonight at R&T everyone was anxious to see what the crazy lady had to say. “My rose was watching everyone work together in the rain, and no thorns” Well, good she had no thorns, but “watching” people work? Yes. Because the whole time we were at Antoinette’s she stayed in the van and did nothing. Whatever, no thorns.

Potatoes

Tuesday June 3, 2009

Today I was with Phil and we went to Dwayne’s house in Porcupine to work on three different community gardens. We planted onions, potatoes, turnips, beats, and radishes. We ran irrigation lions, cleaned up the garden, and dug out post holes and put in fence posts (although no fence). We had a lot of fun in the garden, especially with the potatoes.

However, tonight was not as fun. Every night we do Roses & Thorns, it’s a daily reflection of highs and lows of the day and experience. There are a few rules to R&T: (1) You cannot have a thorn without a rose, (2) you can have a rose without a rose, and (3) a thorn cannot be a person, so that it doesn’t become personal. So it was the crazy lady from Virginia’s turn “well, my thorn would be the staff I worked with today, I don’t want to go into detail.” I was one of the “staff” she worked with. So yeah, that led to a whole big mess.

Work Day

Monday June 2, 2009

Today we started the first work day of the week. I went with Jerry and two work crews to Antoinette Brave Heart’s house in Kyle. We were skirting her trailer all day and I was really impressed by the Minnesota kids that were in my group. They, for the most part, either lived or worked on farms so they were very hard and good workers. We got seven sections of skirting built and put up which is pretty impressive. It’s looking like the week is not going to be a bad one like I expected.

Bad Badlands

Sunday June 1, 2009

Wow, June already. We did the normal routine, history and Wounded Knee in the morning. But instead of going to Wounded Knee I stayed behind with Catie, Maureen, Bekah and Abby to restock and do an inventory for the Canteen, the set of four closets where Re-Member sells t-shirts, water bottles, local crafts, sweatshirts and stuff. It was fun just hanging out with people.

After the group got back from Wounded Knee we attempted to go hiking in the Badlands. We got about 2 minutes into the hike when it started absolutely pouring and huge wind gusts started blowing everything around. So needless to say, we turned around. 

More People

Saturday May 31, 2009

The new volunteers came today. We have a group of high school students from a charter school in Scottsdale Arizona, a church youth group from North West Minnesota (10 minutes from Canada, and 20 from North Dakota, so yeah way up there), a dad and son from Illinois, a family from outside of Chicago, 3 high schoolers from Denver, a girl from Virginia, a crazy lady from Virginia, a couple from Tennessee, a girl from Wisconsin (Naomi) who is volunteering this week and will be an intern with us for the next three weeks. Honestly, I’m not too excited about having so many high school kids here this week. I’m used to working with college aged kids, my peers, so being with high schoolers is going to be different. 

Goodbye

Friday May 30, 2009

Today all the volunteers left. We have a new batch coming in tomorrow afternoon, until then we staff members have a break. The interns took advantage of our 28 hour weekend and went to Rapid City, a city off the reservation about 2 hours away. We went out to dinner, went to the mall, and just hung out and got to know each other pretty well. 

Open, Vast, Free

Thursday May 29, 2009

Today I worked with Jerry on John Nelson’s house in Pine Ridge. Earlier in the year, John’s house had caught fire and luckily it didn’t burn to the ground, which is uncommon for Pine Ridge because there is no Fire Department. When something catches fire, it usually burns completely to the ground. Our goal today was to get the electricity in his house working. He wanted it done just so he and his kids could move back in. Even with all the fire damage, no insulation, no bathroom or outhouse, he just wanted electricity so he could move back in and provide for his family. Although the house had a lot of damage to it, it was in one of the nicest placed I’ve seen on the Rez so far. He was secluded in what used to be a park, had plenty of trees for shade, which is hard to find, and was only minutes away from Pine Ridge Village. We spent the day running wires, wiring outlets and switches, and trying to fix up the fuse box with tons of fire damage. Although we didn’t exactly get electricity back in the house, we did get the entire ceiling and walls insulated.

After work, all the work crews met at Bette’s Kitchen in Manderson for dinner. I had an awesome Buffalo Burger. After dinner, Jerry took a slight detour on the way back to Re-Member. We went to Goose Neck, what he considers the greatest view on the Rez. We got up there and it was amazing, you could see everything in every direction. The Rez looked awesome, rolling green hills, scattered pine trees, zigzagging rock formations, and so much more. Jerry said, “if you look off over there you can see in the distance some mountains, those are the Black Hills, they are 90 miles away.” I thought that was incredible, back home you can’t see more than 10 miles off into the distance, it’s just crowded. Here everything was open, vast, and free.