I cannot believe that our Duke Engage
is coming to an end. I am extremely proud to be part of the inaugural class of
the Miami site.
There were several reasons why I wanted to be part of a
domestic program. The first is the realistic component to the program. I can
see myself living in Miami one day and I now know contacts that would make my
transition to this city easier. Don't get me wrong, I see the benefits of going
international for Duke Engage and I definitely respect and admire students who
go off to different countries and even continents to do service work. And I
would like to experience that one day in the near future. But, I saw the
benefits of getting to know a city in the United States that would be easy for
me to melt into post-college, which is one year away for me. Miami’s intriguing
warmth and rich culture was something that I felt was right for this summer.
This
leads to my second reason to why I wanted to be in Miami this summer. For me
shows like "Caso Cerrado," "Sabado Gigante" and "El
Gordo y La Flaca" were the first introductions to the diversity of
Latin@s. In southern California, Mexicans and Central Americans are quite
prevalent so my idea of Spanish and Latin Americans was somewhat limited. I am
sure people in the Northeast or even in South Florida don't know what legit
Mexican food is. (And no, I'm not talking about hardshell tacos/Taco
Bell/TexMex stuff. Do not come at me with that stuff. Please come to my
house for some enchiladas, mole pozole and tacos that are tasty enough with
some simple onion, cilantro and chile. I digress because I could write an
entire blog on how deprived I've been of my dear Mexican food.) So, when my mom
and grandma would watch these afternoon and nightly shows, I didn't understand
why people in some of the shows didn't pronounce the "S" at the end
of words or pronounced their "r"'s like "l"s. So, I knew
there was more to understand about so Miami represented something more to me
because of my curiosity in my own understanding of my identity in relation to
the greater Latin American world. Sure, I'm not Carribbean or South
American but our histories of colonization and forced occupation sew us
together. So, it is a natural interest, encouraged by academia of course, to
learn about the commonalities and differences of Latinos.
In terms of our service work, I do wish we had been at one
site the entire 8 weeks. But I am extremely grateful for Catholic Charities
Legal Services for allowing me to see the humanity in law. We helped with preparing court cases with the
lawyers (researching country conditions etc), calling families of minors to
encourage them to come to info sessions, translated for clients, visited a
detention center and attended a couple court cases. Interestingly enough, I
found this more impactful than working with the high school institute. What I
realized from working with the high school institute is that although I really
and truly want myself to like teaching and working with high school students,
it is not my passion. I cared about the students we had the pleasure of meeting
but I wasn’t excited to go to work everyday. Maybe it was the way the institute was
organized or maybe not. This is actually quite saddening for me to learn about
myself. I would like to consider myself as someone who enjoys working with the
youth but I found this work to be difficult and energy draining rather than
invigorating. I know some of the other
DEngagers loved the high school institute, which was great. Maybe one day, I’ll
find that work enlivening. I feel at
times, we [I] try to craft ourselves [myself] to be people that we want to be
and have passions/characteristics that we want to have and even craft these
personas for people in our lives and it is hard to accept when actual life says
that this isn't reality.
What I
loved was the work that CCLS does and their welcoming attitude towards interns.
CCLS helps many members, children and adults, of the Florida Haitian and Latin
American community gain authorization to be in the United States. Many of the
lawyers themselves are immigrants or are children of immigrants and the passion
for what they do is very clear. Growing up in a border-town allowed me to live
in constant conversations of immigration. Being raised in a home with immigrant
parents, including with one that could easily be a client of CCLS for her
bravery to come into the United States without authorization was definitely
humbling but normal. I say normal because most of my friends at school also had
immigrant parents and were living as best as they could with what they had. I thought this immigrant
story was normal until Duke and its students said it wasn't normal and instead
something that was sad and even a little embarrassing. I have done some
immigration activism in the past but to be at a organization that specialized
in advancing the lives of thousands of people was inspiring to me It has also
encouraged me to seriously look at immigration law as a career path. Working
for CLS refreshed my academic spirits so I am grateful for that.
With that, I am ready to leave Duke Engage but as I have expressed
before in my blogs, I am not ready to leave Miami. What I mean by that is I am
looking forward to graduating from the Duke undergraduate world and ready to
begin a new chapter in my life. And a couple chapters may take place in Miami. When
I stand on my balcony to look at the beauty of the water, ride the city bus to
work, or reflect on the neighborhoods that we have had a pleasure to get to
know and the people of Miami that we've met, I can't help but to love this
city. Besides my home city, I've never been in a city where so many brown people
live---it's cool to be Latin@ here. In one of our first reflection sessions, we
spoke about spaces where being brown is seen as desirable. And I said Duke
University was not. And I stand by that. So, it's so refreshing, inspirational,
calming and exciting to have experienced the gentle warm hug of the 305. I
would say that most big cities are ethnically and culturally diverse but
Miami....Miami, baby, encompasses so much of Latin America---from the
Carribbean to North and South America. And that is what I'm so attracted to. I'm
attracted to Latin America and its culture and my culture and of course,
myself.
Later,
K
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