Tijuana Diary: Fabricated Poverty

So this was it. We were homeless now, crouched low in the overgrowth behind a university gym. To us, home. Smoking cigarettes, our hands placed over our sleeping bags and blowing twisted smoke rings at the branch canopy above us.

"This is the taste of freedom," Levi was saying. "The best cigarettes are the ones under a night sky."

"Isn't this kind of patronizing, condescending, you know?" I puffed, cringing, paranoid of every sound. "Like, we're homeless, but we're only tourists. We can escape this whole thing tomorrow if we wanted."

"What do you mean?"

"We chose this. We had a bed for the night and we chose this. Urban camping. But is it belittling to those who can't choose it?"

"Even if this experience is fabricated, it still means something," Levi said.

Our campsite.

I've always wanted to be homeless, ever since I read a book called Evasion that glorifies being a poor, traveling hobo. Hopping trains, eating from trash cans, hitchhiking and exploring the planet on foot. So now, this was the realization of a dream, the fact that no one knew where we were. I had complete freedom at hand. I seriously considered never going back. Ditching that ol' degree I was pursuing. Letting my identity die out, replaced with something new. Street cred or whatever. Earning it.

Earlier, we met a homeless kid, round our age, who told us he was stoned, a high school dropout, but he was wandering around, enjoying life. He told us to sleep in an elevator near Chipotle, because he did once to get out of the rain. We chose the more comfortable bushes.

Morning. Neither of us slept well, what with all the yelling and fighting we heard in the night, but we were happy. This was freedom.

We paid for an all-day trolley pass and took train after train, all the way down to San Ysidro. People on the trolley with us gave us looks of disgust. Some old woman we sat across from panicked and moved to the back. Maybe we smelled bad.

The homeless, the actual homeless, they bothered others for spare change. Not us. We had all our possessions on our backs, so we were just like them. I've never felt such a kinship with an ignored, disrespected and ugly group of people. It felt good, even when crazies approached us, gave us the once-over and started nodding and humming at us. Like their lips were sewn shut. It was silent association and it meant something.

We went to Vons and ate a loaf of French bread and a whole baked chicken with our fingers outside the store while smoking cigarettes. Middle class soccer moms selling girl scout cookies wouldn't even look at us. Everyone seemed confused.

Still, we weren't dirty enough yet. We barely smelled and we weren't poor. I had some $200 in cash on me, sewn into my left pocket with my passport and ID cards. In my right, I had a cheap film camera. I was a motherfuckin' millionaire.

One minute through the border, and everything changed. Now everyone thought we were rich. Every storefront we passed by people begged us to buy something. We wandered around, trying to find a really cheap hotel. I had heard rumors of $6 a night places, but everything was $20, at least. We weren't gonna last the week on that.

A woman named Gabriella (we assumed she was a prostitute based on how she was dressed) grabbed hold of us and gave us a short tour of the motels lining Avenida Revolucion. Our last stop was the Hotel La Paloma (The Dove Hotel). $7 bucks a night, the manager said. We can go up, check out the room and if we don't like it. . .

We almost stayed here, then realized it was a deathwish.

We said goodbye to Gabriella, but not before she offered to sell us a plethora of drugs. Our room was 19, a shithole of a place. The walls covered in graffiti, trash in the corner, one creaky bed and a chair. The window was covered by a blanket. Tearing it off and looking out, we saw a thin alley filled with plumbing and garbage. But the biggest problem was the door. It had a huge hole the size of a watermelon, hastily repaired with a loose piece of cardboard. You could pop it out easily, reach through and unlock the door.

So we were moved to room 17. Here, the graffiti was even worse. DIE KIKES was burned into the ceiling, a mirror on the wall was smashed and written underneath was FUCK YOUR LIFE. On the door was a long message about how these guys were gonna come back and if they didn't know us, there'd be trouble. Obviously, someone had broken into this room before because the doorjam was hanging by a thread.

We moved again, to room 10. Compared to the last two, this place was a suite. It had bright pink walls, barely any graffiti, a locker, a nightstand and a chair. Still one bed, no window and trash in the corner. But at least the door wasn't in danger of being kicked down. Yet.

For a week we lived in this shit hole. The front desk sold cigarettes for $2, so we loaded up and lit up in the room or in the courtyard. It was a shitty garden filled with bizarre statues, mostly angels and Virgins and Crucifixes. A couple stray cats and some cheap patio furniture.

Well, we found that when people asked us for money on the streets to say no, but offer a cigarette. It's only ten cents, but then these beggars smoke one with you and you can learn their life story. I heard dozens of miserable, odd and funny stories throughout the week. I empathized with them as best I could, realizing it was still fabricated poverty. Because I was white, everyone assumed I was down for spring break, going to a big university and I could leave any time. Just because it was true didn't mean I didn't want to stay forever.

See, I've been on a church mission's trip to the outskirts of Tijuana before. I helped build one of two houses for a couple impoverished families who live on Shitstack Hill. You've heard the stories, where their sewage runs through the street, stray or dead dogs line the dirt road. We built a house for these people, then went back to our campsite and listened to iPods before falling asleep in tents.

Back then, we didn't experience poverty. We just witnessed it and that's not the same. And now I was nearly as poor as these people around me, eating the same food, drinking the same beer, sleeping in the same roach motel.

Experiencing the middle class of Tijuana was equally, if not more, bizarre. Going through a Costco, taking samples and marveling that a business like this was thriving. Not a block away, we witnessed a man digging through trash and another shooting up heroin under a bridge. I have to wonder how the middle class feels about this, going on all around them. And it's not really different in America, is it? How do I feel about it in my own country?

We left at the end of the week, both of us ready to go home. Time to see friends again, eat hamburgers, Facebook, work. Walking back through that border was heartbreaking because of all the people I saw around who were stuck in this sewer. They were people, too and they had every right to cross with me. Fuck all that legality involved. It takes years for most people to get greencards. If the choice is this or risking illegal crossing, what would you do?

As soon as we were back on that trolley, we stopped at an In N' Out and gorged ourselves. A sign said don't feed the birds, but I did anyway.

OK, OK, I didn't really do a good job of remaining objective throughout my experience. I don't like making myself or others feel guilty about their ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF WEALTH. It's just stupid to think poverty is always glamorous, but even when it's not, I sometimes prefer it.