Short Story Contest

Poetry Contest
1. Each poem must be typed and emailed to gallupjourney@yahoo.com with your name and mailing address.
2. One entry per person.

Photos (not judged)
1. Please submit your photos via email at gallupjourney@yahoo.com, bring a disc to our office located at 202 E. Hill Ave., or bring the photo to our office to be scanned.
2. Please include your name and mailing address. No limit on the number of photos that can be submitted. We’ll choose our favorites to print.

Prizes for the top two submissions in short story and poetry categories!

All submissions due by Monday, December 5, 2010.
Send via email to gallupjourney@yahoo.com or snail mail to 202 E. Hill Ave.

For days the snow had been falling in great dreamy flakes and our outside world was one of silence.  The roads themselves, so lately bare and worn deep with the crunching, creaking wheels of countless wagons could only be guessed at from the general contours of the land.

Inside all was warmth and coziness.  Our house was of log and adobe and was filled with the pleasant scent and sound of crackling cedar and piñon logs heaped in the fireplaces.

The little girls wondered how Santa ever found our remote trading post – and their own tree and stocking-hung fireplace – in the midst of so much snow.

The aroma of turkey roasting and all the other goodly smells of a Christmas feast were ours to savor.  The children, our Indian maid, Mary Peshlakai, and I were enjoying everything.  Especially the fragrance of the candle-lit piñon tree, so lately a living part of the lovely Chuska Mountains just east of us.

Horses in Snow, illustration by Ernest Franklin.

Our home was at a trading post, high in the mountain country, sixty miles northwest of Gallup, New Mexico, the trading center for most of the Navajo Indians and traders for miles around.  The source of all our supplies hauled to us on wagons drawn by four Indian ponies – tough, wiry little animals.

We had large warehouses and all fall the Indians, with their freight outfits, went back and forth from town bringing in quantities of the many items – chiefly sugar, flour, coffee, bacon and lard – which seemed indispensable to the winter’s needs.

Before the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were moved from the mountain over into the desert country for the winter’s grazing, we bought from the Indians several whole mutton and three or four beeves.  Thus our warehouses were crammed and we could watch the high-piled snow very calmly and with pleasure.  We were like a little island community with everything necessary for life’s sustenance at hand, including a cow and many chickens.

Our family consisted of my husband and myself and our two little girls.  Then we had living with us a young white man, Walter, who clerked in the store.  In the house, Mary, our Navajo girl, helped me.

In this valley where we lived, many Navajo families stayed during the winter.  None of them lived closer than a mile to us.  Our nearest white neighbors were at Fort Defiance, twenty-five miles away.  The roads, never very good, were usually impassable in winter.  On our first Christmas at Crystal, in 1919, we felt the distance between there and our family and friends in Iowa to be especially vast.  Then came a happy thought!  Why not have our friends, the Navajos, come for a Christmas dinner!

Over a hundred came for that first dinner although we had scarcely expected so many.  We had ordered bread and cakes from Gallup.  I had baked many large pans of beans, roasted many huge rounds of beef, boiled huge quantities of potatoes and onions together – so we were able to take care of all who came.  It was a gay and happy festival and we felt that the Spirit of Christmas and the Grace of God had truly blessed our home.

The next Christmas was much the same except that several came with gifts for us and the number mounted to one hundred and seventy-five!

Now came our third year at Crystal, with its deep snow that made the landscape like a thickly frosted cake with only the pine trees standing high above it all like candles.  Never did we imagine our Navajo friends braving such weather for a dinner – so none was prepared.

So, on this snow-bound day there came the jingle of the bell that connected the house and store.  I asked Mary to hurry over and see what was wanted.  She returned, her face ashine with laughter.  Then, giggling so she could hardly speak, she told me the store was full of our Navajo friends who had come for their Christmas dinner!  It was unbelievable.  I rushed to the store to see for myself.

The store was full of Navajos.  As I stepped inside I was greeted with mingled cries of joy and relief.  “Chahlah Asun!  Chahlah Asun!”  (Charlie’s wife) and scolding from one and all because I had come out in the cold and snow with a thin, sleeveless dress, bare head, satin shoes and no coat!

It was all very well for Charlie to have given them their customary Christmas treats – sacks of candy, nuts, cookies, raisins, oranges and apples, which for the moment they had appreciated until they heard there was to be no Christmas dinner.  Now a monstrous injustice was about to be righted.  Here was “Younger Sister” and she would see that everything was all right.  She was their friend.  She wanted them to have “Clismas” dinner.  Glances of scorn were directed at their erstwhile friend, “Chahlah,” who had said there would be none.

Hungry Man (most aptly named) was their spokesman.  We had first known him when we lived in the desert country.  Now, with several others, he had come through the snow-piled- mountain pass to be with us.  A long ride, they had broken their own trail.  Afoot the greater part of the way, they stumbled and plowed along while the horses wallowed through steep and dangerous banks on the narrow trail – or took rabbit-like jumps to carry them over drifts piled treacherously high.

So – Hungry Man went on – Chahlah must be a liar, a great liar (bi oh chee tho i yei), to say their Younger Sister had no dinner for them.  All of them knew she had one the year before.  She had one two years before.  Surely there was much food for them at the house now!  Surely Younger Sister had dinner for them.  Chahlah was nothing less than a monster to try to deceive them this way.  They waited for my answer.

What would you do if you had not planned on a Christmas party and suddenly found that your neighbors for miles around had come – through deep snow and in biting cold – with the trustful expectation of sharing Christmas dinner with you?

I told them, “Yes, yes, there will be a Christmas dinner for you,” and stood there shivering at my own temerity – or maybe I only shivered in the blast of a fresh breeze as the store door opened to admit five more guests.

As it was now ten o’clock, I began to wonder what we would have for dinner.  True, there was turkey roasting in the oven, but in those days the Navajos ate no poultry of any kind, having either an aversion to or a taboo against it.

Of course, with my promise of dinner, they all settled down to a nice, jolly, laughing time in the store, happily munching from their sacks of goodies so lately scorned.  My husband and Walter started sawing and cutting mutton into small chunks for me to cook.  I dashed home with my apron filled with boxes of jello and raisins, and cans of pineapple and peaches.  I was almost afraid to tell Mary the news, for I was now wondering how she would bear up under it.

Her face wreathed in smiles and sounds of delighted planning issued from her lips.  “Shoo shoo, yahte (fine or good), Mrs. Newcomb.  Oohooh, bah do beeg a dah (not enough bread).  Biscuits, dahtse (maybe)?  I make biscuits.”  And could she make them!

Tell me truly, now, did you ever have a maid who would exclaim with pleasure at the thought of thirty-nine extra for dinner?  At least that was the count when I left the store.  We had to get busy.

By this time the meat had been brought over and we filled the top of our large range with kettles of mutton.  Then we peeled and cut potatoes and onions into the stew, not forgetting to add several cans of green chile.

Maybe you think our guests were getting restless.  Apparently not.  They had free tobacco and their sacks of treats.  They were warm.  They knew I was preparing their dinner, so the wit and humor flowed freely.

Mary went over to the store to get the Arbuckle’s coffee without which no Navajo feast in those days would have been complete.  When she returned she was again giggling so she could hardly tell me the joke – which was that there were many more Navajos than I had counted at ten o’clock!  So then I started making dumplings to supplement the biscuits and Mary cut up more meat and vegetables for the stew.

It was always interesting to see them come in.  No pushing, nor crowding.  Almost shyly they entered at my invitation of “Cut chin yah gah,” literally, now, “the food.”  When all who could be were seated, the rest either went back to the store or sat in our wide hallway to await their turn.

At the first Christmas dinner I had made a little talk about Christmas and what it means to us.  Especially on that day was it strong in our hearts to give happiness to others and that we were now far from our own people and so we were glad to have our friends, the Navajos, share this joyful day with us.  Again, on this third Christmas with them, I repeated these thoughts.

Then one of our neighbors, Roanhorse, arose and made a speech in return.  He expressed the thanks of his people.  It was really very touching.  The Navajos love to make speeches and, as each succeeding group of diners finished, someone of their number thanked me for the dinner and extended many good wishes to my husband, our children and me.  They thanked Mary for helping prepare it and Walter, too, for his help cutting the meat.

Some of the women who had eaten at the first tables came out into the kitchen and helped with the dishes and, with so many willing hands, it was not long before we had the tables reset and the next guests seated and served.

By dark everyone had eaten and gone home – and the food as all gone, too.  It was a miracle that it had lasted, but it had – right down to feeding the last little sheepherder to arrive.  There had been some extra cakes, but the women who washed the dishes thought it would be nice if they took them home – so they did.

Never again did we have a surprise party like that, for always thereafter, as long as we lived on the Navajo Reservation, no matter what the state of roads and weather, we prepared for – and were never disappointed in having – many guests for our Christmas dinner for the Navajos.

Madge and Charlie Newcomb at Snake Rock with their dogs. (Photo courtesy of Shirley Newcomb.)

About the Author

In 1913 Charles Newcomb was working for the McGaffey Company in Thoreau, but he pined for Madge Pentony back in his Iowa hometown.  Somehow he persuaded her to marry him and they found themselves running the lonely trading post at Naschitti, north of Gallup.

The dust, loneliness, dreadful roads and total isolation didn’t bother Madge one bit, so he moved her to an even more remote post at Crystal, which added severe winters to the other hardships.  Madge loved it.  All her life she took every opportunity to say how much she adored New Mexico and her many Navajo friends.

This story, in a longer form, was privately published by the family some years ago, along with others, and poetry, and observations on Reservation life.  Adored husband Charlie published two barely fictionalized books based on his many years as a trader, The Smoke Hole and Throw His Saddle Out, and both of them received rave reviews.

Daughter Shirley wrote a column about life in Zuni for the Gallup Independent for many years and has had articles published in New Mexico Magazine among others.  It is a family gifted with words, and central to the golden age of Navajo trading.  Chee Dodge was a close friend of the family and Shirley recalls he gave her a five-dollar bill every time they met.  That was about a week’s wages for a working man at the time.

On a quiet road, tucked between neighborhoods, is a place you may never have noticed.  It’s a sprawling structure, built on a hill among the juniper trees, with breathtaking views of the red rocks east of town.  Though you may never have visited, you are invited to, for this is Villa Guadalupe, a home to fifty elderly residents and the eight Little Sisters of the Poor who care for them.  And they love visitors!

The First Little Sister

Saint Jeanne Jugan, foundress of Little Sisters of the Poor.

Jeanne Jugan was born in Cancale, a small seaport in northwestern France, in 1792.  She was the sixth of eight children whom her mother raised alone after her father died.  As a young woman, Jeanne turned down a marriage proposal, telling her mother, “God wants me for himself.  He is keeping me for a work which is not known . . .”  Jeanne left home and worked in a hospital as a nurse’s aide for six years, then went to work for an elderly woman in her home, who considered her more of a friend than a maid.  The two women shared the Catholic faith and visited and cared for many of the poor people in town until the elderly friend passed away.

In 1839, Jeanne took in a blind and infirm elderly woman, giving up her own bed, in order to care for her.  Shortly after, another person was taken in.  Two friends assisted Jeanne in caring for them.  This was the humble beginning of a great work for which Jeanne Jugan would later be canonized a Saint (October 11, 2009).

The mission of Little Sisters of the Poor and Jeanne’s spirituality are best described in her own words: “It is a great grace that God has given you in calling you to serve the poor . . . Making the elderly happy – that is what counts!”  Jeanne died in 1879 at the age of 86, but her devotion to showing hospitality to the aged and unfortunate continued to grow.

Today there are 202 homes in 32 countries where the Little Sisters provide care for the elderly poor.

Villa Guadalupe

Villa Guadalupe, home to fifty elderly residents and eight Little Sisters of the Poor.

A small group of Little Sister foundresses came to the missionary diocese of Gallup on December 11, 1983 – the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe – at the request of Bishop Jerome J. Hastrich, who was concerned about the many elderly poor in the area.  Establishing the home, called Villa Guadalupe, presented many challenges, including navigating the muddy, winter roads on the Reservation in order to bring food and water to the elderly Navajos and learning about the Navajo culture and language.  However, within a year, Villa Guadalupe was home to seven elderly residents.  In spring 1989 a new structure was completed to accommodate more residents and in 2000 twelve independent living apartments were added.

Today, fifty residents, men and women of many ethnic and faith backgrounds, make up the “family” at Villa Guadalupe.  The home is an assisted living facility, not a nursing home, where residents can participate in a number of program and activities throughout the day.  A staff of fifty employees, supervised by the Little Sisters, helps ensure their comfort and health.  Sister Gonzague, who oversees admissions and development, among other things, said, “This is the residents’ home.  Our life revolves around theirs.”

After speaking with Sister Gonzague about the residents, the staff, and the needs at Villa Guadalupe, she suggested that I return the following day to visit with and photograph some of the residents.  When I came back, it was lunchtime and I found my way to the dining hall.  Though I was interrupting their lunch, toting an ominous looking camera, I was greeted with smiles and even invited to sit down and grab a plate of enchiladas.  Some residents allowed me to take their photos while they ate; some even invited me to chat, while others looked too involved in their lunch or companions or the beautiful view from the cafeteria windows.  One woman began telling me about her years as a volunteer and now resident at Villa Guadalupe.  “You couldn’t live in a nicer place,” she remarked.

Be Blessed

Villa Guadalupe residents, Emerson DeGroat.

After visiting with the residents, I was pleasantly greeted by a couple of long-term volunteers who have traveled here for five consecutive years from Show Low, AZ to serve.  Cathy and Darrell couldn’t say enough about the life and youth that they absorb from being at the home and working with the residents.  Volunteers are always needed and welcomed, announced Mary Smallcanyon, the volunteer coordinator at Villa Guadalupe.  “It’s a small place, but it’s a big place, too,” she said with a laugh.  “There’s always something to do here.”  And there’s something for everyone who has a bit of extra time, from yard work, helping with arts and crafts, and laundry, to food prep, visiting or taking a walk with the residents.

The congregation of Little Sisters throughout the world holds firmly to the example of hospitality and the tradition of begging that was demonstrated by Saint Jeanne Jugan.  They commit themselves exclusively to the service of the elderly poor, not only in taking care of their basic physical needs, but in forming relationships based on love and respect, as well.  They continue to rely on donations of food, commodities and money to help offset their operating costs.  Never having accepted a perpetual or permanent form of income, according to St. Jeanne Jugan’s wishes, the Little Sisters of the Poor have never had to close a home because of lack of funds!  Their devout faith and trust in God’s provision has resulted in important bonds with local markets and non-profits and supporters around the world.

Villa Guadalupe residents, Bertha Todd and Jean Tillian.

The Little Sisters of the Poor have cared deeply for the elderly poor around the world for more than 170 years, yet they provide a relevant example for our society today.  By 2030 one in five Americans will be elderly.  In a society that is tragically unprepared for the aging population, the Little Sisters help to emphasize the value of advancing age and the contribution that elderly can make through wisdom and experience gained throughout their lives.

Truly, Villa Guadalupe is a blessing to the residents who live there, but the blessing is reciprocated and experienced by all who spend time with these dear men and women.

For more information on Little Sisters of the Poor or to volunteer at Villa Guadalupe, call (505) 863-6894 or visit www.littlesistersofthepoorgallup.org.

In the final moments of childbirth, when a woman’s body experiences all the pain and fatigue and expectation that it possibly can all at once, there’s also a sense of loneliness.  A realization that no one else can push this baby out, that no matter how many people are in the room or waiting by the phone, that despite what seems to be all the strength she can muster, she’s afraid that she can’t do this.  All the reading, all the preparation has gone out the window.  Nothing else matters in this single moment before birth.  Wavering between doubt and determination, a calm, yet strong, voice breaks through the fog, “Your baby is coming.  You are doing it.”  With new resolve clinging to desperation, another deep breath, another push, a scream that is heard but unconsciously released, and it’s over.  A new baby and a new mother are alive in the world.

This was my experience.  During both my daughter’s and my son’s births, my body succeeded in doing what my mind, at the time, thought impossible.  Truthfully, few thoughts were being processed at all, while muscles functioned instinctively.  But in those moments of doubt, it was the voice of my midwife, Starla Willis, that I heard above all else, not telling me what to do, but assuring me of what I was already doing.  Her words gave me strength when I felt completely powerless.  Immediately after delivering each of my children, pain and weakness were replaced with a lasting sense of empowerment.

Midwife, derived from Middle English, literally means “with woman.”  During pregnancy and childbirth, as with any health issue, it’s good to know that someone who has experience and expertise is with you.  Midwives are trained to guide women through the natural process of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as educate and give basic care to women of childbearing age.  In the earliest days of American midwifery, patients living in the hills and hollows of rural Kentucky were isolated and alone.  Where roads could not be built, nurse-midwives, traveling on horseback, served as a source of healthcare and community for women and their families.  Children there were taught that babies came, not from storks, but from the nurse-midwife’s saddlebag.

From the mid-1920s up until World War II began, qualified nurse-midwives worked for the Frontier Nursing Service to provide care, primarily, to mothers and children in rural Appalachia.  Nurse-midwives were obtained in one of two ways: they were either trained in Great Britain or were British nurses already qualified in midwifery.  When the war started, it was no longer feasible to send nurses across the Atlantic for training, so in 1939, The Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery was founded in Hyden, Kentucky.

Linda van Asselt-King and Starla Willis work at RMCHCS as certified nurse-midwives.

Now called The Frontier Nursing University, it has been in continuous operation since its inception.  However, in the 1980s, the traditional midwifery program became difficult to support as the local number of births decreased.  So, in 1989, the nurse-midwifery program was transferred to the University of New Mexico.  During this time, the Community-based Nurse-midwifery Education Program (CNEP) began a pilot project with the goal of allowing nurses to remain in their communities while obtaining graduate education as nurse-midwives.  It was hoped, ultimately, that the number of practicing nurse-midwives working in underserved areas would be increased.  The project has been very successful and was adopted as the primary nurse-midwifery education program by The Frontier Nursing University.  Since 1991, CNEP has graduated over 1100 nurse-midwives, at least two of which work here in Gallup.

Starla Willis and Linda van Asselt-King are both certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) whose careers have followed similar paths.  They both earned their nursing degrees during undergraduate studies, Starla in Oklahoma and Linda in Kansas.  They both worked at Gallup Indian Medial Center as nurses, along with fellow RN, Jane MacDuffie, and obtained their degrees in midwifery through Frontier’s CNEP program.  When the midwifery practice began at Rehoboth McKinley Health Care Services in 1998, Willis, van Asselt-King and MacDuffie were the first team of midwives hired.  Sadly, Jane passed away two years later.  Michele Forlines joined the practice then, and worked with Starla and Linda for ten years.  (Recently, Michele has been working on the East Coast, closer to her grandson.)  Over the last thirteen years, Starla and Linda have delivered 2500 babies in this community.

Some of the 2500 children that certified nurse-midwives, Starla Willis and Linda van Asselt-King, have delivered in Gallup.

Just as every mother’s birth story is unique, these nurse-midwives tell different tales about what brought them to midwifery.  For Starla, a strong midwife mentor during college and the opportunity to observe several births as a nursing student sparked an interest in midwifery as a career.  For Linda, it was a positive experience with her own pregnancy and delivery in Nigeria that prompted a desire to work with other expecting women.  “Especially in developing countries, women may not have a lot of power, but they have great strength,” Linda says.

Midwifery has been in practice around the world for thousands of years and midwives still attend the majority of births worldwide.  While they are utilized far less in this country, the Indian Health Service has used midwives since 1969.  According to an early study examining nurse-midwifery care at an IHS clinic in Ft. Defiance, Arizona, marked improvements in pregnancy outcomes were observed with the availability of nurse-midwifery care.  Midwives’ long history of caring for isolated and vulnerable populations is just one reason that Native American women are more likely than any other ethnic subgroup to deliver their infants under the care of midwives.

Nationwide, midwives attend only 8% of births, but this is beginning to change.  American women are beginning to shift their thinking about the childbirth process to one that doesn’t rely on so many medical interventions.  It’s the idea that birth is a normal and natural process for which the female body is designed.  Midwifery holds to these ideals, as well, and emphasizes the importance of educating women about their health and options.

“New Mexico is a great place to be a midwife,” according to Starla.  In fact, The Land of Enchantment leads the nation with the highest rate of vaginal births attended by midwives at 38.2%.  When there were three certified nurse-midwives at RMCHCS, they performed about 60% of vaginal deliveries there.  In addition to pregnancy and childbirth, midwives can provide counseling and information about diet, exercise, family planning and general preventative healthcare that women, who, by and large, determine their family’s healthcare, can pass on to their children and partners.

Contrary to what many believe about midwives, the vast majority of them work in hospitals (96% according to the American College of Nurse-Midwives), which can provide many benefits, even to women who desire a natural birth experience.  At RMCHCS, women who seek a natural process can listen to music, walk around, eat, shower, or sit on a birthing ball while in labor; pain management is available in a variety of forms for those who request it; and emergency equipment is close at hand, should it be needed.  While most pregnancies are uncomplicated and proceed with normal deliveries, complications can and do occur.  When this happens in the hospital setting, midwives work with obstetricians to ensure the best outcomes for both mother and baby.

The women’s health unit at RMCHCS offers abundant support to patients and employs techniques that are natural and healthy for mother and baby in general, such as encouraging breastfeeding, baby rooming in with mother, and skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby immediately after birth.  Pregnancy and childbirth are so personal that a large part of a Starla and Linda’s job is to listen and help each woman get the experience she wants.

Anna, local mother of four children, says,

“I loved that I got to make decisions regarding my labor.  I got to choose what I did or didn’t want to do.  I often heard ‘whatever you want.’  Linda was quiet and gentle and gave me the peace to just enjoy my babies after she had tenderly helped me through it all.”

Meghan, local mother of two, says

“Michele saw me through my first pregnancy and delivered my daughter.  At each visit, Michele would take time to see how I was doing emotionally, as well as physically.  I knew I was in good hands and our first birthing experience was so positive and amazing.”

Stacey, local mother of three, says,

“Giving birth in this town would not be the same without Linda and Starla. When I compare my birthing stories to my sister’s and friends’ back in a larger city in the Midwest, with much larger, better equipped hospitals, I always come away appreciating the midwives and RMCHCS’s women’s health unit even more than before.  They provide a personal touch along with adept skill and experience that is rare to find anywhere.”

After thirteen years as midwives in the Gallup community, Starla and Linda have shared in miraculous and memorable experiences with, literally, hundreds of local families.  They have delivered baby girls who they are now beginning to see as patients.  They have even had patients who have been motivated to become nurses themselves because of the impact that nurse-midwifery care has made in their lives.  Being ‘with women’ through some of life’s greatest adventures has been one the most rewarding aspects of being a midwife in this community.

Every now and then, something will send me back.  The smell of mutton, finding piñon shells on the floor, sandstorms, double rainbows, sunlight hitting the hills.  But mostly, it’s the kids.  Somehow, the kids in Gallup have the same sparkly, mischievous grins that stole my heart in northern Mongolia, in a region of the world most know simply as “Siberia.”  I was mesmerized by that country the moment I first read about it filling out my Peace Corps application in 2001, and I fell in love with the children the moment I stepped off the plane a year later.

Rainbows are common in the Mongolian countryside.

Mongolia is wild and wide open, covered with scrub grasses and wildflowers.  The north is dense forest and deep glacial lakes, the south is home to the Govi Desert (a redundant name if ever there was one – “Govi” actually means desert in Mongolian).  The sky is bright blue and cloudless by day, flooded with stars at night, and horses, yaks, sheep, and even camels graze the land with no apparent boundaries.  In the northern mountains a small indigenous group of Tsaatan people survive the extreme winters in canvas teepees with a single hearth fire, herding, riding and even milking domesticated reindeer.  In the Altai Mountains of the west, ethnic Kazakhs hunt wolves from horseback using trained eagles.

There are just under three million souls living in Mongolia, an area five times the size of New Mexico.  It‘s the most sparsely populated country on earth (4.5 people/sq. mi.) and when I moved there in 2002 the average “professional” made around $50 a month.  There are only a handful of cities with decent jobs, however, and most people get by on a fraction of that.

When my cousin (who often works in China) heard I’d applied to spend two years in central Asia, he was incredulous. “You know the Chinese are dirt poor, but the Mongolians – they can’t even afford dirt.  What’re you thinking?”  Bewilderment was the reaction from most of my friends, with my favorite response from the late great Mitch Mason, who bellowed his amazement in a deep Georgian accent, “Mon-GO-lia?  Mon-GO-LIA??!!”   Even my own family had no idea why I’d willingly give up the comfortable lifestyle of New Hampshire and the well-paid engineering job I’d worked so hard for to travel 10,000 miles and live in comparable poverty on $4.28 a day.  I had my reasons.

Why Peace Corps?

To see the world (in a well-supported program where my parents needn’t worry about me).  To live a simpler life (among people who’ve done so for thousands of years).  To be a little adventurous (but with a safety net of American-style doctors and even an evacuation plan in the event of trouble).  To become a teacher, in a part of the world where I might actually feel needed.  And maybe even make a difference.

Despite everyone doing their best to talk me into staying, I knew Peace Corps was the best way to break free of the “golden handcuffs” that held me tight to an unsatisfying career. I could leave the rat race behind and live among people who have managed to get by, even be happy getting by, with far less.  My success would no longer be judged by my possessions, and maybe I could learn how to bring that simpler lifestyle back to the U.S. when I was done.

I began my application (a year-long process) and wrote in Mongolia as my first choice, based on its peaceful politics, wide open spaces, horsemanship (boys begin riding in the traditional 10- to 20-mile races at the age of four), but mostly its absence of the sweltering heat that plagues so many of the tropical Peace Corps posts.

Mongolia is famous as having the coldest capital in the world (Ulaan Baatar) and being the birthplace of Ghengis Khan (his actual name was Chinngis Xhan).  Temperatures average -20°F in winter but can climb to 100°F in summer, even north of the Govi.  A third of the population is still considered nomadic, living in round felt-covered “gers” and moving their family encampments up to four times per year based on the availability of grazing land.

Boys carting water in Mongolia.

Occasionally, driving through the Navajo Nation will send me back.  The homesteads and dirt roads could easily be those I saw on the other side of the world.  Both nomadic Mongols and those living in villages (in wooden houses and semi-permanent gers) survive quite efficiently despite the poverty, adverse climate, sporadic electricity and general lack of running water.  Some have access to a hand-dug well in their or their neighbor’s yard, but often quite close to an equally shallow outhouse.  Others, even those in long-established towns, trek up to a mile each way to a local river or watering hole, chopping through ice half the year to haul buckets all the way home, Jack and Jill style.  Mongolia has never had much water (it’s even drier than New Mexico) but is rich in copper, turquoise, and silver.

Somehow, I made it.  From 2002 to 2004 I lived in the city of Erdenet, population 70,000 (the third largest in the country) and taught English at, guess what, an engineering school.  I had done my training in a tiny pictorial “soum” about an hour south of the Russian border and hoped to stay, but Uncle Sam had other plans for me.  Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV’s) get their teaching feet wet in a short summer class with a small group of students.  My students came to apply fully dressed in their Disney Princess best.  Huge white bows in their hair and frilly tulle skirts.  Forget the fact they haven’t had a full bath since the river was last warm and swimmable, Mongolians took school seriously and dressed to impress their teacher.

Mongolian grandma and baby.

Mongolians overall take education very seriously, perhaps a trait instilled by the Soviets.  Mongolian mothers typically give up their careers when children start school, and when youngsters come home in the afternoon, mothers spend the next three to five hours poring over homework with them, drilling math facts, penmanship, and reading.

I loved that summer school class, and I mostly enjoyed teaching the engineering students in my charge for the two years that followed.  We had some cultural differences (a few felt they could skip half the semester and show up with a small bribe on the last day and still pass; I felt they actually had to come to class and do the work to pass), but I learned far more than I taught.  Mostly I learned about tolerance and acceptance, and understanding that people’s value systems are based on the way they were raised, and had little to do with how I was raised.  I learned to get by with less, to appreciate what others had to offer, and to cherish people’s gifts and strengths.  Finally, my “straight-line” engineering personality began to become flexible in how I saw the world.

Yes, I was pickpocketed (six times).  Yes, I was harassed.  Yes, it was intensely difficult being so isolated and it was tough to make friends.  Yes, many Mongols assumed I was there proselytizing for Christianity (“Are you a Christ?” I was often asked).  And yes, it was hard to discern exactly what was going on at any point in time since I wasn’t fluent in the nuances of the language.  But I learned how to go with the flow, and not let the small stuff get me down.

From Mongolia to GALLUP?

At the time I was applying to grad school, there were only three P.C. fellowship programs offering candidates a degree in Elementary Ed. while teaching full-time.  I knew I wanted to work with young children, I wanted to teach math, and I wanted to be in a rural location.  I applied to all three : NAU (which closed its program as soon as I applied), Columbia University (not exactly rural), and Western N.M. University’s Gallup Graduate Studies Center.

Mongolian boys begin racing horses at a young age.

I chose well.  WNMU has received national recognition for its excellence in multi-cultural education programs, and it’s the only N.M. teacher preparation program to earn NCATE (National Council of Teacher Education) accreditation without provision last year.  It has a strong core of professors with backgrounds in rural education who have each taught in area schools for many years.  And it is a solid partner to the NMPED, bringing in college grads committed to becoming strongly qualified teachers.

I worked full-time for three years (if you call the 60 hours a week new teachers put in “full” time), first at Juan de Oñate then at Gallup Mid, attending school nights and weekends, learning pedagogy and strategies in class and applying them in my classroom the very next day.  It was tough.  It was insanely tough.  It pushed me even harder than Dartmouth’s engineering program in so many ways and I got so much more out of it.  My WNMU education has enabled me to meet the challenges we all face in our schools.  It has helped me create a wealth of instructional and assessment strategies, it has helped me see the children in my classroom and their families as individuals deserving of my respect and advocacy, it has helped me become patient and keep my eye on the prize.  Mostly it has helped me continue to work hard as I and my colleagues are barraged with statistics and news stories about how our schools are failing to prepare our children and how teachers need to improve what they’re doing in the classroom.

Teachers are doing a good job in Gallup, and around the country.  We’re working harder and harder every year, and there‘s actually very little room for improvement (unless you consider the acquisition of magical powers an improvement).  The teachers I know show up to school at 7 a.m., leave around 5 p.m., work like crazy all day and bring work home every night and weekend.  We care about each and every child under our care, and we bend over backwards coming up with creative ways to reach and teach each one of them.  Still, students are bombing the state test year after year.  Despite its “levels of proficiency,” the test is mostly a pass-fail assessment tool and although I would love my students to pass, it is not the tool by which I measure their (or my) success.  Bill Richardson left New Mexico’s schools with the “toughest standards in the country,” and hence the toughest test to pass.  Either students can correctly decipher and navigate the language-laden, multi-step word problems to choose the one correct answer to satisfy the test authors, or they fail.

The test is not what I look at.  I would be thrilled if each of my students failed the state test but did leave my classroom knowing basic multiplication, division, fractions, and critical thinking and problem-solving skills.  I would be ecstatic to be out of a job at UNM where I teach remedial math to adults, performing at about the same level as my sixth graders. If each and every child came to school with a pencil and a full stomach, and didn’t need to worry about the drama in the hallway, on the school bus, or in their neighborhood.  If each child showed up in sixth grade following eleven years of being well-rested, well-nourished (i.e., not eating Hot Cheetos two meals a day), and well-read to from birth, was self-disciplined enough to treat others’ belongings with care and not disrupt class by shooting spit wads at the ceiling, knew the importance of respecting and tolerating others, and valued the promise of education, our jobs would be easy. That would feel like magic.

My family and friends still question my career choice, but I’m sticking it out.  Things need to change, and I’m staying in Gallup because I feel our children deserve a fair chance.  It’s not their fault they’re failing.  But they need to be included as part of the solution.  They need to value education – just because it’s in my value system doesn’t mean I can easily transfer it to them.

I’m staying in Gallup because I see hope here, every day, in the eyes and smiles of the children I teach.  I love this town.  I see promise.  A little bit at a time, I see hope that all of our kids will succeed.

When I first began my extra-long walks, inadvertently coming upon the ruins of another time and places, it was like walking through a ghost town where human life once thrived and celebrated but was now desolate.  The portals of time opened up and I came upon unknown remnants, only later to discover through much research and interviews what the object or building was and its purpose at the time.

Ruins from an old mining site in the Gallup area.

There are homes in ruins out there and there are also burial sites, which must be respected at all times.  With that I wonder what the last thoughts of the inhabitants were when they foresaw the coming end and made a mass exodus, taking everything with them.

Then Gallup made its debut.

The coal industry provided a substantial amount of income to the state in the form of taxes and royalties and Gallup is in a strategic location in regards to the construction of the early railroads that moved people and material resources across the nation.  Sixteen railroads were in service to New Mexico mines between 1880 and 1963.

During World War I and II the railroads and mines were crucial.  When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 every able-bodied man went to war except the Japanese immigrants who provided the manpower to mine the coal and supply the area with electricity.

American Coal Company plant, Gallup, New Mexico, circa 1920.

It’s quite different when you hear those, who were children back then, speak the living history than when you read about it somewhere.  There once were trails blazed but were abandoned and the high road to the unknown that was taken with adventure and discovery in mind now scarcely remains in the minds of a few.  But it is left in the touching of the object or structure of the past.  Standing in the place where others once stood.  Observing what they saw.

According to Bruce Williams, owner of Cowboy Auto Sales, at one time Gamerco was bigger than Gallup and many of its residents were affluent.  “It had a tennis court, swimming pool, racquet ball court, baseball field (where Navajo Tractor is presently located), streets with names and numbers for the houses.

“My family were strictly Indian traders but I remember sitting at the table and listening to the old timers talk about the old times.  I knew some of the people so that is what made it interesting,” Williams recollected.  “We need to document this and get it all on record before it is lost.”

The community of Gibson was developed following the discovery of the Gallup Mine in 1882; John Gibson was the mine superintendent and namesake of the town.  Gibson had a hotel, company store, hospital, meat market, Catholic church and a school.  By 1919, there were 1,200 people living there.  The closing of older mines and the decreased demand for coal in the late 1940s erased Gibson from the map.  The railroad that went up Gibson Valley was dismantled and reused because of the scarcity of metal during WWII.

“It was a big community and had electric and water.  There was a big railroad running through the valley,” said retired librarian Octavia Fellin. “A lot of houses, too, but the jail is the only real structure left.”  Fellin added, “My father was a mining contractor and he helped build the underpinnings of the claims that became the Navajo and Weaver mines and later, The American Coal Company in Gamerco.  He worked there for 30 years and my mother was a nurse at Gibson hospital.”

Old structure thought to be that of the Gibson powder shack / jail.

Although the structure at the Gibson mine site, mentioned by Fellin, is described as a powder shack (where all the explosives for mining were kept) in many historical accounts, all those interviewed said it was definitely used as a jail.  On some weekends there would be eight to ten guys in there for disorderly conduct.

There was a mule barn by present-day Navajo Shopping Center.  The mules were used to assist the miners and pull up the coal carts from the mine along with the underground hoists.  Some said they knew when it was quitting time on Fridays; they would just stop pulling the coal carts and start braying.

Today there are mines still open but most are sealed and concealed quite well.  Frank Trujillo, Chief Appraiser for the McKinley County Assessor’s Office, recalled the mines that were near his neighborhood.  “We used to play in them (coal mines) when we were kids and get in the coal cars.  We even used to explore the tunnels until a kid got lost and they were closed up.”

Johnny Espinosa remembered that when he was a child only the coal separator building was there, where they also burned slack.  “I was ten years old when we moved from there; there were two camps at the time – the Heaton and Weaver mine camps – and two houses out there along with the hoist house, which was used to pull out coal.  They were covering all the mineshafts and air shafts.  The Weaver and Navajo mines caught fire; one is still burning and you can see the smoke in the winter time.”

Through the exploration of my neighborhood hills and valleys I have been fortunate to let the ruins of former towns and communities be a teacher and educate me about the history of the people that once lived here.

The areas and ruins described in this article are remote and potentially dangerous.  Do not attempt to find them.  The author did so at his own risk and shares his findings here.

UNM Gallup Green Building class proudly displays their newly rebuilt solar collector.

Gallup Solar and the Green Building class taught by Chris Chavez at UNM Gallup recently joined forces to refurbish a solar hot air heating system in Gallup.  The solar heating system, like many others installed in Gallup in the 1970s, was in need of repair and maintenance. The system was no longer properly functioning and was donated to Gallup Solar by local resident Theresa Diaz, who was interested in seeing the solar heating system put to good use.

The donated solar collector was removed from its rooftop perch and brought to UNM Gallup where students repaired the collector by removing and replacing the glazing, and repainting the absorber plate.  The restored solar panel was then installed on the Work in Beauty house in Gallup, the meeting place of Gallup Solar.   A new fan was installed, the electronic controller reused, and the rebuilt system now supplies solar-powered heat to the home on cold sunny days.

The collaboration with UNM Gallup is part of an ongoing effort by Gallup Solar to provide skills-based training and education in the solar energy field. Through projects like the collaboration with UNM Gallup, Gallup Solar is helping build Gallup and McKinley County’s capacity to meet current and future energy needs with clean, renewable solar energy.  A skilled workforce is an important component in ensuring valuable local jobs in the growing renewable energy field.

UNM students install solar hot water collectors on a home in the Wildcat Springs area of the Navajo Reservation.

Last May students from UNM Gallup’s Green Building class assisted with the installation of a Photovoltaic (solar electric) system on a Habitat for Humanity home in Gallup and, most recently, the class assisted in the installation of a solar hot water-based heating system on the home of Leonard Tom in the Wildcat Springs area of the Navajo Nation.

Gallup Solar is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing solar energy to Gallup and McKinley County.  For information about how to go solar, how to evaluate or refurbish an existing solar hot air heating system, or if you would like to make a tax deductible donation of a system that you are no longer using, please email outreach@gallupsolar.org.   For more information about Gallup Solar, please visit our website at www.gallupsolar.org.