By Elena Mangione-Lora

I have scores of awards and recognitions from six years of providing the utmost in quality hospitality through my first career in the hotel industry. I still practice the skills I honed there, whether I’m entertaining at home or organizing an event for the university, but my experience was recently put to the test by a simple request for a glass of water.

I visited the US-Mexico border at Nogales, Arizona, with a group coordinated by Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns. There, we helped a local non-profit serve a meal to nearly 100 newly arrived migrants. The staff encouraged us to mingle with the people to bear witness to their experiences.

These instructions inspire a feeling of embarrassment—I’m acutely aware of the disparity between their reality and my own sense of security, safety, and well-being. I don’t want to hear the stories. I have been learning about the violence and exploitation they have endured in their home countries. I know about the peril and abuses they suffered during their journey north through the desert. I feel powerless to help, so hearing the details firsthand seems unbearable.

Their despair is palpable, and despite my pity—or perhaps because of it—I cannot reach out. My friends are able to dim themselves, their privilege and their comfort, in solidarity with these people. They are open, inviting them to share their burdens. I am useless.

I have to do something. What can I do? My teaching experience? Of no benefit here. I immerse myself in doing rather than listening: “Can I get you some more rice?” “Do you need any more hot chocolate at this table?” “Hot sauce? Let me check with the kitchen.” Here at a safe distance, doing something so automatic, I come to life.

A young man stops me in the middle of serving hot chocolate, rice, tortillas, and beans. He has no appetite and takes what I have offered and passes it to the older man next to him. He asks, “¿Me regalas un poquito de agua simple?”—roughly: “May I trouble you for a simple glass of water?”

His eyes catch me when I pause to look into them. They say nothing to me except that he will wait while I get him a glass of water. “Of course,” I say, and I proceed immediately to the kitchen, relieved to have a sense of purpose. A few minutes later, he asks again, “¿Me regalas un poquito de agua simple?” And a moment after that, he asks again.

My colleague working in the kitchen says, “Poor guy, he must be so thirsty from the trek in the desert.” It clicks. This young man is severely dehydrated. He can’t eat because he is nauseated—he feels sick, and he just wants to drink.

I had learned earlier in the week during a training session that nausea and extreme thirst might indicate a critical point in the body’s ability to recover from dehydration. “Please take little sips,” I say. “There’s an ambulance outside, why don’t you let them check you out?”

He replies with an upward tug at the corner of his mouth. “Just a simple glass of water,” he says. He doesn’t eat a bite, and he reluctantly accepts the granola bars and a bottle of water we encourage him to take. As he leaves with his companions, the sun makes the creases around his mouth look more severe. He is ill, tired, joyless, and has to move on.

Elena Mangione-Lora teaches Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages. Notre Dame Magazine published more about the experiences of the faculty and staff who participated in this immersion trip—read the story here. See a photo-essay from this trip here.