May 21 07

May 21, 2007

Golf/scrapbooking day. I love Mondays. Robert left a little later than usual, so we had time this morning to get some things ready to mail and clean up our e-mail. Then he went by the health center to pick up some papers and ended up being late leaving for golfing. The psychologist there started talking to him and he had trouble getting away. The psychologist’s name is Ishmael Gonzalez. He works for the tribe and needed to vent a few frustrations. He said that his experience out here has been quite a paradox. The tribe wants services for the people yet doesn’t follow through with commitments. They are putting a mobile unit in Cibecue for Ishmael’s offices and those of a social worker. They office was supposed to be ready last February, and now they’re telling him it will be September before he can move over there. Seems they put this unit in place without first determining if there was water and sewer available there. Now they can’t find the water and sewer lines so have had to hire an outside contractor to get these luxuries to the trailer.

Then he mentioned to Robert that he was counseling Myrna. Robert already knew this and told Ishmael that she had told us she’s going to counseling and we have really encouraged her to continue with that. Ishmael said that was refreshing because a lot of churches here on the reservation tell their people not to get counseling from him. They tell them that all they need to do is come to church. And we wonder why it’s so hard to get anyone to attend any sort of family service group.

He also said that the politics on the reservation are really hard to deal with. Politics, cronyism, and nepotism are out of control. We have heard this from several people, but he did have a new twist. He said that sometimes in the work place people will be told to stop working hard because they’re making the other workers look bad, especially if these workers are connected to the tribal leaders. Sort of explains why it’s so hard to see much progress here. He said it will take a couple of generations before things change much on the reservation. We think he’s a little optimistic. More like the Millennium, probably.

And that’s it. Robert was off to golf and I hid away in the trailer all day.