I had begun to speak to my father about opportunities to go abroad. My condition was that my destination be a country that was in a state of need, as there has always been an imbalance of the distribution of wealth in the world, and I saw it as pointless to help raise up a nation that was already sitting high. There would probably be fewer opportunities to do so anyway in a wealthier country.

I continued on with the daily grind of temporary work, aiming no longer for just survival but with the intention of earning enough money for my next adventure. Allegiance Staffing sent me to a hotel for a couple of days to help with a convention that was taking place, primarily running dishes from the conference hall to the dish room and other small tasks. I had previously done similar physically-demanding tasks, many times with a team that was completely uninspired or fueled by resentment, but here I felt a level of camaraderie that I had only ever witnessed in Albuquerque. You could tell by the dialogue, the facial expressions, and the energy that most of us knew we were all part of a team.

“Orale (Let’s go)!” was a common expression to hear as a way for people to encourage each other. We may have been one or two pegs up from the bottom, and there was no glory at all in the work that we did, but none of us seemed to have any intention of slipping back down.

During a break I went to use the bathroom. As I exited the bathroom, something peculiar happened. A man wearing a cowboy hat, as we were about to pass each other at the entrance, stopped just as he was right next to me, his words sounding like thunder rumbling in an overhead cloud.

“God is looking down at you RIGHT NOW!” he said.

I didn’t fully look at him, but I paused for a brief moment and nodded, then continued on my way. It wasn’t the type of thing that you could thank someone for, so the nod was the best I could do. Hearing his words, I felt like even though it seemed like I was alone, it also seemed like someone else was watching out for me, just like how I felt when I was stranded on top of the Sandia Mountains.

In general, I noticed in Albuquerque there were a lot of people who weren’t afraid to express their faith publicly. It was a place of terrible violence, but also extreme religious devotion. In this regard, New Mexico mirrored Florida. I had witnessed both extremes there too. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, because when people are at the bottom of something, they often have little choice but to look up. The main difference here, as I once mentioned, was that Albuquerquians, as far as I had seen, don’t target people unless there are preexisting issues, making life much less chaotic. Safe is definitely a word I wouldn’t choose, however.

Eventually, Allegiance Staffing sent me back to Sara Lee, but this time to work with their daytime production team. It was familiar surroundings, but I got to see everything from a different angle. This time there was no foreman chasing me around making sure I was doing everything he wanted me to do the way he wanted it to be done. The work was moving at a much more acceptable pace for me.

I ran into some of my old teammates on the sanitation crew, and they expressed gratitude for seeing me again, and I was equally grateful to see them again. It was as if I had been sent here to wrap things up before moving on.

“I can’t believe he fired you. $#@& him!” Greg said very disgustedly.

Greg always resented the foreman as well, and could sometimes be seen making inappropriate gestures behind his back. The foreman caught up with me as well. I wasn’t angry with him but rather indifferent, and I didn’t have much to say to him, but my reappearance showed him that nothing he did was going to stop me.

A man from Sudan on the production team I had talked to briefly a couple of times asked what happened to me. I told him the story, and he came back with a story of his own. He told me that when he first started working at Sara Lee, he started with the sanitation crew, like me, but he was fired by my old foreman after only the first day! I didn’t feel as bad getting fired after hearing that, and sympathized with him, convinced there was nothing he could’ve done to be legitimately fired after only one day, especially given his friendly nature and the fact that he had been in the production department as long as I had been there.

“Those guys are bad!” he said, referring to the foreman and the supervisor.

It was good to know that it wasn’t just a case of me being a worthless worker, and there may have been more involved in the selection process than what was made public.

As I was going on with my duties, I heard a voice call out from about 15 meters away.

“Hey!!”

I turned to look and saw the Wolf standing there looking at me as he threw his arms in the air from the center of the facility. It seemed like not everyone got the full story about what happened to me, because The Wolf seemed totally unaware.

“If I woulda known I woulda fought for ya!” he said after I explained my situation, still considering himself to be somewhat of a mentor.

I had one item on my agenda as far as The Wolf was concerned. Before I got fired, he promised me he would teach me how to box, but when I reminded him of it, he refused.

“Oh, I can’t do that stuff anymore. I got in a fight,” he said.

It wasn’t much of a surprise anymore, being at least his third time.

“You dropped somebody, huh?” I asked.

“A-GAIN!” he said sarcastically as he cocked his head to the side a bit with a look on his face that was somehow a mixture of both guilt and pride, and I laughed.

It appeared his immunity was still intact. I never asked him what his most recent rumble was about, because I already knew how he handled his business.

As laid back as the production side of Sara Lee was, I started to consider it as an option if none of my far-reaching plans worked out. I could sneak back in without having to deal with any of my old superiors and whatever they were on, possibly literally, knowing this place.

It was hard for me not to continue to notice how the music seemed to reflect my outer circumstances. A couple of weeks earlier, when I was applying to enlist in the Navy, the song “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee was hot stuff. To me, with its highly charged and rapid pace, it represented a primal surge of energy, not the least bit refined, as I took a step from unemployment to possible deployment. It may not have been the option for me, but at least I got my feet moving, and it spurred me to further action.

By this time, a few well-known artists, including Mariah Carey, had come out with comeback songs. Her song, titled “It’s Like That” had that energy of climbing back up the mountain and reaching the summit, just as I had done, and it gave me a view on life worth seeing again. Mariah Carey and I obviously had very different lives, but I could relate to the theme and energy of the song. I managed to make it back up to where I fell from, but the question was, where to go from here? Where was the next mountain?

My father, after doing some investigation, found a volunteer group that was sending volunteers to Africa to help with agriculture and other infrastructural enterprises. I had always heard stories about conditions of extreme poverty there, so it fit my criteria in terms of being sent to a place in need of help. Wherever those mountains were, they probably weren’t in Africa, if they truly existed at all, but at least I could use it as a possible transition to another journey afterwards.

In contrast to my plans to travel abroad, more work developments were taking place in Albuquerque. I was sent back to the construction site that produced drywall where I had previously worked to clear a furnace of old insulation bricks in a hazardous work environment. This time, I was on a team of a few individuals other than myself doing not nearly as painful of tasks. The foreman named Paul had us sweeping around the facility for most of the day.

“Take your time,” he said.

I did my best to take my time, but the work was so easy that we couldn’t help but finish quickly. For some reason, I seemed to be the unofficial team leader because the others in my group were always coming to me with their concerns, and I was always the one who reported back to Paul in his office. Each time I came back to ask for another task, he would emphasize taking our time. Time after time I tried to work at a slow pace, but my work ethic wouldn’t allow me to slack off like he seemed to want us to do. I wasn’t sure what the reason was for that. Perhaps there was some benefit I was unaware of that his company got from having temporary workers that he didn’t appear to truly need at this moment. I went back to ask for work one final time and he lost his composure.

“Come on, man,” he replied, disappointed that I was asking for more work once again.

I didn’t understand. I was fired from my previous job for being too slow. This time, the foreman was getting annoyed because I was working too fast.

At the end of the shift, just as I thought there was no way for me to win here in this city, Paul approached me and told me the team was looking for another man and asked me if I wanted to join. I was looking for regular full-time work again, but going to Africa was a rare opportunity I didn’t want to miss out on either. It was a genuine conundrum, and one of the most important crossroads of my life. The choice was between material security and adventure/the unknown. I couldn’t decide on the spot, so I told him I would think about it.

I was born into a family of travelers, and for the last couple of years I had been doing a lot of traveling of my own.  I not only had a genetic disposition for it, but I also had a personal desire as well. It didn’t take long for me to make my decision. After nearly five months, I decided to make a quick exit from Albuquerque to go back home through the northern route, completing the circle I had initiated the previous year when I went out to New York City and looped down and around to Albuquerque. I knew going abroad would expand my horizons to unprecedented levels, and I was excited about the journey ahead.