Deltacanopy

Posted on 20th Apr 2010 @ 12:27 AM

On Friday, a school bus carried six Georgian Court University students down Route 88, onto a sandy road and into the Third World.

The dark blue bus parked on a small sand lot behind a car alarm shop. At either end of the lot were two makeshift soccer goals made with weathered 2x4s. A tattered Mexican flag marks the entrance to a camp shielded from the outside world by weeds and cattails. Twelve men spend their nights inside the camp.

They draw their water from a dirty stream, and have cans of food packed tightly into milk crates. The tents that they sleep inside are raised on wooden platforms and shrouded with brown tarps.

The six young women from Georgian Court's campus ministry club who showed up Friday with the Rev. Steven Brigham, or Minister Steve, were there to build a small outdoor shower designed to be used in the backyards of suburban homes.

The students wanted to do something to help the homeless near the university as part of a Lenten service project. The Roman Catholic season of Lent remembers how Jesus Christ spent 40 days fasting in the desert.

The shower is designed to draw water from a garden hose. But without a water supply, the campers would have to hook up to a bucket of water heated by a turkey fryer. Pressure would be created by a pump powered by a car battery.

"You really have to get wet, turn it off, soap up and rinse off," said David Jones, who helps Brigham with his daily rounds to the homeless camps in northern Ocean County. "You can't just get in and relax because the water is gone just like that."

The camp, littered with empty cans of Milwaukee's Best beer, was mostly deserted.

As the group set up a nylon canopy, which would house the shower, Javier Tenahua emerged from his tent and stood on the outskirts of the group.

"I came here alone," Tenahua said through Carmelina Saturria, a Georgian Court student who translated. "I did not think that I would have to live like this when I started."

Tenahua has lived, undocumented, in the United States for four years, and it took him a year to travel from Texas to New Jersey. He pours concrete for a living, but there is not much work for him in the winter. He can no longer afford to make short phone calls to his family in Puebla, Mexico.