Please post:
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Hello Everyone

Last Friday, August 13 a SOL caravan left LA to take 210 bales of emergency
relief hay to the grandmothers' cattle at the Winslow impound yard. I had
arranged to have Wilbert Goy, who is in charge of the Winslow impound yard,
of the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission meet us at the imound gate to let us in
at 10am Saturday, August 14th. The impound yard (160 acres) is kept locked
and is only opened once a month to allow the access of the owners of the
impounded cattle to check on their animals.

For those of you who are not aware of what the "Winslow impound yard" is, it
is the 160 acre field where the BIA takes the grandmothers' cattle that are
impounded. The cattle are not fed regularly, are not watered (except for a
couple of large puddles due to recent rain), and are not cared for
medically. So, the cattle, who in essence are the grandmothers' livelihood
besides their sheep, are slowly dying of starvation, dehydration, and
disease.

Over the past 2 weeks Sol put together a caravan for last Friday that took
210 bales of hay to the Winslow impound yard.

Thank you to: El Eggart for finding a hay distributor, to the hay
distributor (wants to remain anonymous) for donating 210 bales of hay,
Marty Hornstein for getting us 2 22ft trucks to haul the hay in at no cost,
Chris Vernon, Colin Reynolds, Rene Lopez, El Eggart, David Adair for
volunteering for the caravan and going way beyond the call of duty, to
Marsha Monestersky and Diane Lesher for getting Wilbert Goy to wait for us
at the gate of the impound field. Thanks also go to: Marty Hornstein,
Solcommunications, and SEE for donating gas money. Thank you Mauro and Vic
Phelps for trying to get media coverage.

The following is the diary of this caravan:

Friday, August 13, 9:00am David Adair leaves from LA to drive 2 hours to
the hay distributor's location to load one truck of hay. At 12:30pm Colin
and I leave LA in the second truck to go and load up hay. At 4:30pm I find
out that Channel 11 news wants to meet the caravan at my place at 6:30pm to
film the caravan leaving. Colin and I are racing to get back in time. We
hit traffic. I make calls to everyone reminding them to be at my place by
6:30pm. Colin and I make it back at 6:25pm. I find out that a volunteer
can't go. This leaves me with no co-pilot for one vehicle. I start making
calls to find someone. No luck. I drop this vehicle and our caravan heads
out at 8:30pm. The news people never showed up. After filling up the two
trucks with gas (the only vehicles that went), we leave LA for Winslow with
2 people in one truck, 3 in another. We drive 20 minutes and one of the hay
trucks overheats. We pull off into Glendale at a gas station and open the
hood. The front of the fan (the "nose")had completely come off, flown into
the radiator and cut a hole into it-which is now leaking coolant, the blades
of the fan are bent, and the belt has come off the engine (in one piece). I
immediately call Marsha, who is staying at Diane's in Flaggstaff and ask
them if they can meet Wilbert Goy from the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission
office at 10am at the Winslow impound yard (about an hour from Flagstaff)
and ask him to wait for us. I tell her we should be there by 4pm (a
complete guess).

I call the leasing company. It takes a few calls to get a new truck there
(there were only 2 people in the office and they couldn't spare anyone to
come to our location). After speaking to them a few times I let them know
in no uncertain terms-but in a nice way-that there was no way we were not
going to Arizona. Eventually a new truck arrives and now it's time for 4
people (myself, Renee, Chris, and Colin) to unload 110 bales of hay at 100
lbs each into the new empty replacement truck. Mom is in charge of the
phone and morale.

At 4:00am we leave Glendale, CA, very sweaty and stinky, and start again for
the impound yard in AZ. End up in construction on the I-10, Chris has an
asthma attack from the hay dust (he didn't know he was allergic), and now we
are desperately looking for Benadryl.

Finally locate Benadryl, start out again to impound yard. At 4:00pm we
arrive in Flaggstaff. I call Marsha and Diane and let them know we're
there. Diane brings Marsha to our location, Marsha gets in a truck, and off
we go to meet Wilbert.

About 1/4 mile from the gate, a white government vehicle goes by in the
other direction. Wilbert had left the impound yard, tired of waiting I'm
sure. But, thank God, he turns around, somehow knowing it's us even though
the trucks are enclosed, so you can't tell what's in them, and then gets in
front of our caravan and opens the gate. I finally get to meet Wilbert,
thanked him profusely for waiting 7 hours on a Saturday so that we could
deliver our hay.

After seeing the terrain, I realize that there is no way the trucks could
drive all over and drop hay near the stranded cattle that are too weak to
walk back to the corral to feed. However, after speaking with Wilbert, I
find out that there will be people from Big Mountain at the Winslow tract to
brand and vaccinate their cattle on Monday. So, they can bring their cattle
in and feed them themselves.

At 5:30pm, myself, Chris, Colin, Renee and Marsha start unloading the first
truck of 110 bales of hay (the 2nd time for the 4 caravan people). All of a
sudden Wilbert is helping too. Not only did he help unload the hay, but he
and Marsha got to talk about the Winslow impound yard conditions, etc. He
stated that there was no money to buy hay for the cattle or to provide more
troughs (there are 2 there) for the 140 cattle located on the tract. There
is an empty water container that is used to haul water back and forth, but
apparently it's too expensive to fill it up and haul it back and forth ( I
found out it's only about $10 in gas to do this). Now it's time to unload
truck #2's 80 bales of hay. We kept 20 bales of hay to take up to the land
for 3 families that deserately needed the hay since we also had to take
Marsha up to the land also.

We are done unloading the hay at 8:30pm. It starts to rain, so we drive
back to the highway as fast as possible so the trucks don't get stuck in the
mud in the field. We start out for Tuba City (2 hours away) to gas up and
continue on to Kayenta, where we're hoping to get a Motel (we usually stay
in our vehicles or at someone's hogan on the land, but we were in desperate
need of a shower, and wanted to be as close to Big Mountain as possible
because we had to drop Marsha off on the land.) It's still raining, we
finally get to Tuba City and I call Carlos Begay, our main interpretor and
ask him if he can meet us somewhere to pick up the hay and Marsha and take
them to the land because my group of people have done about as much as we
could do. Carlos agrees to meet us at Black Mesa Trading Post at 10am the
next morning. We now start driving 1-1/2 hours to Kayenta. This was done
mainly to cut 3-5 hours off of our drive time Sunday because Kayenta/Black
Mesa Trading Post is in the opposite direction we need to go to head back to
LA.

At 1:30am we arrive in Kayenta and there's no vacancy at the Motel. We call
all of the other motels and they're all full too. We put a deposit down on
three blankets from the motel and sleep in the back of one of the hay
trucks. We finally get to bed at around 2am.

At 7:00am the next morning we get up and eat at the motel (The Anasazi Inn),
and leave for the Trading Post at 8:15am.

Carlos arrives at the trading post, helps unload the hay, makes 2 trips to
drop them off, and takes Marsha and the hay to the mountain. At 12:00pm
Sunday, August 15th our caravan of 2 empty 22ft trucks starts back to LA.

We arrive in LA at 12:30am Monday Aug. 16th. We stop and fill up the trucks
with gas. Clean and wash them out. I call David Creech and ask him if he
can meet us at the leasing location in an hour. Colin and Chris take one
truck to one leasing location, and Renee, El, and I take the other truck to
the other leasing company, an hour away. Still on the freeway heading for
the leasing company, traffic is stopped. Apparently someone has decided to
jump from an overpass onto the freeway and commit suicide.

We arrive at the leasing office at around 3am. We check in the truck, say
hello to David Creech and off we go, homeward bound.

Mom (El) and I arrive home at 4:00am and finally get to bed at 4:30am only
to turn around and be at work at 9:30am Monday morning.

I cannot tell you how hard we worked that weekend. Chris, Colin, Renee, El,
all of us are not only volunteers, but it was the first caravan for Chris
and Colin. Through all of the hard physical labor, no sleep from Thursday
night until the few hours' worth in Kayenta at early morning Sunday, my
group kept a smile on their faces and love in their hearts. It's people
like these that make it all possible. Without them this would not have
gotten done. We accomplished everything that we set out to do including a
commitment from Wilbert Goy that there would be 2 men working the impound
yard on a daily basis, and kept each other going through it all. Thank you
again.

Until the next caravan
Joelle of Sol Communications