Saturday, April 16, 2011

Fast and Slow.

Some people call the country life slow. In some ways it may be slow. People do talk slower, and nothing is a block away. Evenings and time off from work can be slow too. Too slow. If you can’t drive anywhere you are stuck sitting around in the evening, watching TV, listening to music, or trying to strike up conversations. I sat with the workers in one camp, on a plastic bucket like them, as the light died down. As far as work goes, though it’s as fast as any factory or holiday-season checkout line, only with heat thrown in to make it worse. They do get breaks for water, but it's not as though there's anything slow about the work itself. One farm let us stop the workers while they were working in a cornfield so that we could register them for our program. Some of the workers even wanted to have their pictures taken. Official SCPHC rules were that I could not use pictures of people’s faces for publicity. Still, I got some amazing pictures and videos. Such as this one, which I took before they stopped:

The video doesn't capture the sheer noise of it, you'll just have to imagine that.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Driven

Before I go any further about South Carolina, I should mention that most of the time I wasn’t alone. Like all Student Action with Farmworkers interns, I lived and worked with another intern. My intern partner was Pedro. He grew up in Georgia and cut tobacco for a living. He was now in college preparing for a career in medicine, possibly nursing or medical translation.

In college I had always traded on self deprecating humor and nervous stuttering apologies to get what I wanted or needed. Pedro was the complete opposite. He traded on deadpan bragging humor and measured words. If I had to sum Pedro up in one word, it would be “driven.” He was always figuring out ways to make our projects succeed. "I don't like being told I can't do something," he told me.

He wasn't driven in a nervous way though, or at least he did not show it. He was able to relax in his time off, even if his idea of relaxing was to go to Charleston or Burlington or check out Columbia's nightlife rather than just spend the night at home.

Many of the SAF interns like Pedro had come from similar situations to the people we were helping. Throughout my time in SAF, I spent time with people who had worked in fields or greenhouses and had now moved on to college. It struck me that what we were seeing was not exotic to them at all. It was life. It wasn't just about wanting to see the conditions of farmworkers. It was about giving back while moving ahead. It was about being driven.