Part 3: ethnographic (individual and group) case studies

[tries to show: the situation for real people; AND, compare/contrast that situation with other folks studied in this course!]

I was one of three Baby Boomers in a group orientation that occurs every Monday at the Food for People facility on 14th and Summer streets. The other 7 newbie volunteers were “kids” between their mid-teens and late-20s. The diverse group had various motives for wanting to volunteer at Food for People, from “wanna-be do-gooder bleeding hearts socialists” like me to court-mandated diversion program participants who had been convicted of public intoxication (or far worse).

The orientation was thorough, beginning and ending in the front entry area, which contains a reception desk and lobby seating, free food (bread and produce) for anyone that walks in the door, and the all-important “choice pantry” (described above) for eligible clients. In addition, we toured: the intake interview rooms; the hot-meal kitchen; the meeting/eating room; the food prep, cull, pack, repack areas, and adjacent stacks of dry goods, walk-in refrigerators and freezers in the “middle” warehouse; and a “back” warehouse with more pallets of staple goods obtained from the federal surplus food program, as well as via ongoing regional food drives.

Even on the days when the choice pantry is closed (such as “orientation Mondays”) there are at least a dozen folks performing a variety of tasks to keep all of Food for People’s programs and events running. A buzz of goodwill permeates the building, bouncing off of the diverse educational posters on the walls and the pamphlets strewn about on tables that provide facts, figures, and illustrations on the growing need for affordable and nutritious food in the wealthiest nation on earth. These people are "voting" with their hands, feet, and hearts, no longer waiting on politicians to fix things; instead, they "act local while thinking global" (Moo Wk 5, people and politics).

The Volunteer coordinator is an energetic dynamo with a newly minted MA from nearby Humboldt State University. She explained many important issues during the orientations. Her presentation style is a blend of enthusiasm, patience, precision, and no-nonsense facts about policies for serving the food-bank’s clients, honoring the donors’ preferences, and following government edicts.

She also made three key points that are widely embraced by scholars (for example, Moo, Wk 5, The politics of Food) and widely ignored by large parts of the public: 1) adequate nutrition is a human right for all, not a privilege for those with the cash (see a comparative case for Africa, in C&C, Ch 17); 2) most of those without sufficient resources to purchase adequate nutrition are children, women, the chronically infirm, and the elderly; and (using methodological relativism, Krissman, Wk 3), 3) all clients are assisted without judgment, since the circumstances that brought them to the food-bank are much more complex than the stereotypes presented by many in the media and politics.

For the first year, my primary job was as a “shopper’s assistant.” I love this job because it provides contact with the folks that the Food for People’s choice pantry was created to serve. Many shoppers shower their helpers with praise and affection, even though the small number of paid staff and many other volunteers do most of the harder, behind the scenes, work.

Next are a few of the interactions that I had with folks when I was a shopper’s assistant…

Vignette 1: After considering the relative benefits of two “miscellaneous” items on a “choice pantry” rack at some length, Ms. “C” chooses the peanut curry sauce (“It will taste better on a stir-fry!” she declares.) Now “C” pushes her cart to the bagging table, where shoppers pack up their food before leaving the pantry. I compliment her on her large insulated tote bag, and she replies, “My daughter got it somewhere. Since my bike chain broke I’ve had to walk here, and the kids' milk was warm by the time I got home.” “How far away is your place?” I ask, concerned about the 15+ pounds of food that this 60-something year-old grandmom would be carrying up hill and down dale. “I think it’s about 3 miles, but it’s a beautiful day today!” “C” says as she pushes open the front door and waves goodbye. I want to drive her home myself, but I ride MY bike to the food-bank. For some reason, she reminds me of my own mom at that age, some 20 years before her lingering death. I am also troubled by the fact that “C” doesn’t have enough cash to get a bike chain fixed…

No hanging out for me!

Vignette 2: 15-year old “M” says that she volunteers most days at Food for People. I ask why she is spending her summer at a food-bank. She says, “Oh, it’s something to do. My dad grounded me in April, and school and the pantry are the only places I’m allowed to go!” I try to imagine what such an innocent-looking teenage girl could have done to be punished for so long… “Well, maybe he’ll let you slide soon?” I ask hopefully. “I doubt it,” she responds. “I won’t get to do anything else until I finish high school.”

Getting old, fast...

Vignette 3: Ms. “R” looks like a teenage surfer girl, with tie-dyed T-shirt, cut off jeans, and flip-flops. Except THIS surfer girl is way pregnant, and already has 3 stepladder children waiting for her in the lobby while she obtains an emergency food box. “I’m living in a place with a ‘closed kitchen,” she tells me to explain why she doesn’t want to shop in the choice pantry for fresh fruits and veggies. "They are packing me a box full of energy bars and trail mix, so I can snack between meals" She shivers slightly, then adds, “I moved home for a few months, but things didn’t work out. Now I’m back in Eureka without any of my warm clothes…”

Who gets to judge who?

A few months ago I underwent new training, and began the much more daunting job of intake interviewer. This position involves much more intimate interaction with the food-bank’s clients, beginning with the fact that the interview rooms are only 4 feet by 10. A desk, a few chairs, and 4 walls are the setting within which each client, often with a partner, roommate, and/or children pile into the room, and are asked a series of questions beginning with an inspection of their IDs, followed by demographic and economic data involving every aspect of the client’s household. While my anthropology training has proven invaluable, this job places me near the center of a situation rife with the rigidities of hierarchy that differentiate those with power, prestige, and wealth from those without (RCA, 159-161). One result is that there is much more potential for friction here than in the interviews I conducted with undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

I try to make light of the fact that I need to know so much personal information. I assure clients that no one will use their intake sheet with the aim of investigating their statements. Yet it does feel rude to ask exactly how much money a person has earned that month, whether they have housing, and what its conditions are, and who they share food with. Most of the clients submit to all of these indignities with aplomb because they really need the shopping cart full of food that awaits them in the pantry. A few are irritated or embarrassed, and they try to rush me through the process, but federal law, donor guidelines, and the organization's desire to cater its services to its clientle all force me to insist that each interviewee gives me considered answers to all of my questions. 

[Jethro Tull documented the marginal lives of the homeless living along the River Thames in the late 1960s. The project began with the photos of Ian Anderson's wife, Jennie. It culminated in the album Aqualung, which paints a dystopia in which the "religious" are snobby pillars of society that look down on the least of "god's children." It is a fitting soundtrack for this ethnographic post on the hungry poor of Humboldt County!]

About 1 out of 6 Food for People clients are homeless... The homeless can't give interviewers an address, and many must admit that they haven’t earned any income during the previous month. Some of them are couch surfing, while others are living out of vehicles, but many are living rough on the streets, in the gullies, or by the bay. While most clients make extraordinary efforts to maintain their hygiene, many interviewees don't have ready access to facilities or just don’t care anymore. Sometimes the reek is dizzying in the tiny interview space, but I understand that many of these folks have such major deficits that cleanliness is unlikely without professional assistance. (Yet, homecare workers are so poorly paid, that many of them also seek help from the food-bank.) Some clients are completely addled (that is, mentally ill), others were born or became severely handicapped, a large number are teenage runaways, and too many are grossly obese, or devastated by other chronic diseases. Finally, many had such unstable upbringings and/or suffered from domestic abuse that they have given up on themselves.

The worst case yet began when the other intake interviewer (a retired probation officer) asked me to take a client she couldn’t bear to deal with. It turned out to be a 23-year old woman with full-blown AIDS... Just three decades ago religious zealots claimed that a strange new disease was God's plague on gay Americans, yet it now afflicts mainly straight women in disavantaged circumstances in both Western and Third World nations (C&C, Ch 4; RCA, 120, 121). 

But what made this interview especially tough was that the woman had a 5-day old baby girl in tow. I don’t know how someone in this woman's condition negotiated the healthcare system to bring a fetus to term, or how she got the baby out of the hospital (RCA, 57). The two of them had spent the previous night at the Eureka Rescue Mission, and were about to move into one of the dozen “clean and sober” rooming houses that are scattered around the city. The woman clutched at her newborn like a 3-year old with a new Barbie doll.  I doubt that she can take care of herself, let alone this tiny baby. The fact that this woman got pregnant, gave birth, and still has a baby in her custody reminded me of the situation in the impoverished northeast of Brazil (C&C, Ch 18), where the poverty, despair, and institutional neglect of women by both the governmental and private sectors leads to endemic squalor and frequent infanticide.

Finally, I collected some general socioeconomic data in the 8 weeks I have been working as an intake evaluator. In an average 2 hour shift I interview 20 clients, so I have data for more than 150 households.

All Food for People clients live on less than $1,100 a month in per capita earnings, and most earn under $900; 82% self-identify as “white”; 62% are women; 52% live alone; 46% have some form of government-recognized disability (which pays an average of about $800 a month, and weirdly disqualifies them for receiving food stamps!); 41% have minor dependents; 32% are senior citizens; 25% receive federally-funded food stamps; 18% are military vets; 16% are homeless; and, 15% self-report no income earned during the past month. 12 clients over the course of 8 weeks reported being college students: 5 at College of the Redwoods; and, 7 at Humboldt State University.

In addition, I have been told innumerable stories of workplace accidents, good jobs suddenly disappearing during the economic crisis of 2008 (RCA, 77-81), personal bankruptcies, and home foreclosures. One of the most common things clients say to me is, “I wouldn’t be here (at Food for People) if I had any other option.” Many appear to be humiliated to have to depend on a food-bank to feed themselves and their families.

In the next blog post I will summarize and conclude what I think that the information in this series of posts signifies…