Scouting the Field

We struck out with a Haitian friend this morning to do some reconnaissance of Haitian communities in San Francisco. Hoping to establish some initial contacts and get a sense when people may be in their homes and available to be surveyed, we first walked through the public market where people sell various things on the street, and then caught a guagua (Dominican for "bus") out to the neighborhood where our friend said a lot of Haitians work.


What was peculiar about this experience was that we got off the bus in an area that was really quite affluent, with lots of new development, both retail and residential. This was not a mistake. We were in the right place, and proceeded to a construction site for a major new apartment complex, with a sign near the sales office outlining a rather extensive list of amenities. The three of us walked around the complex with another Haitian man we crossed paths with, who seemed to be a foreman of sorts for the construction site. A few of the buildings looked finished, but others were merely concrete skeletons in progress. According to those we encountered, the people who worked at the site (as well as their families) were essentially squatting in the structures they were working on. Behind the complex we also came across several shanties full of people, including small children. The juxtaposition of this incredible wealth with such tremendous poverty was maddening. 


I didn't understand much of the conversation that occurred in Creole, but most of the people we spoke to did not have any documents, were miserable in their current circumstances and were skeptical of our project, asking what direct, concrete benefit they would receive from us. Explaining our desire to understand their plight provides an abstract benefit at best. We hope that the findings from our project may help leaders and service providers in San Francisco how to best reach this vulnerable population, but that's a ways down the road, and implies a lot of suffering on their part between now and then. Even then, maybe our findings will do very little to help them at all. Tough pill to swallow for sure. 


In the process, we met some leaders in the Haitian faith community, and will return to introduce ourselves and our project at two of tomorrow morning's church services, hoping to forge a more trusting relationship.