Cubetas

i bet theres a spanish word most of you don't know.

It means bucket.
It also means $2.50 to blueberry pickers in NC.

I've decided to finally write about what it is I do, at the work part of the jesuit volunteer corps that i've been deriding lately.

Yesterday we went on blueberry outreach. The migrant farmworkers all came from either Mexico or Guatemala, about 50/50 on the ratios. Most of them got here a week or so ago, coming from Florida on the blueberry circuit. They live in temporary housing, in trailers, and don't really care where they live since the farmers provide it for them. They're also only going to be here for a few more weeks before heading up to New Jersey to pick blueberries there.

They definitely weren't getting minimum wage, since blueberries aren't ripe yet and they're paid by the bucket -- so they'll work all day and maybe earn $15 . They don't understand that even if thats all they earn, they still have to earn at least minimum wage. When you try to explain, they interrupt and say, "pero nos pagan por contrato" -- they pay us per bucket, in other words. Its hard to explain to people who never really learned past basic math and have trouble doing their multiplication tables. Even if they do understand, its hard to calculate.

Theres so many of them. I didn't feel any despair this time, or the need to cry when i went home -- its just a way of life for them. They migrate from camp to camp, state to state, earn enough money to survive and get drunk to help lessen the sharp sting of reality, maybe get a prostitute every now and then, maybe meet another lonely migrant worker, get married, have children.

I have hope for those kids. We met a lot of kids last night, and all of them spoke English. Some of them were trilingual, speaking Spanish, English, and their native Indian dialect. Many of these dialects we had never heard of before, but theres close to a 100 dialects in Mexico alone. If you can speak English, and get a decent education, you might be able to do something for yourself. Run a store, or work inside somewhere, where you don't have to move from place to place constantly looking for backbreaking work.

I need to start taking photos.

The trailers were in terrible condition. Dirty, cramped quarters, 7-15 living in one trailer (i've been to a trailer park where 17 migrant workers lived in one 2 bedroom trailer for three months), and beds that wouldn't pass inspection. But we didn't focus on that, since these workers don't really care about their housing when they only live there for a few weeks -- instead we try to talk to them about pay, since they do care about pay. But it has to be really bad for someone to want to do something about it -- do they demand their rights, or do they count on a job again next year? Retaliation is a big problem.

and its in the middle of NOWHERE. seriously. nowhere. normally outreach takes place within 20 miles of some kind of town, but these fields were seriously in the middle of nowhere.

I only vividly remember one man, because he was frightening and incredibly sad. He was in his forties, maybe older, and he was the drunkest person I've ever met in my entire life (and that is saying a LOT) who was not passed out. I'm surprised I could understand his slurred speech. He was by himself in the trailer, his friends were working the packing house that night, and he was very nice to us. He pulled out a couple of chairs, but we knew that we weren't going to get anywhere talking to him, that he'd just forget the next day, but we spoke to him for a minute to be polite. He had terrible teeth. Most of the front ones were gone, and his gums were bleeding on the other ones -- you could see the tops of the remaining teeth were bloody where they met the gums. And it was clear he hadn't brushed his teeth in a really long time; as soon as he shut the door to the outside, the trailer filled with his breath. it was really awful. at that point ann and I shoved out of that trailer; we couldn't take it anymore. He was sad when we left though, he must be lonely. Later, when we were done with the rest of the trailers in that camp, his friend came out of the trailer and told us that we shouldn't come at night because prostitutes came at night and the grower got mad at them when women visited the camps, and that we should come during the day like respectable people.

It was rainy, and cold, an unbelievably dismal day. But overall I thought it went well; we reached a lot of workers who were fairly receptive to what we had to say, and at least a few who wanted to read the information we passed out.

we'll see how the summer goes.