Systemic/Structural Issues of Suffering and Accompaniment

What?Farmer believes it is crucial to address the systemic and structural issues and conditions that cause suffering because we become able to identify the worst assaults — “those most at risk of great suffering,” and in turn hopefully find a way to change the risk or take away the risk altogether. (Farmer, 30) In the opening paragraphs of the chapter “On Suffering and Structural Violence,” Paul Farmer asks: “By what mechanisms, precisely, do social forces ranging from poverty to racism become embodied as an individual experience?” (Farmer, 30) In asking this, Farmer opens and introduces the central thesis of his writing: the poor people of the world suffer the most in terms of structural violence. The structural issue that I identified in my Community Context worksheet was the unfair treatment of Latinos in the Marin community because they tend to be poorer and have less educational opportunities as compared to non-minorities and people of color. This week’s reading and writing by Paul Farmer deepens my understanding of that structural issue because it gives more detail into what exactly these people face. The people I work with at my community partner site (Canal Alliance) don’t receive the same educational, career, and overall life opportunities as other races in the same community and county. Knowing how these people can suffer at the hands of things they can’t control themselves makes me want to work even harder to help these kids as much as I can.

So What? Acéphie and ChouChou’s stories illustrate structural injustice and violence with their own personal and real examples, showing that the suffering of people is real at the hands of structural injustice and violence. For Acéphie, her life had always been a string of tragedies. Her life started out with her parents had decent jobs but their home was drowned, “along with most of their belongings, their cops, and the graves of their ancestors.” (Farmer, 33) Acéphie was nineteen years old and still in primary school, her educational suffering already able to be seen. Acéphie had caught the eye of a somewhat promiscuous soldier named Captain Jacques Honorate and she eventually returned his gaze after much persistence. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to her until the birth of her daughter from another man, Honorate gave Acéphie the AIDS virus. One thing Farmer ends the story with is that Acéphie’s story isn’t one of AIDS or isn’t just her story either. Her story is interlocked with the stories of all the other people who had to suffer: Captain Honorate’s first wife and five kids, his other two sick sexual partners, Blanco (the father of Acéphie’s daughter), and Acéphie’s family themselves and how they had to suffer after her death, including her father who hung himself.

For Chouchou, his story isn’t much better. He started off life dropping out of primary school when his mother died. His childhood was described as “. . . nothing remarkable . . . It was brief and harsh, like most in rural Haiti.” (Farmer, 36) The next years that Chouchou lived through were hard times for all of the poor in Haiti due to a family dictatorship causing violence and fights with other countries. During this time, 23,000 Haitians tried to seek political asylum in the United States and only 8 were approved. Unfortunately, one day on a truck ride, Chouchou was seized by an out-of-uniform soldier for a remark made about the uneven roads. After being seized at the next checkpoint, he was beaten by a group of soldiers and stayed there for several days. Later on in his life, he was arrested again and beaten and tortured for days until he was “left in a ditch to die,” until his family came and brought him back home. (Farmer, 38) It took three days for Chouchou to die from his injuries. Because the government at the time was the ruling power, Chouchou’s death was probably looked over and not cared about by any form of authority. The suffering he and his family faced because of their economic, educational, and life circumstances was something common for the poor people of Haiti at the time.

One observation/story I can draw on to illustrate injustice that impacts people at my community partner site is when one of the kids at Canal Alliance in the room I was in was being told by one of the tutors to come to her tutoring session, and she was fighting really hard not to. One common thing I realized was that none of the kids enjoy their time at the tutoring sessions there, something I thought was normal and something I understood because I always thought: what kid wants to go to tutoring after a full day of school? It wasn’t until I actually asked them why they didn’t want to go to tutoring that I understood the deeper injustice a lot of these kids face. These kids said that they didn’t like going to tutoring because “they weren’t going to understand anyway” and that they usually just tell them the answers as opposed to actually helping them learn how to do it. Because these kids do go to public school and I did for most of my life, I understand how it is, and the injustices of that type of school system. Not every child is treated the same with the same amount of attention, and once you get behind, you’re behind for the rest of the year. Whenever I go to Canal Alliance I try my hardest to actually teach the kids how to do the things themselves rather than me doing it for them, because hearing the relief when they say they actually understand something is worth it.

“Bearing witness if done on behalf of others, for the sake of others . . . no matter how great the pain of bearing witness, it will never be as great as the pain of those who endure, whether in silence or with cries, the indignities described in these pages.” (Farmer, Pathologies of Power, 28) It is important to “bear witness” because if you choose to just look over systemic and structural issues and injustice, you yourself are allowing it to keep going and in a way, supporting it. One person can’t change the world, but you may be able to change someone’s world by bearing witness to their systemic and structural issue or injustice.

Now What? The concept of accompaniment informs my role and relationships at my community partner site because accompaniment is crucial in order to help the kids there. Farmer says: “There’s an element of mystery, of openness, in accompaniment: I’ll go with you and support you on your journey wherever it leads.” (Farmer, 1) The kids at Canal Alliance, because they are at such an impressionable age, need to know that someone, anyone is there for them to support them and be there for them. They need to know that someone believes not only in them but in the person they can be. Accompaniment as an approach can be done by showing these kids that they are believed in and showing them that they can achieve what they put their mind to. They need to know that their dreams don’t have to be just that and can be turned into a reality. It was really amazing to be able to talk to these kids about where they wanted to go to college. Although I do only work with middle schoolers, the fact that they actually wanted to go to college and knew some places they might want to go to was amazing to me, because I know so many people who didn’t even know things like that as a senior in high school. The kids I’m working with are on the right path to their best educational lives and I couldn’t be happier for them, and will be there to accompany them for the rest of the semester.