A Typical Day

I wanted to go into more detail about a typical day of recruiting in the neighborhoods.  The past few days my partner and I were recruiting in RV Taylor homes.  These are public housing facilities.  They are small, cheaply made, and provide a sense that a family isn't suppose to get comfortable and feel at home in them.  They're supposed to live there until they can move out to a better living arrangement.  But, that's not always the result-- forcing families to live in these poorly built housing facilities.

So we are given tracking sheets with past participants and we go door to door via the tracking sheet information to try and find the children to sign them up to take the survey.

We knock on the first door.  No one answers so we start preparing a door hanger with information about the study.  Then a young boy about 12 answers the door and we definitely woke him up.  We get out to the neighborhoods pretty early, so waking up the kids who are sleeping in because it's summer is pretty common.  We get the child signed up and move on to the next address.

The next door we knock on houses a family not on the tracking sheet.  This is very common, especially in the public housing developments.  Families move in and out very often.  We ask for any children ages 10-18 and see if they're interested in getting signed up for the survey.  Luckily this boy has taken the survey in the past so he's already in our records.  The mother is holding back 3 kids who are pretty eagerly trying to get out on the porch to visit us.  The older one--who we are signing up is successful and expresses how excited he is for the survey.  He asks if it's in the same spot as last year and if he still gets $15.  He sweetly asks us to write down 10:55am instead of 11am so he's on time.  Then he let's his younger brother speak.  The younger boy makes little sense.  I attributed it to excitement, but his mother explained that he rarely talks and doesn't make much sense.  He has a learning disability and I'm pretty certain he was blind.

We move onto the next house.  This grandmother invites us in, fixes up the couch for us, and screams for all of her grandchildren to come into the room.  One grand-daughter, probably in her early twenties is bottle-feeding a 3-month old baby.  She was precious.  Unfortunately the mother was too old to take the survey, so we moved on to asking about the children on our tracking sheet.  We get them signed up.  We visit with the grandmother until we decided it's time for us to head out.

The next house looks vacant.  But from prior experience, just because something looks vacant doesn't always mean that it is.  In one instance, my partner and I swore a house was vacant and a family of 9 answered the door.  But, this house was definitely vacant.  We could see in the window.  The appliances were ripped out from the wall and taken-- all expect a thawed out refrigerator.  This is the worst smell in the world.  This smell mixed with piled garbage gives a scent of rotting carcass.  The windows weren't boarded up, so this house must have been recently moved out of.  The back door was wide open and we could see the thawed out refrigerator and garbage... this shot down my partner's assumption that a murder occurred here and a dead body must be rotting inside.

We find 2-3 more houses like this in our tracking sheets.  Sometimes it's easy to identify houses that are vacant--they're boarded up.  But other clues help us to determine the living situation in the household.  Can you feel the air conditioning escaping out of the door?  Is there recent mail on the porch?  Can you hear music/the TV on in the house?  Are you able to see in the windows?  Can you ask a neighbor?  One interesting fact that my partner and I have noticed is that many houses have ADT/Brinks security stickers everywhere.  I doubt these homes have these services, but it's definitely used to avoid robberies by the tenants.

We move on and knock on a house where the door is broken.  We hear people yelling at us to use the back door, so we do.  We're asked to come in by a young mother, probably in her thirties.  We have 7 kids on the tracking sheet.  We ask if they still live here and if they want to do the survey this year.  As a 2 year old is pulling on my leg and a scrawny cat is rubbing up against my partner were told that this child died and this teen is in jail, but the others want to do the survey and she has some others to sign up. The house is a mess and there's graffiti on the walls.  The lights aren't on-- and may not be working-- and I can see about 10 people sitting in the living room.

As we approach another house there are 5 old men sitting outside drinking beer out of cans in brown bags.  It's 10am.  We asked them about the children on our tracking sheets.  They men are nice, but due to their drunken state aren't much help.  With leave them with information and move on.

We have another address, which is further out so we start our walk.  We get stopped by a mother in a minivan with 6 children in the back.  She asks if we're with the survey and if we can sign up her daughter.  We ask her where she lives and we follow her to her driveway.  She hurries into the house with her kids and the young men all wearing red (probably members of the blood) at the neighboring house explains why.  We head in after her, get her daughter signed up, and then leave.  We're stopped by the men outside and asked if they can be signed up for the survey.  We tell them that we're looking for younger kids like 10-12 and they joke with us for a bit with that being their age.  They aren't very threatening and we leave the neighborhood and head back to the office for lunch.

Field Pictures

Roger Williams Public Housing:

Downtown Mobile:

Downtown Prichard:

Vacant:

Boarded up public housing facilities in RV Taylor Homes:

shannonmhitchcock@gmail.com

Hey all,

A pretty traumatic event occurred and I want to share it with my readers because it definitely has impacted me, the other interns, and my overall time spent in Mobile.  But, due to it's severity I don't feel comfortable sharing it with the world wide web so please email me personally and I will gladly email it to you without a problem.  I do feel that it was unfortunately life changing enough to share and would appreciate your interest and care to read it, so please don't hesitate.

Thanks much & miss you all.

Lots of love,

Shannon

The things that make you stronger

I wrote this last Thursday, but still needed to cool down and recuperate from it (and finish writing the post) before I posted it… so here it is:

I know this is really long, but please read it.

Today was difficult.

This internship has shown me things that I would never wish on my worst enemy.  I know that makes me sound like a martyr and I’m not trying to come off that way at all, so if I am I apologize.  I also don’t want to come off as a complainer because that’s not my intention either.  I’m using this blog to document my internship, and unfortunately the bad things happen more often than the good.  You’ll see me write about the perfectly sweet and innocent moments that I’ve experienced—an honestly I cherish those.  Because when bad days, like today, occur—it’s those sweet moments that remind me that things will be okay.

Today, a team of interns was sent to a site to administer a mass quantity of surveys.  This was my third day at the site so I was pretty confident in my capabilities of handling the parents and children so I volunteered to run the check-in table.  This position entails checking in each child on the master list.  The master list has every single person that has taken the survey as well as those who have not taken the survey.  It was my job to get a name—check the list… and if the name was on the list—check the other information (middle name, address, birthdate).  We do this to make sure: 1. the child has not already taken the survey (scamming us out of extra $$), 2. that this is the correct child by checking the other information (again scamming us by stealing some other kid’s information) and most importantly 3. that the child has consent.  If the child’s name is not on the list we tell them that they have to come back with a parent or primary guardian to get consent to take the survey.  So, this job is a little strenuous when children try to scam us or when parents get angry because they have to come in to give their child permission.  But, I’ve done it before so I wasn’t worried. 

The site we were running the surveys at is a women’s shelter as well as a community center.  We check the children in downstairs in the community center/office area and the surveys are administered upstairs in the bedrooms.  I know that sounds a little strange, but when a place allows you to administer surveys for free you kind of have to work with what they’ve got.  So we’re all set up and ready to start checking people in when an older man under some influence comes into the center screaming.  This is a woman’s shelter, but the workers here do allow men to come in and use the bathroom or drink from the water fountain.  Every man I’ve seen has been polite, grateful, and charming.  They appreciate the fact that the center lets them come in and even some of the men are welcomed to use the phone and even join in on watching The Price is Right—why because they’re appreciative and well-behaved.  But, this man was known by the center for not being well-behaved and I got to experience that.  He came in swearing and slamming doors.  The secretaries asked him to leave right off the bat but then he started screaming about the oppression her felt from everyone in sight.  Then he asked to use the phone but then ran into the bathroom and slammed everything in the bathroom.  He was obviously drunk and it was 10am, but it was just honestly scary.  It was especially scary because I was right next to the men’s bathroom and I was in the hallway where he decided to throw his fit.  While he was continually and continually being asked to leave by the staff a fellow intern and I just stared.  He yelled and yelled more.  He finally slammed the door and left.  We were really shaken up by this point and we hadn’t even started our administration yet.  At this point I was just mad.  I know it’s not fair that this man has problems and I don’t know him well enough to judge the situation that just occurred.

So check-in was running pretty smoothly.  We consented new people and got other returning participants in to take the survey.  But, one thing that really makes me mad about consenting the participants is that parents lie.  Parents lie about their child’s age, their relationship to the child, and even if the child has ever taken the survey before.  Kids lie, but it’s expected—the fact that they’re children doesn’t make it okay but we can understand it better.  But, grown adults who lie in front of their children right to our faces is absolutely not acceptable.  It makes the kids think it’s okay to lie and it’s just awful.  We deal with this all of the time.  It’s frustrating and it really makes you feel cheated.  This will come into play later.

So the day’s weather went south pretty fast and a horrible thunder and lightening storm came through.  We thought that this would either make our survey site completely dead or that it would be ridiculously busy.  Dead because people wouldn’t want to trek through the weather to get here.  Busy because the parents/family members waiting for their children to be done would wait inside and cause congestion… everywhere.  The latter is of course what happened.  Allowing people to stay in the community center while it’s storming is not a problem at all.  It just makes things chaotic.  The children who have already taken the survey try to sneak back into new survey administrations and run around like crazy.  It’s difficult.  Today made this even more difficult because the community center was running a senior citizen arts and crafts project in the middle of our survey ‘holding center’ (for the children signed in and waiting to be put in a group for survey administration).  These three young girls came up to the check-in table wanting to sign in.  One of them gave all of the correct information so we let her in.  The second one stumbled over her name, how to spell it, gave a wrong middle name and birthday, and took forever to tell us her address.  These are all telltale signs that the child is trying to scam us.  I told her that I thought she was lying about who she was and she gave me attitude and argued that just because she was ‘slow’ that I shouldn’t judge her for not knowing how to spell her name.  Meanwhile, her friends are all giggling behind her.  So, I told her that she would not be taking the survey today and that she could call our office if she had problems. 

The next girl was on our list, but already took the survey.  I told her that she took it two days ago and she said that wasn’t possible.  I shouldn’t have—but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and called the office to verify.  It was a waste of time so I told her she wouldn’t be taking the survey either.  They were obviously bummed, but didn’t seem too upset and ran back outside to play in the rain.  About twenty minutes later I find the two of them back in line.  I told them that I recognized them and that they still couldn’t take the survey and they laughed and ran away.  I let them stay inside because it was pouring, but twenty minutes later they started acting horrible.  They asked to use the phone and I was fine with that because I was hoping it would get them out of there asap.  It didn’t.  And they started acting worse.  The office staff was annoyed with them too, so I told the girls that they had to leave the premises because it was private property.  They gave me attitude but left.  Yes it was still raining but there was an awning and they just called their mom who was on her way.  The office staff thanked me and I didn’t think it was a problem because the girls were playing in the rain earlier.

That’s until the mother got to the site… running in, slamming the door, and screaming about some bitch who wouldn’t let her daughters stay inside in this storm.  I knew she was referring to me so I confronted her because I didn’t want anyone else to take the blame.  I told the mother the story—that her daughters lied, acted awful, caused chaos, and were really rude to the staff.  The mother didn’t like my answer so a staff member stepped in and told the mother to look around and realize that every other child was behaving and that her daughters were absolutely not.  This verbal yelling from the mother went on for a while and I’ve never felt so small.  I didn’t raise my voice, I listened to her, and I didn’t fight back.  There was no use and it wasn’t going to change her mind about how much I didn’t know about how to treat people.  The staff finally got her out and then the waiting parents and staff members made sure I was okay and told me that the lady was crazy and not to take it personal.  It’s hard to not take things personal, but I really couldn’t let it get to me.  The other parents were honestly appreciative that those girls and the mother left because they were disturbing their peace and quiet.  I was just really mad and a little upset.  Especially when the mother called me out on “not understanding her situation in life,” insinuating that I was “too privileged” to relate to people in “her state” in life.  I just felt really judged and belittled. 

It was only 2pm.  The storm continued and we lost power—if you could imagine three groups of ten children each being in creepy bedrooms in the absolute dark.  Thank God the lights came back on pretty quickly. 

After a younger group of children finished the survey and were let out a little boy came up to the office crying.  He was being ushered into the office by a staff member so I went up to his sister to ask what was wrong.  She told me that someone stole their money.  Who would steal two 10 year olds money?  I asked her to tell me exactly what happened and she said that before her uncle brought them to the survey he planned on taken $5 from each of them for signing them up.  I remembered her uncle—who evidently lied to us about being the children’s caregiver.  This was an extensive lie because he went on and on about how the children live with him full time and how he was their only parental figure in their lives.  I really hate when adults (he had to be in his 30’s) lie.  It’s just so wrong.  So we told the little boy to call his mom and that we weren’t letting them go home with the uncle.  Then the uncle comes in and he was furious.  He yelled at the little boy and then grabbed his arm, shook him up, and vigorously escorted the two kids out.  I’ve never witnessed a child being roughed up by an adult and honestly I don’t ever want to witness that again.  After that we were all shocked and really didn’t know what to do.  We didn’t witness the uncle “hit” the child so we couldn’t report it, and even if we did report it child services would have most likely thrown it out.  It’s just so sad.  What’s even sadder is that the grandmother showed up to the center just as the uncle and the kids were leaving and the kids refused to go with their grandmother because they were too afraid of what their uncle might have done to them if they did. 

MLK

The majority of my rest of week two was spent at Bishop State CC, which served as the surveying site for the MLK neighborhood.  I spent my Tues-Thurs here signing in participants, consenting new ones, and administering the survey.  Administering the survey to a larger group is definitely different from in-home surveys.  You have the participants who goof off because they're with their friends or giggle at the sex questions.  But, I really had easy groups that really cooperated with me throughout the 408 question survey.  

If participants are noticeably falling behind on keeping up with my reading and the group's speed we pull them out and do a one-on-one survey.  Even when the survey is only supposed to take 1.5 hours (these can run up to 2+ hours) I really like administering these.  Spending one-on-one time with a child is pretty rewarding.  A particular 1-on-1 survey that I read was for a 10 year old girl on Friday.  We were at a different surveying site at a church in Whistler.  We could tell that this girl was going to be a sweetheart the second she was signed up by her mom.  One of the questions we are required to ask for new participants is their relationship with the person signing them up (parent, guardian, caregiver).  This is to ensure that the consenter is truly the child's primary guardian/caregiver.  This little girl came in with her mother and we asked the little girl what her relationship with the woman was.  She looked really confused, so we asked is this your mother or aunt, etc.  The little girl answered back with, "... uhm she's my bestest friend..."  So cute.  After prodding a little longer we finally got the answer we needed out of her-- that the woman was indeed her mother.  After signing her up and getting consent we placed the little girl in an older group because that was the next group being tested.  So we knew from the start that we would probably have to pull her out, but sometimes the younger participants surprise you and can really keep up.

So when she was pulled out, I started the 1-on-1 survey with her.  Throughout the survey she would interrupt me with... "Can I ask you a question?"  She was so sweet.  With her first interruption she told me that her sister felt really bad about something and she wanted to talk about it with me. I was a little nervous about this at first because I had no idea what she would be telling me, but it was super sweet.  She told me that this morning her sister spilt her juice.  And that her sister didn't want to tell her mother because she was afraid that she would get in trouble.  But she talked her sister into telling her mother and her mother wasn't upset.  Her mother wasn't mad, she understood that mistakes happen.  But the girl's sister still felt really guilty about wasting the juice.  We talked about it for awhile.  It was so innocent and sweet.  After we got through the survive, about 2 hours later, I asked her what she would be doing with her $15.  She said she was going to split it with her younger sister who wasn't old enough to take the survey.  And that she would spend her half on her godson.  Nothing for herself.  When i asked her why she wasn't going to spend anything on herself she explained that giving it to her sister and godson would make her happy.  What a sweetheart. 

A rough Monday

So today was rough.  First of all, my roommate and I are having a bit of an ant problem... and they bite.  So that didn't start our day off very well.

So my partner, Aimee, and I had 4 scheduled in-home surveys to conduct today.  So we had to check out the $$ and have everything ready on Friday because our first survey was at 9:30am so going into the office at 9 was pointless.  So, our first family was actually approached last week when we were recruiting and informed us that they were packing up and moving that day.  After asking for a change of address for their new location the mother informed us that she honestly didn't know where they would end up.  It was so difficult to hear that.  They were obviously losing their house and had nowhere to go.  Surprisingly, the mother called a few days later to give us a new location and to set up an in-home survey.  So, that was our first stop of the day.

Doing the first survey was disheartening.  The children were evidently not up to par with other children their age in educational standards.  It was our first glance into the failure of the education system in a severely low-income neighborhood.  I felt so helpless.  For the second survey site, we surveyed in a house run by teenagers.  These children were raising themselves by themselves and doing the best they could.  It was really depressing.  The third and fourth survey sites were pretty typical.  But after visiting four households and surveying 9 participants my partner and I were absolutely drained.

My boss, the program director, told us the first day of training that after a week in the field we would have more experience and a greater understanding of poverty in the US than some of the top researchers in the field.  He was right.

New Orleans

We're only two and a half hours from New Orleans.  So on Saturday morning 8 of us took off for a weekend trip.  We stayed in a hostel--The India House-- off of Canal Street.  It was a little further away from the French Quarters and Bourbon street, but it was only $17/person a night-- which is awesome!  Me and three other girl interns split a 4 person room which was pretty nice.  It had two bunk beds and it's own private bathroom/shower.  The hostel was decorated so awesomely.  If you're friends with me on Facebook check out the pictures.  It was my first time in a hostel and I was thoroughly impressed.  I highly recommend the India House-- just remember your student ID!

So after we tried to check into the hostel (we were too early and turned away awkwardly ha) we decided to head to the French Quarters for lunch.  After driving around forever to find parking we settled for Cafe Amele.  It was so beautiful there.  We then met up with the other interns who left in the earlier car at Cafe Dumont (best frozen cafe au lait-- you have to get it)!  We then decided to head out to this house destroyed by Katrina which was turned into a giant chalk board for people to express their "before I die..." wishes.  We of course got distracted by everything on the streets-- stores, flea markets, etc... so we put off visiting the house until tomorrow.  The flea market was amazing.  Masks, voo doo dolls, authentic New Orleans all for CHEAP!  We had to be in that flea market for at least an hour... I felt bad for our only guy Kenny haha.  I bought a voo doo doll so don't piss me off! ;)  We walked around some more, listened to some street bands, and got harassed by 'live statues' until we decided that we should probably officially go check into the hostel and get ready to hit up Bourbon Street.

Where we were staying we could see some Katrina damage.  It was really depressing.  The damage made the houses look rundown and uninhabitable, but it was still really different from the homes/public housing facilities that I've been visiting in Mobile.  In New Orleans you could tell that the homes were damaged by a natural disaster, boarded up, and vacant.  But in Mobile the homes aren't damaged from a  natural disaster... they're cheaply made, worn out, over-crowded, and poorly kept.  And the people living in them can't afford anything better so they stay-- even if they're uninhabitable (there are no other options).  It's not an easy feeling to know that I'm able to categorize different types of 'poor' and different types of low incoming housing facilities.  But, I like that I'm becoming more understanding.

We got dinner and then decided it was time to do Bourbon Street.  Little kids were throwing beads off the balconies-- which made accepting them a lot less trashy haha.  Then we got the signature grenade drinks, which had mixed reviews-- I thought they were good.  It's a little unsettling that they don't/won't tell you what's in them (or how much alcohol for that matter... especially for public health students who mildly tore the bartenders apart haha).  We then all stumbled upon these street break dancers.  One of the interns, Kenny, is a break dancer who actually is pretty professionally known at Villanova for it.  We kind of egged him, but it didn't take much, to showcase his moves.  The break dancers were so nice and let him do it, he was amazing!  It was so awesome because later on in the night (hours later) he got stopped on the street and congratulated on how good he was-- he had fans, so cool!  We bar hopped and band hopped and had so much fun dancing to 80's rock and ending our night on a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street.  After, we took the street car back to our hostel and called it a night.

In the morning we decided to head to that house I mentioned earlier-- the one destroyed by Katrina and turned into a chalkboard.  The cars went separately, so me and three other interns visited the house and it was unbelievable.  All of the 'Before I die..' chalk writing we're overwhelming and made you want to read them.  Some of them were silly, while others were really touching.  We all took turns adding to the chalk board.  Before I die... I want to make a difference for those who need it.