Does she think of me?

 
On separation, notions of abandonment, mothers, daughters, adoption, and birthdays...through the ethnographic 'I'

{Photo of Amy and Mom}

When fieldwork touches us deeply (as members of a research community/team) it is healthy and academically fruitful to write reflexively about our feelings and the way in which our positionality and openness moves others (and vice versa).

Reaching out to others is not a one way process - rather, it is a reciprocal and mutually performed act of caring in which we reach within ourselves to connect with the experiences and feelings of those around us (especially within the research community). 

Yesterday in one of the hip-hop workshops I found Vera pretty down...she asked me if we could talk privately in a corner...I thought to myself perhaps it's glue depression or let down from the cold night she spent in the streets of la 'L' (within the eyes of mainstream Bogotá, an invisible yet deviant and avoided drug zone ironically located behind the district military barracks)...

As we moved two chairs into the corner of the concrete homeless shelter the tears began to fall onto her soiled jersey...I moved my chair closer and held her shoulder firmly in a half hug (to demonstrate care without violating personal space)...

"Wednesday is my daughter's birthday...I want to go to Ibague to be with her so I may not be here for the hip-hop workshop...I'm so sorry...I don't want anyone to know why I'm crying..."

We sat there for a few moments of silent tears.  "Amy, the truth is, my daughter is going to be four, and I have never spent a birthday with her because ICBF [state child protection agency] took her away when she was little...every birthday that passes I feel so sad...I cry all day for her...and I don't want anyone to know...I want to be with my daughter on her birthday...I want to see her face [more tears rolling into sobs of anguish, sadness, loss]."

"Does she think of me?..."

At that moment I began to feel the lump in my throat...fighting it...determined to be strong...I replied, "I'm sure she thinks of you Vera...she wants to remember your face, she wonders if you think of her....she feels sad on her birthday...even if she is with a family who loves her deeply..."

"She may be in France," I replied, "and her words and thoughts may be in a language you may not understand...but you are in her heart."

"How can you be sure, Amy?" .... I replied hesitantly, "because I feel a sadness every birthday that I hardly understand...I wonder if my birth mother [I was born in Bogotá and adopted by an American family] thinks of me, if she remembers the day I came to the world, and I wonder if she loved me"....

At that moment, Vera and I looked at each other and shared a moment of understanding and exchange...

Vera must have thought, "Wow, maybe my daughter thinks of me...maybe she will think of me on Wednesday during her birthday party wherever she is"....

I was thinking, "Wow, maybe my birth mother thinks of me...maybe she cries on my birthday like Vera...maybe she wonders where I am"...

Although quite personal for both Vera and I, this moment of mutual understanding and reaching out soothed each of our respective wounds.

Vera's case, and my case, is quite common in Colombia and particularly with street girls.  The pregnancy rate amongst youth sex workers is staggering and the majority do not end up raising their children directly (they are either seized by the state or raised by relatives and then follow similar street life patterns). 

Those children who are fortunate enough to be adopted (such as myself) are extracted from situations of socio-economic and familial strife (among many other devastating contexts) and are given opportunities many worlds removed from the everyday reality of street girls.

Only a minimal percentage of girls will make it over the barbed wires binding so many within street life, exploitation, and social exclusion...such as the beneficiaries of la Fundación Social Fenix, which provides a peer-led support structure psychologically, professionally, and academically to young women to pursue higher education in the social sciences or health-care fields (with the long-term objective and commitment to work as professionals within vulnerable and excluded street communities). 

Mother-daughter dynamics are often complicated and the context of adoptees is no exception...

Fantasies about how things would have been or how things could be is a common theme that I come across in my fieldwork...

I talked with a young street girl who was convinced that she saw her mother on television begging for her daughter back (when in reality she had been seized by the state and lived in institutions most of her life and has no contact with her family).  She was also on some sort of acid trip...but this still demonstrates how deeply the sense of longing and abandonment are ingrained within her mind. 

Another girl once told me about the Christmas feast she enjoyed with her mother and family - when in reality she spent the night of December 24th in the streets of la 'L'.

These fantasies are devastating and when listening to the girls I often do not know how to respond.  If these images are the one slice of happiness street girls have to hold on to, who am I to stomp on them with a reality check?

Practically living within the world of street girls during this period of fieldwork has been a reality check for me...it has helped me value the opportunities I was given through adoption, the family I have, the maternal love I have received all my life, and the privilege of returning to Bogotá to work with girls in the streets, rather than having grown up in them....

Popular Discourse on..."Polvos a $3 mil!" (Get off for 3000 pesos!)

 I noticed this article today after leaving one of the Hip-Hop for Change workshops (one of the side projects that constitutes part of the community action component of my research) with some of the 'toughest' and 'roughest' (in an endearing sense) street girls I work with in la 'L' (one of the heaviest drug zones of Bogotá and what is left of 'el Cartucho,' which once spanned more than 5 blocks north-south and 4 blocks east-west and has since been replaced by the family- and community-centered 'Parque Tercer Milenio' - a case of what I call spatial cleansing...part of an effort to eliminate deviant populations from urban space)...

The hip-hop workshop is held in IDIPRON's (a governmental program working with street youth) only day center for homeless women, including minors. (Note: there are dozens of day centers for male youth within the same program for street youth in Bogotá).  For illustrative purposes, I must add that these shelters are referred to as 'patios', which also, according to one of the girls I work with, within 'street vocabulary' refers to jail space or particular areas within a prison. 

After the workshop, I stopped to make a phone call and noticed two men glued to the cover story photographed above, which was hanging from a post on the corner's empanada and cigarette stand. One of the men dressed in overall pants (probably an employee of the car wash locale next to the 'patio') and the other in a business suit - which ironically represents the contrast of clientele in the prostitution zone of Bogotá...

At this moment there were several things going through my mind:

1) In addition to exhibiting the bodies of sex workers in a circus-like fashion, this cover story is sending more clients directly to the zone in order to get their polvo for 3 mil pesos (the equivalent of one dollar and some change depending on the 'exchange' rate...in both the sexual and international financial market sense of the word)...

2) I might as well buy the paper to get it off the corner...

3) What will others around me think/assume as they see me buying the newspaper?

After some minutes of reflection, I began to see firsthand that popular discourse surrounding street girls and sex workers in the streets of Santa Fé and other parts of the center of Bogotá matters for the manner in which they are viewed and (dis)valued within society.

If it is acceptable to photograph and (dis)play these 3 bodies (as if they are plastic, nameless figures in urban space) and then hang them for sale (again) as if El Espacio (the tabloid newspaper) were somehow involved in the 'pimping structure'...hmmm....now that I think of it.....

I'll leave you with this....when the girls left the 'patio' at 3 p.m. today (they enter at 7 a.m. to wash their clothes, have a warm meal, participate in workshops or sleep on concrete until its time to hit the streets again until dawn), I imagine at least one passed this cover story (as it is hanging half a block from the exit on Avenida Caracas where most of the girls will cross to return to la 'L')....

What crossed her mind in that moment?

"Oh great! Perhaps I'll have work today"...or perhaps, she will leave the 'patio' motivated to write more lyrics on her corner in la 'L' before it gets dark (perhaps the final paragraph of the song we are writing in the hip-hop workshop), she will pass this article, see how she has been labeled, and then think..."Nah, what for?...I will never be more than someone's polvo for 3 mil"...

One of the central points of street outreach is to undue this mindset and fight against or disarm the disempowering effects of popular discourse on street girls' everyday lives...to work with girls to recognize their self-worth, to envision a future beyond paying the night's 'pieza' (motel/brothel room) and consumption (often with alcohol or drugs prioritized over food)...Part of this process, perhaps, should involve the (re)naming of spaces in which street girls feel safe (i.e., the 'patio')?

I therefore argue that in addition to working within and against the social and spatial context reproducing and reinforcing the exclusion of many street girls, it is necessary to identify and deconstruct (vis-a-vis street outreach, sensibility/awareness training in hospitals, brothels..., etc.) the discursive context that breaks down the positive work and peer-leader inspired change occuring within the community...