Posts about Croatia are forthcoming, I promise. To tide you over, it was a marvelous time with marvelous people in a marvelous country, but I’ll save the good stuff/new words/terrifying stories for when I have the time to write it all out. This week I started my internship, so I thought I’d scribble off a quick post about my impressions–apologies for the spelling mistakes. French keyboards have gotten my pinky finger all confused.
If you were to come with me to this internship, we’d step out of the train at Barbes-Rochechouart on line 2, and we’d take out our headphones as we got off because it’s good to be alert in this part of town. It’s not a dangerous area, per se (one stop away from Montmartre, and on these beautiful last few days that’s been a blessing) but still, like a Scoot (how they pronounce Scout here), it’s good to be prepared. We’d take the left exit, you and I, and set our mean faces, our New York faces, so that no one bothers us on the way. In the mornings, it’s not a problem. We can easily ignore the men drinking their mint tea, because they’re not even getting up, they don’t mean us any harm. The area we’re in is called Goutte d’Or, and it’s almost entirely immigrants, which you can tell from the stores–a Lebanese bakery, Moroccan silks, magnificently crafted dresses that subsaharan African women wear and look like queens. We’d take the first street on the left and stare longingly at a purple and silver tapestry that we would look silly in, and then we’d cross the square and take a left at the park, and continue down Rue Polonceau past the empty lot where you can hear the screeches of children at the ecole maternelle on the other side, and then right there is that colorful door that has URACA written above it–you’d miss it if you weren’t looking closely.
Inside, you must say bonjour to the entire room as you enter, and bise Nouwel who always has impeccable makeup and a nose piercing to match mine. She’s one of the social assistants, and gives me Excel spreadsheets to fill out. Then there’s Damien, the director, who is immensely capable AND has the most adorable burbling laugh I’ve ever heard. Purple looks good on him. Then Fadoua, the impossibly slender social assistant from Corsica who today split her lunch in half with me just because, and is passionate and kind and generous. And if we were there yesterday, you would have smelled the African meal cooking, giant pots of couscous and chicken and carrots that Nouwel gave me a hot box of and I don’t know that I’ve had anything so delicious in France yet. On Mondays and Tuesdays, we give food to those that have signed up, and so I meet some of the women and men who come to us for help.
URACA is an association in the 18ieme arrondissement, and we are sent patients from hospitals who have AIDS or a chronic disease like drepanocytose, or sickle cell disease. We help them find housing and help them with their visas. But URACA is a small organization with limited funds, mostly from the prefecture and from private donors, and this means that we have to turn away those without those specific ailments. And if you had been there yesterday, maybe you would have seen my first useful act–which was to translate from French into English for a Nigerian woman that we could not give her food stamps because her problems were not those that our organization handles. That was hard. Not the translation, which was simple, but explaining that we couldn’t help her (and calming raised tempers). That wasn’t exactly how I’d pictured saving the world. How do you respond to a woman holding a child who is asking you, really desperately asking you, “What am I going to do?”
Though I’m glad to be here, it’s also made me question myself and my future. I’ve wanted to work in Northern Africa for quite a while now, and it’s the reason I’m majoring in French. But, as Fadoua put it bluntly my first day, it’s not a good time for a blonde and blue eyed girl to be in Northern Africa. It’s barely the right time for a blonde and blue eyed girl to be in this quartier, as I’m reminded on my way back to the train in the crowded afternoons with grabbing hands and colorful remarks. I don’t, inherently, belong here. The question is, can I elbow my way in, prove myself, and stay put? Will I eventually be useful to this organization, apart from entering names that I can’t say and am misspelling because French keyboards are different? Will I eventually be useful at all, anywhere?
If you were here, you’d tell me yes. You’d tell me that in a week that mosque on the corner will be more fascinating to me than an obstacle to cross the street for, that the splashes of color in this part of Paris will continue to be a welcome change from the grey and black of “chic” districts. You’d tell me that even though it’s hard now, no one ever said that it would or should be easy. Maybe, as I did yesterday, we’d take a walk in 60 degree weather to the steps of Sacre Coeur and sit on the grass and smell the improbable hyacinth and I would be reminded that spring is coming, that I am lucky, and that life will work itself out, wherever I end up and whatever language I speak. In the words of Desiderata, “Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
Croatian stories to follow. Sometimes I just want to cry here, but then I remember there’s no reason to. Je vous embrasse, mes amies.
Emily Wolfteich 