La Mie de Pain

This semester, after several frustrating attempts to find a service placement in Paris, I finally began working at La Mie du Pain, a homeless shelter and kitchen located in the 13^earrondissement. Every Sunday night, I went for several hours to set-up and serve meals to the men and women who came. My first evening there, I was most impressed by the way in which the kitchen ran like an extremely well-oiled machine without seeming at all cold, official, or mechanical. Each volunteer had a specific task, some mingling in the dining room, some serving food in the line, others cleaning or continuing to cook, and at the end of the night I was told that we had served 534 meals in about two hours. Nevertheless, the attitudes of the volunteers amongst one another and equally with the people who came remained remarkably upbeat and friendly. The volunteers greeted the regular attendants like old friends and carried on running jokes with one another while serving chicken and pouring milk.

Once the dining room had been cleared and clean-up was almost finished, the more seasoned volunteers got out snacks and we all sat around and chatted for another half an hour before anyone left. As the newcomer, I was meeting the others for the first time, but it was clear to me that they had developed deep friendships and cared deeply for one another. This aspect of the organization, a clear intent to be a supportive community and not merely a random collection of individuals thrown together to serve meals once a week, reminded me of the See! The World program and the purpose of our reflections and responses. The very core of service is the inter-connectedness between human beings and a common desire to do something, great or small, to make the world a better place. As I settled down to write this reflection, I flipped through a brochure on the organization I had been given my first evening there, and I was struck by the image La Mie du Pain gives itself. A casual observer at one of our Sunday night dinners might note the nutritional value of the meals served (bread, pasta, cheese, fruit, vegetable dish, meat, and milk), the efficiency of the kitchen staff, and the number of people served in a night. However, the brochure mentions not a single one of these more technical aspects. Instead, over and over again, the emphasis is put on a fight against exclusion and on the importance of welcoming without exception those who are excluded into a climate of the warmth of human contacts with the ultimate goal being the “reconquest of oneself” in taking charge of the future. (And a warm meal and a bed for a night certainly help). The fight at La Mie du Pain is not only against cold and hunger, but against the lack of so basic a human need, contact and genuine caring amongst one another, that the volunteers share it with each other so that they may better share with the people that they serve.

My spirits were always lifted on Sunday nights. An important work is being done. Still though, I would often think on my way home, did that much change? I passed the same number of people on the street everyday and the men continued to pour into La Mie du Pain every night with sores on their hands and faces from the cold. I worry then that the work of a shelter is more of a quick fix and could possibly even contribute to an ongoing vicious cycle if people become dependent on its services (dependent in two senses: both in terms of the people who benefit directly from the meals and temporary shelter and in terms of those in the position to act for change who might find it easier to brush off the gravity of the situation). I understand what Claire means when she says that she doesn’t think she’ll ever be “comfortable with the elegance of London”. Never in my life have I been confronted with so much wealth and so much poverty side by side. In 2004, INSEE, France’s statistical bureau estimated at 86,000 the number of homeless in France. (In the New York Times, Craig Smith notes that this is about equal to the number of homeless in Los Angeles alone). In Paris, I found that the homeless population was bizarrely both visible and hidden away. Early on in the semester, I went on a bike tour of the city as a nice way to get oriented. One of our stops was at the Centre Georges Pompidou, a modern art museum with a large plaza in front often teeming with tourists and performance artists. Our guide pointed out some metal siding propped up against one another over to the side of the entrance to the museum…some sort of construction project we all assumed. But no, our guide explained, the sidings had been put up to disguise the tents of several homeless people in an odd act (by the government or the museum) of both tolerance and complete disregard for the real problem. Especially in this situation, an attempt to separate with metal walls a few men and women from the rest of the population, it is clear to me why La Mie du Pain focuses so much on the importance of human contact and the value of a simple conversation.

Just after I left, the problem of homelessness in France became quite a bit more visible. Along the Canal St. Martin, hundreds of people (homeless and middle class well-to-do alike) have been sleeping outside in tents to draw attention to the severity of the homelessness problem. According to the New York Times, the protest has gotten enough support that President Jacques Chirac acknowledged it in his New Year’s address and the two leading presidential candidates for the presidential election this spring have expressed support for the cause. The discussion now centers on the establishment of housing as an enforceable human right. Easier said than done, and I will be interested to see how France puts this new policy into practice. I am also still not sure of how I feel about the nature of the protest, especially once I read that when conditions get tough the protestors can and have slept in their cars, or better yet, head on home. Something Scott said in response to Lissett’s reflection rang true for me here (although in a different context, I know): “self-deprivation out of guilt must be the most perverse exercise of privilege.” The idea of people of all different socio-economic backgrounds uniting behind a desire to draw attention to the problem of homelessness and to demand change is great, but isn’t it just an extension of the side-by-side wealth and poverty I witnessed all semester? When the going gets tough, the people in one tent have a warm bed and fridge full of food waiting at home while their neighbors along the canal can’t begin to dream of those luxuries.

Just as several others have already expressed in their reflections, I too sensed at the end of the semester that the overall impact of my service was relatively small. I especially regret that I wasn’t able to start sooner in order to have developed deeper personal relationships with the people I worked with on Sunday evenings. Nevertheless, I gained a lot from the experiences I did have. I encountered homelessness in a different way than I ever had before and I challenged and expanded my understanding of what service means. I’m looking forward to continuing to confront these issues back in Durham.

-Laura Robinson, December 2006