La Mie de Pain

Last week, my parents came to Paris to visit me and to do a bit of their own traveling. After my class ended at five, I tried to reach my dad on his cell phone, but got no response, so I decided to make my way over to their hotel to see if they had left a message. As I passed Place St. Michel approaching the Seine, my phone rang. It was my mom, who offered that they would come and meet me in front of Notre Dame. I agreed, and three minutes later I arrived at my destination and sat down on a bench to people watch while I waited for my parents. The next ten or fifteen minutes summed up so much of what I love about Paris: the crazy variety of people, the striking buildings, the setting sun illuminating everything and everyone with a golden glow. And then it got dark. And cold. Winter was just creeping up on Paris, and I was certainly not dressed for the temperature drop. On top of that, my stomach was beginning to remind me that I hadn’t had time for lunch earlier in the day. They’ll be here soon enough, I told myself, but ten minutes turned into thirty which turned into forty-five. After an hour had passed, I was miserable. I felt disconnected and abandoned, having no way to get in touch with my parents (my dad’s cell phone apparently not functioning) and having no idea how much longer they would be. Somewhere in the midst of formulating in my head the perfect phrases with which to chew out my parents when they finally showed up, my thoughts abruptly shifted to the many homeless I encounter daily on the streets of Paris. Their presence had always left me saddened and feeling helpless and overwhelmed, but suddenly I grasped the absolute urgency of their situation as October turns to November and the forces of nature make the fight for survival that much more of a daily struggle than it already is for so many people. And suddenly my misery and cold and hunger and sense of abandon didn’t seem at all that bad. Because of course I wasn’t really abandoned. Soon enough, my parents arrived with excuses of getting lost in the metro system and whisked me off to a nearby café where I enjoyed warm food and friendly conversation.

Sunday I will hopefully be able to begin working with La Mie de Pain (www.miedepain.asso.fr). This organization was formed in 1891 to aid “les personnes défavorisées” in the neighborhood, specifically the 13^th arrondissement near Porte d’Italie. One of the objectives of La Mie de Pain is to increase awareness of the problems of marginalization and exclusion in society, and acts by welcoming people in such situations for lodging, meals and warm conversation, as well as for help in reinserting themselves in society and taking control of their own futures. Currently, I am not yet sure in which area of this organization’s actions I will be serving, but I am excited to learn more about the possibilities. The population that I will be working with at La Mie de Pain is a population that I encounter daily in my life at Paris, and while the issues faced by this population aren’t at all absent from discussion or from new sources, I still feel that I lack an understanding of Paris’s issues of homelessness, poverty, and hunger that I hope will come with more direct interaction with this population. At the very least, I hope to be able to offer a little bit of warmth during the coming months of winter and I look forward to writing more once I am engaged in my service next week.

-Laura Robinson, October 2006