week 4, post 1

I enter my "client's" home at 9:00 am and am greeted by the faint whiff of sandalwood incense -- evidence of daily devotional reading, scripture study and prayers. The modest house is immaculately clean and comfortable. So much for stereotypes about "the poor." Some psychotherapy is about recovery from injuries sustained in life. But not in this case. Our agenda is about 85% growth, empowerment, and spiritual direction -- reaching toward understanding and possibilities. In spite of a life of cultural isolation, my "client" is bright, curious, perceptive, articulate.

He describes his extended family to me and my head swims with the complexity of the kinships. After 200+ years of an isolated life, everyone is related, and keeps track of these relationships. I've lived in neighborhoods where neighbors across the street/hallway didn't know each other after 10 years!!

This extended family thrived in the bayou for 200 years. Agriculture, fishing, hunting and a strong faith and community sustained these people. Now agriculture is gone. Forests of cypress and pecans have disappeared. Grazing pastures and room to keep hogs or poultry have disappeared. What was once pasture has become salt marsh. What was once salt marsh is now open water, a few feet from back doors.

Modern people often fail to distinguish simplicity from poverty. My client understands, without a hint of nostalgia, self pity or bitterness, that simplicity is no longer an option. Coastal erosion, if nothing else, has made it so. Modernity or poverty is the only choice left. Survival necessitates cultivating a skill he can sell to people.

As is always the case in good counseling, there is a rich mutuality in the relationship. While I offer myself to be useful to the client, he is also my teacher. I am blessed.
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In order to obtain reimbursement for flood damage, FEMA requires applicants to produce proof of ownership, or rent receipts, plus utility bill receipts. This is understandable -- in order to avoid fraud. But here is where middle class logic meets the reality of life in the bayou. Here, several family units may reside on one piece of property; there is only one title, one utility bill, for several families. And that documentation may well have disappeared under flood waters, if the family ever kept track of it at all! It is a catch 22! Middle class people (bourgeois) routinely fail to grasp how incredibly complicated it is (read stressful), and the enormous volume of paperwork involved in being poor!

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Now it's time to go work out at the Y, treat myself to a hot shower, and head back down the bayou. Peace, Warren.