in the field one day, I was helping one of the guys on my crew, when the son of one of the owners walked by and looked my way yet didn’t show any sign that he had registered the presence of another human being. That was how he looked at all the laborers. Were we invisible? Did he not realize that we were there working to the best of our abilities to bring in his family’s harvest, increase its profits, and enrich him too? In his eyes, we were not individuals with names or identities; we were nonentities, even faceless.
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but another encounter made that tougher to do. Our paths crossed this second time when I was given an opportunity for extra work in the evenings and on the weekends—cleaning the ranch house belonging to the young man’s family. Later I would visit more opulent mansions, but at that time, when I arrived at the house and stood outside of it, the sprawling home looked like it could be on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Nervous and excited, I rang the doorbell. When no one arrived to open the door, I tried knocking. Nothing. Finally, I rang one more time, and the same teenager threw open the door, apparently annoyed. Saying nothing, he pointed me toward the cleaning supplies, gestured to the main part of the house, and left me to fend for myself. I concluded that migrant workers were perceived as not only faceless but voiceless.
Later, I could look back at these encounters and recognize the early lessons they had taught me about the need for compassion and caring for the many patients who all too often are treated as faceless and voiceless in institutional and even family settings. The treatment of migrant workers also stayed with me as a reminder to acknowledge the contributions of everyone at the hospital, clinic, or lab—from orderlies and janitors to nurses and technicians, on up to doctors and administrators. Everyone has a name, a face, a voice. And these experiences of being marginalized would keep me from seeing others only through the lens of their job, or their diagnosis—as anything other than a fully alive person and valued human being.
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