Nice. Ive heard the Curtis Stigers version.
Today-31 targets, all on restricted access properties where you have to jump through hoops to try to find a property manager and convince her/him to either let you on the property or give you info from their files. The fun part? They gave me a start time of 5:30 pm, when almost nobody will be in the office.
In rural Missouri, a neat but ramshackle farmhouse, greeted by several laughing black children, polite to a fault. They summoned their mama. How many people live here? About 15. George and me just raisin’ 'em. They got noplace else to go. The census needs their names and ages. That there is Herbert, he’s about ten, takes care of the chickens. Etc. Do they all go to school? Yessis, walk down the road and the bus picks up as many as we got, 'cept the little ones. Most of them, we had to guess their age, some the best name we could come up was obviously a nickname. They’d be about 40 now, and I’d guess they’re doing just fine. I drove home weeping.
Oh, you have to check out the versions by Johnson and House! Spine tingling!
Now THAT is a profound tale of enumeration. Thanks for sharing it.
Today-Eleven targets, all of which I already did yesterday and couldn’t complete because they were in secured buildings where the management couldn’t be reached or refused to cooperate at all.
And a start time of 7:30 pm.
I have NEVER had anyone write a song for me before! Are you married? (Just kidding, the husband I have is enough trouble already. I don’t really want another one.)
Today I got sent an hour away to complete 31 proxy interviews at a housing development. The land was flat, there was a big shovel digging trenches and a double-wide that was used as the office. Every single case had been notated that the land was completely undeveloped and that nobody had lived anywhere on the development on 4/1/20. That was an easy 31 completed cases.
I’ve been sent to interview 2 personal friends who live in the sticks. While I could proxy them off myself, I entertained myself by banging on their door and demanding to know why they hadn’t taken care of this shit before I had to do it. Yeah, I’m that sort of bossy bitch friend, wanna make something of it?
I also paid off an out in the sticks grumpy old man with a baggie of home grown yellow cherry tomatoes for the complete. I’d never met him before, only knew him by reputation, but who can really resist fresh picked tomatoes?
The Elders at the Yavapai Native American tribes have given permission for non-NA census workers and I’ve volunteered.
This is so odd, because its almost like we are working different jobs. I get my work assigned in the morning and while I can’t knock on doors before 9:00 am or after 9:00 pm, I can work my caseload as/when I am able. Perhaps I am allowed more leeway due to the heat, or maybe its just because its 2020 and nobody really has done anything like this before, so of course its messed up.
Plus, you got paid for visiting them, so why the heck not?
Now that sounds nifty. I hope you’ll fill us in on your experience, Jane the 'Numerator.
The Elders didn’t seem to have shared the news to their people and let me tell you, you haven’t been stonewalled until an Apache stonewalls you. After the second shunning, I left the res, went to the closest grocery store and bought flowers and chocolate.
I then went to their center and begged to speak to an Elder, while explaining why. Small packages changed hands, not as bribes but as gifts to make up for inconveniencing their day. “I know that my rude demands have darkened your day, so may I please brighten your desk with these flowers and sweeten your day with these chocolates?”
It took a couple of hours, but now I have written permission on tribal letterhead and a beaded token to show that speaking to me is accepted and encouraged.
Hopefully, things will go better tomorrow.
(Yes, I know I shouldn’t have done that. I should have let it go up and down the chain of command, but there really isn’t enough time left for all of that bureaucratic nonsense. I’m a 'numerator, not a politician. Give me my numbers and I’ll go away!)
I think you deserve an award for cultural respect and sensitivity.
The world needs untold millions more of you.
If bribes are frowned on, I’m in trouble. I’ve been bribing managers of apartment buildings with bakery items for the last month or so.
We have such high turnover (neighborhood near a college) that I keep hearing “Duuude, we all just moved in here. C’mon, want to play beer pong? … Whoa, back in April? I think before us there were like ten girls living here.”
So off I go to the rental company office with a half dozen tasty treats, and sometimes I get a complete list of former tenants: names and even ethnicities.
The local bakery’s all in favor of the census, so they’ve been charging me less AND throwing in an extra maple cruller (my delivery charge).
Thank you so much for the unexpected praise BippityBoppityBoo. I will tell my mother what you said, because she is the one who spent so much time teaching me to always show respect and kindness. At 82, I guess she could be called an Elder as well!
I will confess to being sad that I promised to return the beaded token, it would be a very nice keepsake and it will be a long drive, but a promise is a promise.
Digs, I am pretty sure that at some point in my training, I learned that I couldn’t pay people to respond. Or maybe I couldn’t pay them to translate. I don’t really remember, but the only time cash money has ever left my hands was when a child asked me for pennies to use to finish an amazing tower he was making. That wasn’t a bribe, that was keeping the kid busy while mom answered the questions!
I don’t think you are bribing the rental office folks, you are just ingratiating yourself. No money has changed hands, you were just charming and happened to bought extra tasty treats for the bulk discount!
Clearly she is a woman wise in raising children.
Yet more respect and sensitivity. And trust building for the next census taking.
I am very irritated now because of government bullhocky.
Today, I was attempting to enumerate the Yavapai Apache tribe in Verde, and even with my beaded token, it was rough going. At least I wasn’t being shunned (being invisible is a really odd feeling), but I was mostly getting polite “go away” answers until I came across a Tribal Counsel member.
He thought that the census was important but explained that the reason people wouldn’t talk to me was because back 60 or 70 years ago, the census came through and the people answered. Once the government knew how many children lived in each home, they came and took the children to boarding schools so they could be educated into assimilation. (I remember learning about it in a history chapter in high school.) His grandfather was one of those children, so like many other folks who lived there, he grew up hearing his grandfather telling him to never talk to the census people because boarding school really sucked.
Horrifying, just terrible.
OK, that isn’t just irritating, its awful.
The irritating part is that the nice man I was speaking to said that there would be a food distribution at the tribal center next week and that if I would be there, he would be as well and could introduce me to people. Like the grandmothers, who would be there all day and know everything about everyone! I could 'numerate or proxy the entire tribe in a day!
Sounds great, right? Yeah, well, its still the government. I told my sup about it, she said she would contact her sup. I already know what’s going to happen, it will be passed up the chain of command until someone makes a decision, then they will need to find someone qualified to be there. By that time, the census will be over, and the population will be undercounted.
The census was also how they found Japanese to round up into internment camps, and this is one reason why all the identifiable collected information is kept confidential for 72 years.
My mother was a triple migrant, and she wasn’t always entirely accurate about origin when filling out government forms. She did /not/ put my fathers place of origin on his gravestone: if the government wants to find out the ethnicity or origin of her grandchildren she was /not/ going to help. She’d seen people being trucked off when young.
Last time around, there was controversy about the identifiable collectible information in our (Australian) census. It’s been 50+ years, and the number of people who think that identifiable collectible information is a bad thing is decreasing.
May I tell an enumerator story from voting enumeration in Ontario?
It used to be that for every election, federal or provincial, there was a mini-census completed between the day the writ dropped and the election. People would be hired by the Chief Electoral Officer to go throughout their community, signing up everyone who was eligible to vote.
It was good money for a university student, so I signed up. Got paired with another university student, and off we went. We had to knock on each door at least three times, on different days and different hours, to make sure we got everyone registered.
On one of our evening shifts, it was getting dark when we knocked on the door. A woman answered it. She looked East Asian, and her English wasn’t good. She looked a bit apprehensive about these two young men she didn’t know, coming to the door as it was getting dark.
We tried to explain we were enumerating everyone for the election, but we were having trouble communicating and she was looking worried. I was afraid she would close the door. Then one of us said the magic words: “Are you a Canadian citizen?”
That got to her. With a big beaming smile, she said, “Yes! Canadian!” and she zipped off and came back right away with her citizenship card and her husband’s card. We carefully wrote down the names and gave her the note with the address for the polling station and said “Go here to vote.” Again, we got a big beaming smile and she said “Voting! Yes!”
And off we went. I had the strong impression that this might be the first time she and her husband would get to vote in Canada, and possibly the first time ever, depending where they had come from. I still remember that big beaming smile when she realised why we there.
That was a very nice story Northern Piper. Naturalized citizens always seem proud of their citizenship, as well they should.
Our area is done and there are no travel opportunities. At one point, I was scheduled to spend a few days in Tuba City (Navaho Reservation), but cases are starting to go up and they closed their doors again. I certainly don’t blame them, but I’m also sad because they will be under counted.