Urban Gleaners

Like all countries, France has its share of poor people. The poor, like the rich, still need to eat. Unlike the rich, access to food for the poor is not always easy. A recent French study has highlighted how, while most of us do our shopping in the supermarket, plenty of people gather their food outside the store. Tapping into a cultural reference, these people who forage through whatever is discarded by stores or outdoor markets are known as les glaneurs modernes (the modern gleaners). The word “gleaner” became a cultural benchmark as a result of a well-known 1867 painting by Jean-François Millet, Les Glaneuses. Millet depicted the plight of people reduced to scouring the fields after a harvest, hopeful of picking up usable grain that was left behind.

The study released just last month described the profile of the new, urban, gleaners. One surprising result of the survey: it is not only the homeless who forage through refuse. There is now also another group, actually more prominent, those who have a regular residence. Unlike the homeless, who tend to consume what they scavenge right away, these domiciled gleaners, take the food home, as they would groceries from a supermarket. The extent of how the practice of gleaning went well beyond the ultra-poor was one shocking result of the study. The new gleaners are sort of caught in a difficult in-between. They are neither poor enough to receive regular food subsidies nor well-off enough to do their food procuring as a market transaction.

A whole culture has apparently emerged as the new gleaners become regulars at certain sites. Grocery store operators and trash collectors come to know them and often provide tips about recuperating prize material among the refuse. So prominent is the new gleaner movement that not only have their been news stories about them, but, one of the remaining New Wave filmmakers, Agnes Varda has made a documentary about the practice.

A new wrinkle to urban gleaning has recently been added. This comes via a movement that originated in the U.S. One recent news story featured well-off young professionals on their way to a local outdoor market. Unlike most market goers, they timed their arrival to coincide with the market’s closing. Why? They planned to sort through the garbage. This time the foraging is not undertaken for financial reasons. It is now a matter of ideology. Reacting to the waste engendered by a consumer society, these green gleaners forage as a way of establishing an alternative model of consumption. They seek a return to a simpler, less wasteful lifestyle.

In the U.S., this movement goes by the name “freegan”. Here in France, they call themselves “freegan” (any Americanism is welcome, even by those who oppose the great giant of consumerist excess) or gratuivores (free eaters). They are also referred to as déchétariens, “trashitarians” we might say. Some get a bit carried away in their exuberance, claiming, as one web site does, that “nothing is really healthier than dining on food from trash: free food for the taking, reduction of waste, and immonuvolution.” This last, strange, word indicates the surprising health benefits of ingesting food that may be a bit spoiled. Immonuvolution even comes with a snappy slogan: “Mildew, it’s loaded with vitamins."

Whatever the label, what unites participants on both sides of the Atlantic are principles enunciated on the freegan website: “As freegans we forage instead of buying to avoid being wasteful consumers ourselves, to politically challenge the injustice of allowing vital resources to be wasted while multitudes lack basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, and to reduce the waste going to landfills and incinerators which are disproportionately situated within poor, non-white neighborhoods, where they cause elevated levels of cancer and asthma.”

What happens when freegan gleaners, homeless gleaners, and urban poor gleaners congregate on the same spot? Hopefully the freegan gleaners decide that, maybe this once, being a standard grocery store consumer offers the nobler path.

Car Bubble

A car is like a bubble that seals us off from the direct experiencing of things. Suburbanites enter their garage without even stepping outside, get into the waiting automobile, and, thus ensconced, head off for their destination. In between—radio listening, phone calling, traffic signal following, and, possibly, a passing notice of what is around them.

How different it is when one travels in ways other than a private car. Several years ago, needing to get from Little Rock to Memphis, an inter-city bus offered the best transportation. Such a trip is one that all suburbanites, all professionals, all professors (speaking for my own group) ought to take. What does such a trip entail? First, some time at a bus station. Here is a location unlike the suburban home or the modern office. First of all, it’s a bit grungy. Then, although no one likes to talk about class in the U.S., the denizens of a bus station are of a different economic, let’s call it “stratum” instead of class. There is also a different racial composition from the typical suburb. Many of the people on my bus were black. There was also a young woman from Central America, continuing an 18 hr bus ride that would take her to Kentucky for vegetable picking. The most interesting conversation overheard took place while waiting to board. Person in back of me to friend: “You know, it’s different now. Parole officers are just not what they used to be.”

The memory of this trip came back to me recently since we are living in a French village without a car. That means for most of our travel, some form of public transportation is a requirement. One recent trip had us taking busses, trains, planes and, to finish things off, a cab. The final, taxi leg, provided a repetition of the car bubble experience. Airports, because they are usually quite a distance from the center of cities, tend to be another buffered zone. Bus and train stations, however, represent a whole other story.

Sitting in the waiting room of the Marseille train station, it became obvious that the person seated back to back with us was the kind of individual we would never come close to in our automobile. The spectator in the car bubble is isolated from particular kinds of sights, sounds, and, yes, smells. Impossible here not to realize in a direct sense the plight of fellow humans. Before this person began to speak (in a loud, slurred, voice) his presence was signaled by the very obvious fact that he had not bathed in quite a while. The voice and subsequent additional odor (of cigarette smoke) gave evidence of someone in the grip of alcohol and tobacco addiction. When the security agent came over with a stern reminder that smoking was forbidden, another, sadly typical, fact became obvious: he was a member of the Arab subclass that makes up much of the bottom rung in French society.

The waiting room, a fairly warm place, (nowhere in a French train station is “toasty” by U.S. standards) provides a bit of free shelter. Not that it’s easy to get to. Marseille’s St. Charles Station sits atop a knoll overlooking the lower city. It is best approached by a famous, long, staircase. There are 103 steps to climb before reaching the top. Hard to get to or not, the destination is sought after, if your only alternative is walking the even colder streets.

The next leg on our journey involved a bus ride between Avignon and Carpentras. The Avignon bus station has open doors at either end. This means it is always cold in there. It’s kind of dingy, even more so than public transport places in French cities. Once again, what passengers cannot fail to notice, is how many of their fellow human beings find such a location to be the closest thing to a home. As we left the station, the final sight was that of a shabby bedroll occupied by someone catching some sleep, on the sidewalk just by bus exit.

Non-car travel brings with it sounds (parole officer talk), smells (bath-deprived neighbor) and sights (makeshift outdoor bed) not ordinarily experienced. It also breaks the bubble and creates discomfort, which is not always a bad thing.