Chapter
2 - Filmmaker Commentary |
| Spending the day with Tiguida at her work
- Health Center 3 in West Philadelphia - was a valuable insight into just
how the language and cultural barriers play out in the health care setting.
In this case, we have African patients who are there not by choice but
obviously there is a medical need and you can just imagine how volatile
that situation can be if the patients feel like they are not being tended
to. Fortunately, the federal law mandates that the Public Health Centers
are obligated to provide interpreters for limited or non-English speakers
and that's where Tiguida comes in. She ensures that these processes are
in place. She is not there to translate but to ensure that the Health Center
is accessible to African patients. What happened during the day of filming
was just such an incident where the Women, Infants, and Children office
(a State program that is not part of the Philadelphia Public Health system)
refused to see an African patient unless she brings an interpreter with
her. They were wrong - it is them who should arrange an interpreter for
her. So, you see Tiguida in action. Laws and regulations are only as good
as the people responsible abide by them and this was a case where apparently
it was more the personnel who just simply tried to turn her away instead
of doing their job. There is a definite undercurrent of tension especially
at social service agencies where personnel somehow feel that these new
immigrants are getting a 'special' attention and feel that if 'they don't
speak English then that's their problem'. Well, fortunately the law is
on the side of the so-called Limited English Speakers but it's always an
uphill battle.
What really comes through with Tiguida is the compassion that drives her. When she recounts how she served newly arrived African immigrants with free dinners at her restaurant until they found a job - it's really something else. Who does that? It's community at it's best and in the car ride, she goes on to say that she sees herself as 'mama de tous le monde' or 'every child's mother' having been raised in family where there were more than 30 children in her house - none of whom were her father's children, but he raised them just like one of his own. It's times like these when you wonder if like something terribly has gone wrong in the overly individualistic pursuits that many of us find ourselves in that we can't escape - it's in a way unavoidable because this is the culture we find ourselves now living in. |