Luces Encendidas #9: El Megáfono/The Bullhorn
I fully own that I am a particularly sound-sensitive person. Most of the time that manifests in being distracted by ambient noises (when I’m trying to sleep or concentrate) or repelled by loud noises (in bars or gyms, near construction sites, and so on). But the mushiest and commonest anguish I face is the third face of this sound sensitivity: any situation where I’m trying to pick out a signal from white noise.
To begin, let’s rewind! When I deployed with FEMA in 2017 to assist with efforts to provide hurricane-recovery assistance, I often found myself in a sea of volunteers awaiting instructions from Someone With Authority. What usually happened was that the SWA would show up, make an announcement (usually at a volume loud enough for some-but-not-all people present to hear), and then either leave or get pulled into a side Q&A with a few Insistent Interrogators.[*] For the rest of the crowd, what followed was a game of telephone that got some of the info to most of the people present, but occasionally ended up with a number of people literally missing the bus. As a professional Hey-How-About-ist, it seemed so obvious to me that the solution would be to put up a whiteboard or use a bullhorn to get information out to large groups… but somehow those options didn’t come to pass.
[*] As you can well imagine, there is often a direct correlation between how important an II makes their question out to be, and how few other people it has any relevance to.
Now, in 2021, in this HHS Migrant Shelter deployment, I am happy to report that the age of the bullhorn is here. And lest you think this is going to turn into a deep, richly metaphorical meditation on who gets to project their voice and what the soundscape of a place like this represents: this will be thuddingly literal.
(But also, you know me. This might go places.)
The dorms I’ve been in, both in San Antonio and El Paso, have been large. Each room, whether an expo hall or a purpose-built tent, houses about 800–1,000 kids. The only way to command attention and communicate info en masse is via some form of projection. The facilities in San Antonio had an overhead intercom, which was used very occasionally to announce a census of the kids.[**] (It was disfavored for anything else, I suppose, because the same message was blasted into both halls, which were on different schedules.)
[**] It occurs to me I haven’t really gotten into this yet, but the leadership in SA was obsessive about checking and re-checking who was sleeping in each bed and ensuring that their records were up-to-date. The goal was laudable, but waking everyone up at 6 a.m. to inspect their IDs felt like overkill at the time.
For the more quotidian announcements, like mealtimes, the floor manager would strut around and call on individual pods to line up for the march to the cafeteria, ostensibly rewarding those who were ready first but mostly as a theatrical display of his whims. OK, muchachos, is this pod all ready for breakfast? Go ahead and get in line! How about these groups over here? Hmm… we’ll see. It was immensely silly, compounded by the fact that a bullhorn is profoundly good at projecting sound in one — and only one — direction, leaving everyone at all other compass points waiting to find out what the echoing gibberish would eventually resolve into.
The layout in El Paso, being set up like a military field base[***], brings with it a wildly different sonic environment. Whereas in SA there was a general hush anytime the kids were asleep or you stepped outside for a moment, here white noise is constant. Electrical generators (for the lighting and HVAC in the residential tents, plus hygiene, cooking, and computing facilities in some of the specialized tents) are always humming. This being the high desert, wind is sometimes whipping at the polyurethane walls and ceilings. The presence of over 4,000 kids — mostly in five main dorms, but with two for Covid quarantine[#] and one for other infectious issues— means that there are few hours when the hubbub of teenagers chattering, playing, laughing, or feuding isn’t audible from outside.
[***] I was surprised recently to learn that even though the space we’re on is within Fort Bliss, the Army has had zero involvement in the creation of this shelter beyond indefinitely leasing the footprint to HHS. The construction of new tent space is entirely done by incredibly efficient outside contractors, including a recent modification to our massive cafeteria tent. One evening we came in to discover that an entire wall (80 or so feet long and 30–40 feet high at the apex) had been taken down. and by then end of the shift, an extension of 40–50 feet had been completed (with new flooring and light fixtures) and sealed up.
[#] The boys’ Covid dorm is unofficially the “party tent”; anyone walking by is likely to hear raucous laughter emitting from inside at all hours of the day. Since there are only 300–400 kids quarantining in a room that could fit twice as many, about half the space has been converted into an indoor soccer field. I don’t think any of the boys are hoping to be sent there, but a perk’s a perk.
With the vast number of kids housed in the biggest dorms, the bullhorns are much more a matter of course; choreographing the kids’ schedule ahead of time simply isn’t feasible so on-the-go directives are often necessary. The environment is constantly conspiring to drown out any verbal communication, so abutting that requires getting people’s attention requires an auditory boost. Bullhorn announcements don’t just coordinate mealtime preparations, but also frequently tend to be of the “Hey everyone, get to bed”[##] or “Line up here if you need to go to the medical tent” variety. (It’s also extraordinarily useful for trying to seek out kids who have caseworker appointments, since the whirlwind of daily activity threatens to obscure the fact that getting these kids connected to their families is job #1.)
[##] Such announcements are often wishful thinking. Each of the dorms has developed somewhat of a different culture over the past month, with the newer ones being more agreeable and bedding down by midnight. The “older” dorms — housing kids who have gotten fed up with waiting weeks to see a caseworker or getting tired of the erratic laundry service — are more rambunctious. (I’ve more than once walked into a dorm at 4 a.m. to see it still buzzing with activity.) It doesn’t help (to bring this back full-circle) that the overhead lights are often still blazing at that hour, due to a lack of communication between some of the operational units.
The most extraordinary megaphonery I’ve witnessed, however, was in patrolling a dorm that was known for being rather disgruntled. It was close to midnight, no one had truly settled down, and it seemed we were in for a long slog of staving off misbehavior. I noticed a teenager walking around with the bullhorn in hand and I wondered aloud to the nearest staffer what this was all about. He assured me it was OK, and the kid began a stemwinder of a combination prayer-sermon about God’s grace and the promising future they had ahead.[###] A crowd gathered around, cheering him on; after about a half-hour(!) he concluded and they all trickle back to their bunks, somewhat more subdued. I know, I know, this sounds like a just-so story of the power of faith, but culture matters.
[###] I have probably given some short shrift to the religiosity of this cohort. We spend so much time talking about gang signifiers and potential weaponry, but these kids are also bringing a serious Catholic upbringing. Every dorm has a makeshift altar with pictures of Jesus and Mary and a small coterie of craftsy crucifixes; every night there are at least a few dozen kids who go kneel in prayer before each one at bedtime.
Unfortunately, not everyone makes an effort to project. The hardest part of my job at the moment is picking out what a mumbling teenager is saying in rapid Spanish from behind a mask. (They don’t always heed the explicit request of “más despacio, voz más alta” so we often end in stalemate. “Soy un poco sordo” sometimes works.) Also, and no shade to any of my fellow deployees, but I’ve now sat through so many briefings where the authority figure has positioned himself — almost always himself — right in front of a generator or A/C outlet while speaking, that I’ve come to conclude that most of them must not want to be heard. I don’t get it, but for me it all just fades into the background hum.
