Three Sisters Called to Serve in Rural South Carolina Sisters Meggie Flores, Paula Gallant, and Consuelo Tovar take a minute to pose for a photo outside of their home in Lexington, S.C., from which they serve migrant farmworkers in the Saluda County area. Below, map: South Carolina, where the Daughters of the Province of St. Louise have served in Hardeeville since 2017 and now serve in the Saluda area along with the Vincentians.
Saluda County, South Carolina, population 20,473, sits in the northeast corner of the state. Here, up to 5,000 migrant farm workers arrive each year. Men and women, sponsored by the farmers, come into the United
States legally for up to 10 months at a time to work in the fields. Peaches, corn, and vegetables are among the largest harvested crops. These farmworkers are part of about 1 million hired farmworkers in the United States, according to the National Center for Farmworkers Health, Inc. They support the $28 billion fruit and vegetable industry in the US. Unable to bring their children into the US, the farmworkers mostly live in dormitory-like residences where they sleep and cook on common stoves. The dormitories are designated “men’s and women’s” with a few available for couples. (The adults must leave their children behind in order to work in this US Visa program.) On Sundays, the hiring farms provide repurposed school buses to shuttle the farmworkers to small cities where they may do their laundry and shop for their week’s groceries. Mondays through Saturdays, the hiring farms shuttle the workers to work
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Faith Afire • Fall 2021
