Blame Canada

I don't know about you, but having lived my entire life with family, food and a roof over my head, I find it hard to imagine how bad life could really be. Even when people are obviously hard up, like at the shelter, I find myself thinking: "Well, they're smiling and laughing, and they look okay. Things can't be that bad." But often, they are. I spoke to one guy a couple of days ago who'd slept outside the previous night (which was unusually cold). He didn't even have a blanket. How do these people cope in winter, when it's 30 below outside?

(Answer: a lot of them freeze to death. I've been told "that's just the way it is." Why??)

Another guy I was speaking to today said his t-shirt smelled of puke (I hope you're not reading this at dinner time!!). "Oh," I said, not really knowing what to say. "Did you puke on it?"

"Probably," was his reply. He didn't even know. That's a pretty bad state to be in. Even worse than being cold or smelly must be the knowledge that you have absolutely nowhere to go. It must feel so incredibly lonely.

So I found myself wondering what I could possibly have in common with the people at the shelter. But actually, for people with not much in common, we get on surprisingly well. We had a real laugh this morning just talking about movies and cars and stuff, and there's this one guy who always tells me about the latest thing he's written. He's going to bring something in for me to read.

Sometimes I enjoy myself so much, I forget I'm also there to make sure the shelter's rules aren't broken (things like swearing and playing practical jokes). I'm pretty crap at the discipline part. The writer guy was telling me this morning how he used to steal the badges off Mercedes cars and replace them with a Happy Meal toy. I guess I should have said something along the lines of, "nooo, crime is bad", but I actually thought it was pretty funny. Same with the guy who was teaching me how to swear in Russian the other day. I mean, it's in another language, it's not like anyone can understand, right?

Another annoying shelter rule is that you can't speak to or make contact with anyone when they're outside the shelter. I'd love to just take someone to the movies one day (a lot of people there are bored and penniless), and I could use the company - but it's a no-no. I suppose it makes sense - a lot of volunteers at the shelter are girls and a lot of the guys are, well, guys. So they've probably had 'inappropriate' relationships develop in the past. Trouble is, I live so near the shelter I keep bumping into the homeless people wandering around - but they seem pretty closed off when they're out on the street, so sometimes they don't even say hi. That makes me kind of sad, but I can't really blame them.

Anyway, I'll be seeing a lot more of them next week because I'm getting paid (yay!) to work three extra mornings. I'm also doing a poetry workshop so it involves writing too! If only that could become some kind of permanent job...

# posted by Suzie : 6:13 PM