I did my third shift in the homeless shelter yesterday. And I really enjoyed it.
At the start I felt a little useless as due to the warm weather, pretty much everyone was asleep but I soon moved outside to chat to the smokers – I always find it really interesting just learning about people’s lives and stories and how they came to be where they are. I guess its one of the privileges you get when you’re just volunteering, with no real timelines or pressure to get anything else done, just to be able to sit and chat with people.
I spoke to three such different people last night – one that really struck a chord was only 20 and was so easy to get along with – it just makes you think about what really makes you similar or different to people. I found it much easier to chat to him than I do with some of my own colleagues – I guess who is to say what barriers or labels make you similar to someone. He was an incredibly passionate guy – and was really excited to get himself back on his feet and hopefully back in drama, the one subject he’s always loved. We also had quite an interesting chat about religion. He was asking me if I believe in god and he was saying how important religion is to him. I asked him if he sometimes wondered how there could be a god when he’s had to go through so much shit. He just talked about how others have it so much worse and that there must be a reason, maybe he did something wrong. The amount of hope and positivity I find in this shelter, among people who frankly have every right to just have a moment of wallowing and despair, is incredibly inspiring. As he was from Cameroon he also spoke French and so I got a mini French lesson – it’s been 10 years since I’ve done any so that was interesting but he had a lot of patience!
I find it quite difficult to tell fact from fiction – and it’s sometime halfway through someone’s story that I realise they’ve contradicted something they said earlier and that perhaps I need to be a little less naïve/trusting. I’m sure often it’s not intentional lies at all – they’ve had plenty of time to come up with their own versions of stories and many also have mental health issues so I’m not trying to make it black and white – I just think it’s a learning for me.
Another slightly odd situation was after I’d been chatting to one guy for quite a while, one of the other volunteers came up to me and said she’d been told not to sit with this guy alone as he was a potential sex offender. I thought perhaps I should have been told that when I arrived! But fortunately the setting is very safe and you never feel too alone - plus I have an alarm round me so I wasn’t too worried!
I also spent time chatting to the other volunteers, who because it was quieter, had more time than normal. It was nice to meet one volunteer who is currently a journalist but about to make the same move as me into social work – but in a year’s time. It was great to just chat about the journey of moving back home and giving up our salary and share some of our fears and excitement –the things we’d miss about our job (for me the creativity) and the things we wouldn’t (the soul-lessness and general sense of making up crap most of the time!). And chatted to another guy who is working as a support worker there. One of our conversations was about how the shelter was being run. They don’t have any beds or bedding there because they don’t want to encourage people to stay longer than necessary – it’s very much a hub to assess and reconnect people. But we weren’t sure how comfortable we were with this and thought their should be more of a balance – I had to tell an older guy that he’d have to sleep on the bare wooden floor because he didn’t get to the soft chairs in time…(in the end they did give him a duvet to lie on but they tend not to.) I understand some of their rationale but there’s an element of humanity to this matter – and although they’re not supposed to stay long, the truth is there are cases where they are there closer to a week or even two, and if that’s the case, it’s feels like providing them with some basic bedding would be the compassionate thing to do.
But anyway.
I have a week left of work now, I leave next Friday, so it’s all getting closer and more exciting. I’m waiting to hear news of my first placement at uni – and I’m spending my first week after I leave work, volunteering in a mental health day setting. I’m also going to hopefully be working on a mini project for the WhoCares trust – speaking to children in care about some government consultations, and I’m off to Nottingham to shadow @fluffosaur which I’m very excited about, among other things. Plus lots of pre reading to keep me busy…along with my upcoming birthday…and my charity event (I run a charity and we have a big annual 10k run/walk coming up in Hyde Park in 2 weeks time) so it’s busy and exciting times!
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