Personal Narrative: Homelessness In Canada

Homeless

I didn’t want to be there. I felt like Joe Hockey in an anti-budget protest, but my friend Peter had dragged me into this, and I didn’t really want to offend him. I helped him set up the portable lights and tables laden with steaming hot food in an outdoor car park in Surry Hills, now deserted as everyone had gone home to their families. Peter said that he and his church group did this every Tuesday night, serving food to the ‘homeless’ people in Sydney. “Pfft” I thought, “There’s no such thing as real homeless people in Sydney.” I believe that in this country, anyone who truly wants to get a job will find one. The only people that don’t are dole-bludgers, lazy useless scumbags who just sit on their backsides and get free money from Centrelink, free money that I have to work for. Why can’t this money be given to starving children in developing countries where real poverty exists? Not here, where there’s no such thing. Nevertheless, Peter seemed pretty enthusiastic and I told him that I’d come just once to give him a hand.

Looking at them, I asked myself, were these real homeless people? Or were they no better than bothersome ants that steal the sugar from your pantry? I started frantically dishing out the plates to the homeless people, many of them smelt terrible, like bodies rotten or dying, trapped in a closed room, but they were all very grateful and some even said “thanks” or “God bless”. There was one man, who when he took his plate, looked directly into my eyes and thanked me. He had beautiful grey eyes, the colour of wood smoke, and long jet black hair, which was surprisingly well combed for a homeless person; it wasn’t much, but I could tell there was something different about