OK so I posted in the University of Birmingham student group
about this, but I feel I needed to write out the full story. It got me so
worked up and angry.
So today I was going to Aldi to get food, as I do every week.
Outside there is a lady who sells the big issue, and like most people I don’t
buy it very often (I’ve only bought two this year.) Never the less I always try
and say hi and be polite when asked, and make conversation, and today when I
did that the lady ( regrettably never asked her name) asked me very quietly if
I could buy some food for her children.
Now, most people would politely decline at this point, but I’ve
always been bad at saying no. It was probably because of this, as opposed to me
being a particularly good person, that she then accompanied me into the shop. I
told her I couldn’t buy much because I was a student, but she just seemed invigorated
from even being in the store - she hesitantly asked if she could get chicken,
and I said that was OK. After that I asked if she wanted any vegetables, to which
she lit up and asked me if I was sure. She only got some potatoes, and then
lastly some chocolate for her kids - She was hesitant and awkward the whole
time. The food in total only came to a fiver – not exactly a lot.
I admit that stereotypes of homeless people came into my head throughout this - was she really homeless, did she really have children, etc., etc. But she was a legitimate Big Issue vendor, and after all, I'd bought her food, not drugs. When I’d bought my own food and come back out, she thanked me
again. I asked her about her situation and she explained in broken English that
she's from Bosnia, and she has four children: one 3, one 4, one 9 and one 12.
They don’t go to school because she can’t afford to send them. Her husband is
dead and she can’t get a proper job; she’d been living on the streets,
sometimes sleeping in the church. She was sleeping in a park with her kids when
a lady asked her what she was doing, and took pity on her. Currently she is
staying in a room in this lady’s house, who also took her to The Big Issue and
got her the job. However, she explained that she can only stay if she pays the
rent for the room.
She started to cry as she told me how she wasn’t selling
enough, and how she was going to have to move out of the room. She explained that
she was trying to do everything for her children, and I realised the real impact
of the meal I had just given her. I felt like a terrible person for even considering for a minute that she was a scam. She said, rough quote, ‘I have had too much
hardship. God has given me too much. I just want it to end.’ She showed me the
ten magazines she hadn’t yet managed to sell, and the bus ticket she’d bought from
the city centre which had cost her four pounds. She said it almost wasn’t worth
coming out at all, but at least she had the job.
I tried to say that most people did care, deep down, as we watched them all avoid eye contact and
walk past us with their bags full of Aldi food. I said they would help more if
they knew people’s story, if they stopped to think about the fact there were
literally lives at stake. All she said to this was that she didn’t beg, and she
mostly didn’t try and tell anyone her hardship because she didn’t want to be
like that. She said ‘some people come by smiling’ – she didn’t want to ruin
their day with her pain. She says she just has to wait and see if anyone has a
good heart, and then God will bless them a thousand times for their kindness.
When she asked about me I didn’t want to tell her anything,
not with all the privileges I take for granted every day. I was embarrassed
about my own status in society, about my comparative richness. All I said was
that I was a student at the university, to which she nodded – we are from completely
different worlds. She blessed me and my family and I told her to try and keep
up hope (and felt like a complete arsehole doing so). As I came away, all I
could think of was of those people who were walking past us, and how twenty
must have come out of the shop since we’d been talking. If half of them, even
in that five minutes, had forked out £2.50 for a magazine (less than a pint of
beer), she’d have made her quota for the day. I’m not saying that would have
solved all of her problems, but it wouldn’t exactly have hindered, would it?
We’re ruthlessly blinkered. We don’t like to think about
poverty so we literally, physically look away, and try to act as though it
doesn’t exist. We tell ourselves we’re good people and we have morals, that we’re
kind, but think about it. Are we? No. No one gives enough of a shit about
anyone but themselves and their own lives. Society is a load of bullshit.
All I can beg of you, reader, is that you look up from your
phone screen – from your apps, social media accounts – for just a moment, and
have a look around. What can you do to make someone’s life better? What can you
do to make someone else smile? What even minuscule thing could you do to make a
difference to this shitty world?
