Heartache and anger

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?