I was walking again, after 8 weeks, throught the market near my house. We stopped at the fruit stand to buy fruit for the week, just some nectarines as we still had at home, but we spent some time in there as my mother and sister were dicussing whether she wanted pineapple, papaya, watermelon, or something smaller. We were finally leaving and I saw a guy. He was more than 40 or 50, covered in dirt from head to toe but with something touching in his eyes. His eyes were directed towards the fruit, you could read the desire and the fear. I had never seen that before. I had seen despair and the traces of a hard life, distrust and defeat, but never this.
My sister later told me she also so him. He was trying to grab a grape and the vendor cut a small bunch and gave it to him. We left. I was thinking if I could give him some, buy anything for him. I'm almost broken and living mainly from my family as I am not charged for rent, food, or the doctors they had been paying me. I've been feeling like a parasite since I had no job, specially since last month that the ligaments in my foot broke and saw my bank account was overpass the limit it should so fast. I still have a little money, but I immediately thought in my parents spending in me and me instead of giving back spending the few i had in somebody else and then asking them for more. We were also leaving, and I truly don't know what to do in a situation like this one. I wish I would.
Back home I was feeling sick, so I tried to sleep a bit. I couldn't, I was thikning in this man and in this problem. What could I do for people homelessness. If I had money, I thought, I could have bought him some fruit, or even a meal. If I had a place of my own, and a bit more, maybe some clothing and a place to wash himself up. I remembered a Mexican movie of Pedro Infante in which a lady found homeless guys and took them to her home as workers, gardeners, buttlers, etc. and then they left. I remembered that it is terrible to give away things as it is better to help people grow rather than just help then that day.
How can this problem end? I don't know. I wish I would.
Giving food and shelter for a while is a momentary solution, but, what is the real solution? I thought in a house, more like dorms, where homeless people could live, and be fed, and work for it growing their own vegetables or making stuff to sell. But what would be then? That's also a momentary solution.
Those people once had a home and each had a life. What made them be hungry walking through the streets?
Out of my sister's bed I began seeing things in a different way. In this world if you had no money you didn't exist. The census is done to all those who have a place to live. What about those who don't? as pointed out in a museum exhbition of Minerva Cuevas.
I get online and in my fb homepage are lots of pictures of pets asking to be saved or adopted, and I think about this man. Who will save or adopt all the people living in the streets? Why are we more caring for dogs or cats than for our own specie? TV constantly tells you about being comfortable with yourself, and well are immerse in a pop culture in which we forget others really fast, we care about our well being, our sadness and our missery. My sister is in a program called "Un techo para mi país" in which houses are built for families, small house, but better than the ones they have made of cardboard or rotten wooden plates, with terrible ceilings. I think it's great what she does, she is in the education program, but then again, if someone has no money for paying the basic (most of the house is financed, but they need to pay 1,000 pesos, like 76USD for the house, so it is not a gift), then there is no house for them. They will keep living where they are living. And homeless people in the city, living under a bridge are in a worse situation, as they don't even have 4 walls around them and a ceiling over their heads. And nothing is thought to be done for them. Not that I know of. They are shadows, they don't exist, not at all. And that is the saddest thing in the world.
I don't know what to do about this, but, I'll try to think of something to finish with this. If you have any idea, if you can think of something, please, let me know. And next time I see someone in this situation, I'll try to help, somehow, and not for feeling better with myself or summing good points for when I die, but because this is a situation that cannot go on.
Now I have to think.
