Today I met someone who taught me a lot. She is a homeless woman in Glebe, and has been living on the streets for about 7 years. As I walked past she asked for a $1 as she is living on the streets because of domestic violence. This struck me and I asked if she’d had dinner (this was about 7pm) and invited her to eat as I hadn’t yet either. We ended up talking for sometime. She was really into the idea of computers, and had a computer she had found but couldn’t sell as it was locked (windows login) and her sister wouldn’t buy it unless she could use it, so I gave her an Ubuntu CD, and she was stoked!
Anyway, she is an Aboriginal woman from the Griffith area who was taken from her mother as a baby and brought up by foster parents in Sydney. For those unaware of this practise, it was the policy in Australia in those days to take young Aboriginals from their natural mothers for a “better” life, a disturbing and destructive practise that obviously still has victims dealing with the consequences today. At any rate she felt she had a good upbringing as the foster parents treated her well, and hated her natural mother. She is 34.
She had a partner who apparently still stalks her and beats her up. She can’t get into refuges for women, as they prioritise for women with children, and she can’t get a restraining order against him as she is homeless. So she can’t get assistance or protection against someone who decides to hurt her for whatever reason. I had not thought of this loophole in the system, and it disturbed me greatly. Many homeless people in Australia don’t receive any government benefits as they don’t have an address to collect them from, another loophole.
She told me about her aspiration to write a book about the Queen of the Land and the King of the Sea, bringing a traditional Aboriginal story to print. She draws and told me how she had been given $10 for her birthday by a sister, and had spent $9.98 on a huge set of textas on sale at the store. Before she left, after eating maybe 1/4 of her meal (“That is a HUGE amount of food for me sister!”) she made me promise to come find her again when she writes her book to see it. I thought she meant to buy it but no, she just wanted me to see she could do it. She had a brother hanging around by that stage and had to go, she gave me a massive hug and thankyou before leaving and immediately giving the brother the leftover food, ancouraging him to eat it. At any rate, it has really made me think about yet another perspective, and set of social issues that it is easy to discuss over coffee with friends, but not easy to understand from the inside.
What was amazing was when she relaxed a bit and made or listened to a joke, her face lit up with this inner light, and she was so hopeful. She had a beautiful face, but then she would bring the walls up again, and have fear, pain and uncertainty etched on her face.