The first thing I saw when I walked into the room for Dinner tonight was a baby. 4 days old. A tiny little button, all wrapped up in a blue blanket and his dad's arms. Lots of admirers, oohing and cooing. Lovely. The mom and dad live at the Motel and Children's Aid has given them a few weeks to move out. They've been given priority by the social housing folks, and should be in a new home in the town next door by the middle of the month. Otherwise the little blue button will be in someone else's arms.
Children's Aid simply won't let kids live there anymore. Which is probably good.
CL told me all of this while we ate.
I said, "You get enough bad apples coming through, that kids really shouldn't be living here."
She agreed. Told me about a guy who'd just moved out. Into a room with barred windows downtown.
When she went in to clean his room, she found some needles on the the kitchen counter. She called the cops and they told her not to touch them. Not to touch anything. To lock the door and wait until they could send someone.
The someone came and went through the room. Found half a dozen more needles. He told CL he knew how to search a room, knew what he was looking for. Knew how to search a sofa without sticking his hand down anywhere he couldn't see.
Our group has been given the chance to partner with the local health care centre in working on establishing a 'street health' program. We're glad to have them because we don't have the expertise, and they're glad to have us because we're a bridge to the people who they want to reach out to with things like foot care, med management and harm reduction. The latter would partly involve needle exchange and possibly providing people with crack pipes of their own rather than sharing them, which can lead to the spread of Hep-C and HIV through cracked or bleeding lips.
Things are changing at the Motel. The manager has moved out of his apartment in the main building. He's still living in the area and still works for the Motel, in charge of collecting rents. CL is responsible for day to day stuff.
Last week the old manager paid us a visit during Dinner and told people that if there was anything among the 'donations' that they wanted, they should get it now or the new owners would dumpster it. A few people rummaged through the piles of clothing and dishes and old books and took what they wanted. SW took a purse for himself and was showing clothes to some of the women, saying, "This would fit you."
One thing that hasn't found a home yet is the waterbed. I love the waterbed. I think it's got to be the most marvelously useless thing anybody's donated to us. And that includes the salon chair which looks like this, except ours is so much cooler. It's yellow and has an ashtray built into the arm rest. Yes. An ashtray.
But the waterbed. What on earth? What's anybody going to do with a waterbed? If someone took it to their room, set it up on the poor old plywood floor and filled it, they'd end up in the crawlspace underneath with the cats and the spiders and the sewer gas.
Although, a couple of guys were saying that if you cut it up the right way, it would make a decent tarp. So there you go.
Dinner tonight was a bit tight. Enough of most things for everyone to have firsts, but no extra.
I'm deeply grateful for the partnership of our church groups in providing meals, but I wonder sometimes whether they really understand the situation.
Last week I overheard a snippet of conversation between two men. The group had brought a very good meal - meat and potatoes and veggies and salad.
The two men had watched the diners go down the table and serve themselves as they always do. And, like tonight, there had been just barely enough meat to go around.
One man said to the other, "There's got to be a way to keep them from taking so much meat."
I didn't say anything then, but I wonder whether it occurred to those men that this Wednesday's meal is, for most of these guys, the first meat and potatoes meal they've had since last Wednesday.
That they don't have chicken on Thursday, fish on Friday, lasagna on Saturday, roast beef on Sunday, chicken on Monday and sausages on Tuesday plus eggs for breakfast.
This is it. The only solid meal anybody cooks for them all week.
A few weeks ago, when we handed out the care packages put together by several church groups, one man at first said no thanks, he didn't want one. But once everybody else had theirs and there were a few left, he asked whether he could just take a loaf of bread. We said "Of course" and tried to get him to take the rest of the stuff in the bag as well. Pasta, sauce, canned stew, canned veg.
He said no thanks, just the bread. But then he saw a can of tuna. Said he'd take that. He could make sandwiches.
Well, we said, why not the rest of the stuff?
He said, "I've got no way to cook it." No stove, no microwave, no hot plate, no toaster oven.
Just sandwiches.
So we gave him a couple of loaves and an extra can of devilled ham and he was happy.
And we wonder why he takes so much meat.
r
Children's Aid simply won't let kids live there anymore. Which is probably good.
CL told me all of this while we ate.
I said, "You get enough bad apples coming through, that kids really shouldn't be living here."
She agreed. Told me about a guy who'd just moved out. Into a room with barred windows downtown.
When she went in to clean his room, she found some needles on the the kitchen counter. She called the cops and they told her not to touch them. Not to touch anything. To lock the door and wait until they could send someone.
The someone came and went through the room. Found half a dozen more needles. He told CL he knew how to search a room, knew what he was looking for. Knew how to search a sofa without sticking his hand down anywhere he couldn't see.
Our group has been given the chance to partner with the local health care centre in working on establishing a 'street health' program. We're glad to have them because we don't have the expertise, and they're glad to have us because we're a bridge to the people who they want to reach out to with things like foot care, med management and harm reduction. The latter would partly involve needle exchange and possibly providing people with crack pipes of their own rather than sharing them, which can lead to the spread of Hep-C and HIV through cracked or bleeding lips.
Things are changing at the Motel. The manager has moved out of his apartment in the main building. He's still living in the area and still works for the Motel, in charge of collecting rents. CL is responsible for day to day stuff.
Last week the old manager paid us a visit during Dinner and told people that if there was anything among the 'donations' that they wanted, they should get it now or the new owners would dumpster it. A few people rummaged through the piles of clothing and dishes and old books and took what they wanted. SW took a purse for himself and was showing clothes to some of the women, saying, "This would fit you."
One thing that hasn't found a home yet is the waterbed. I love the waterbed. I think it's got to be the most marvelously useless thing anybody's donated to us. And that includes the salon chair which looks like this, except ours is so much cooler. It's yellow and has an ashtray built into the arm rest. Yes. An ashtray.
But the waterbed. What on earth? What's anybody going to do with a waterbed? If someone took it to their room, set it up on the poor old plywood floor and filled it, they'd end up in the crawlspace underneath with the cats and the spiders and the sewer gas.
Although, a couple of guys were saying that if you cut it up the right way, it would make a decent tarp. So there you go.
Dinner tonight was a bit tight. Enough of most things for everyone to have firsts, but no extra.
I'm deeply grateful for the partnership of our church groups in providing meals, but I wonder sometimes whether they really understand the situation.
Last week I overheard a snippet of conversation between two men. The group had brought a very good meal - meat and potatoes and veggies and salad.
The two men had watched the diners go down the table and serve themselves as they always do. And, like tonight, there had been just barely enough meat to go around.
One man said to the other, "There's got to be a way to keep them from taking so much meat."
I didn't say anything then, but I wonder whether it occurred to those men that this Wednesday's meal is, for most of these guys, the first meat and potatoes meal they've had since last Wednesday.
That they don't have chicken on Thursday, fish on Friday, lasagna on Saturday, roast beef on Sunday, chicken on Monday and sausages on Tuesday plus eggs for breakfast.
This is it. The only solid meal anybody cooks for them all week.
A few weeks ago, when we handed out the care packages put together by several church groups, one man at first said no thanks, he didn't want one. But once everybody else had theirs and there were a few left, he asked whether he could just take a loaf of bread. We said "Of course" and tried to get him to take the rest of the stuff in the bag as well. Pasta, sauce, canned stew, canned veg.
He said no thanks, just the bread. But then he saw a can of tuna. Said he'd take that. He could make sandwiches.
Well, we said, why not the rest of the stuff?
He said, "I've got no way to cook it." No stove, no microwave, no hot plate, no toaster oven.
Just sandwiches.
So we gave him a couple of loaves and an extra can of devilled ham and he was happy.
And we wonder why he takes so much meat.
r
Comments