Gazes

This guy’s eyes haunted me for a long time.

I was out to take pic­tures at the Rideau Cen­ter. When I exited The Bay, he was stand­ing here, play­ing the har­mon­ica. I stood here for a minute, look­ing at him. I grabbed the cam­era which was slung over my shoul­ders and our eyes met briefly. He nod­ded, still play­ing. He first slowly turned on his side to show me the cat perched on his shoul­der, safe from my camera’s peer­ing eye. I smiled and waited. Even­tu­ally, he looked straight into my eyes. I snapped two pic­tures quickly, gave him a cou­ple of bucks and walked away. Later, when I looked at the pic­ture, I noticed he looked like a deer caught in head­lights. His wary eyes seemed to be chal­leng­ing me, say­ing: “are you see­ing me now?”

Look­ing back, I real­ized what both­ered me so much: to most peo­ple, these guys in the streets are invis­i­ble. They stand nearby bus stops, sit at busy inter­sec­tions and sleep under bridges. They sit there and they watch peo­ple go by, attend­ing to their busi­ness. Every­body mind his own busi­ness here. Occa­sion­ally, they ask for a buck or two and will wish you a good day even if you don’t have change. And peo­ple keep on walk­ing by, as if ignor­ing them will make poverty, home­less­ness and dis­tress go away. How silly from us.

A French song goes “It seems to me that mis­ery will be less painful under the sun”. It sounds so true to me. I saw the ugli­est side of poverty in Bolivia: it was cold, the streets were dirty and look­ing at the kids in rag play­ing in piles of garbage made me cringe. Some places we’ve been to were equally as poor, but it just didn’t feel the same. In Brazil, kids from the fave­las used the show­ers at Copaca­bana and played foot­ball on the beach. Poverty was still there but it didn’t seem as bad.

To me, poverty and home­less­ness in Canada look as bad as it did in Bolivia. Sure, our streets are cleaner and we have drink­ing water. But these guys are out­side in the cold from dawn to dusk. I chat­ted with one of the guys pic­tured below and he explained me that he can usu­ally find a bed in one of the emer­gency shel­ters around the city, such as The Mis­sion or the Sal­va­tion Army. But home­less are kicked out dur­ing the day and left roam­ing in the city.

I don’t have a mir­a­cle solu­tion. Like most peo­ple, I occa­sion­ally spare some change but most of the time don’t. I rushed by home­less peo­ple every day and I sel­dom take the time to slow down and be friendly.

I chat­ted with “Danny” for a lit­tle while (he is the one who told me about these emer­gency shel­ters). He told me one of the things that both­ered him the most was that peo­ple ignored him. He felt invis­i­ble and asked me why peo­ple acted this way around him. The only reply I had was that peo­ple were prob­a­bly scared. Not of him, but of being like him. He seemed to like that. It made sense to him.

The Shop­pers	A Buck or Two
Wait­ing	Danny

Two Worlds

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4. Pic­ture of the Week: 33°C
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