The Other Side

"I will show you around."

Honestly, I was not sure if he was really serious about what he was saying the night before. Yet, Richard was there, waiting for me at the meeting point, enquiring if someone had not seen me - I was late as usually :) I had to get rid off my luggage and after that we strode into the downtown. Firstly, he started with a very detailed guidetour, which immediately arouse my attention. I could not believe that he has such a great overview about Toronto - remembering all historical turnabouts, years and events which I could hardly find in a printed leaflet Even I could not give so great guide around Bratislava despite I studied toursim and Bratislava is my hometown. It was amazing - I had my own private tourist guide. I admired and appreciate his effort to give me as much as possible. Later it was time to abandon splended downtown, glittering with fancy boutiques, breathtaking skycreepers and to see the other side of Toronto - that one which people usually do not want to see. We strolled into sidewalks and ended up in a poor district. On the first glance, it was not scary at all, it looked exactly like in an normal Slovakian city. Yet, people whom I saw made me fear - boozers, junkies, weird looking individuals, dealers etc. Dirty streets, houses in pitiable conditions, ramshackle stores and „interesting“ pubs :P Richard encoouraged me to have a look inside, so I did. I smiled when I came in - it looked like in our village pubs, but as I mentioned above, the people were different. I barely made my first steps and everybody stared at me what I was doing there - obviously I did not looked like one of them. I understood that I was not welcome and rather left.
Richard was about to show me a good neighbourhood - a social organisation that is like a day shelter for elderly people. Offering free meels, a computer room, library and equipped with other 3 entertainment rooms, it helps pensists to break through the day by getting together and doing something meaningful. Of course, immediately after I came in, everyone stared at me as what the hell I am doing there. Richard had to interfere and pointed out that I am there with him in order not to be kicked off after the first minute.
We ran into the director with whom I was to have my first interview. I cannot remember his name, but he was very nice and although he was in a hurry, during the lunch he answered all my curious questions with good grace. It is not my goal to explain all of that here in detail, I intend to write a seperate article juast about that, probably for our newspaper. By the way, it would be a sin not to give a brief description of "the food court" They offered free meals 3 times per day. An item on my must to do list - to eat streetfood - checked :)
The food was a very good quality. It tasted like a home-made meal with a better nutrition value than anything else in the city under 10 bucks. They get food from several food bunks and what they do not get they buy for government funds. Another interesting thing: the serving staff was volunteering - to be concrete that day some guys from the Bank of Montreal. I have never heard that our Slovakian white cellar would ever participate in social work. A good idea to fasten one‘s working team and to do something for the society, though.....
After the lunch I was shown the whole facility. We went to the computer lab to find out if there is something that could be done about my netbook. I did not believe that there is a chance to fix it, but a fervent effort of other guys to help gave me a new hope. I was very delighted by their willingness to help to a complete strange guy. Five people discussed the issue and tried to find a solution. Although we did not solve it, I was determined to see that thing through to the end just to be able to write about this experience.
It was almost 1pm and I still wanted to fix the netbook, make several interviews including my private one about my job and to have a quick look in some other social facilities. Almost
impossible task for one afternoon, but somehow I did not care and believed that everything would be OK:
"As you can see, there are many types of people hanging out on street. Crack addicted, weed subculture, boozers, junkies - all get together and create their own drug clubs." It made me wince to walk in the close distance among these people but I tried to do my best not to show it. This is not like in downtown, where you might see 5 homeless on one street among other people. Here is difficult to find someone who looks at least a little normal. Naturally, it is always about the question what is normal and what is not – everything is very relative.. Later we went to the salvation army. Suprisingly the staff looked even weirder than the "clientship". Richard explained to me later, that this is due to a lack of social workers so they hire everyone who shows up there for an interview. No doubts, this kind of jobs requires true grit and a strong will to help other people and demand is much higher than offer.
We wanted to meet there another director who is in charge for mental illnesses. As he later told me during the interview, many a psychical ill patient were released from psychiatric hospitals, because there is simply not enough space for them and soon or later they ended up either on street or in jail. Mental illness might have detrimental consequences if it is unthreated and people might harm not only themselves but they can be a potentional peril for the society. He has been working in this area for more than 30 years, trying to help these people out of their misery. I came up with clearly speculative sociological questions and I could see that he was not really delighted with my cold and purely "scientific" attitude. Certainly I did not want to make an impression of a curious unthoughtful guy who does not appreciate efforts to help those whom is sometimes very difficult to help. I decided not to ask some of my questions just because I did not find them interesting anymore in compare to other topics that came up in our discussion. I must say that I enjoyed it and I appreciate that they found some time to talk with me.
Later we went to a job agency where we were to have meet other computer gurus who could help to fix my netbook. Another reason was to get access to a phone and to do my job interview. It was funny that after all of those night conversations with Richard and interviews with people I met that day it was fairily easy to make that interview without any preparation at all. I do not want to flatter myself, but I had a good impression from that - I felt as if I were talking to an old frend.
Later I fell into my last desparate attempts to repair my stupid Dell. Somehow I found on internet, that there is a chance to boot a netbook version of Linux via USB. That was exaclty what I was looking for. The process was pretty difficult and I have get through many obstacles until I figured out how to go about it. I was on the brink of creating an instalation USB stick when suddendly I could not format the stick due to administrative restrictions. Noooo, I said that I will not give it up so easily, so I decided to go to an internet coffee where I boot it and sucesfully installed. After all, I could not believed that I really did it! I was so proud and happy and in a big indeptedness to Richard that he enocuraged me to work on it. I still remember that day before how incredibly dispirit I was.
Although we did not finish everything we planned, in short I can say that this was a great and a very successfull day. It opened my eyes and made my more aware in the world around me. We should be really thankful for everthing we have. For many other is our mundane life an untouchable dream . We often say that people on street are blame for their own misery. But aren’t we those who let it happen? They seem not to appreciate our help and keep on taking drugs and wasting their lives in this vicious circle. We must look for reasons somewhere deeper, in cannot be explained just by some snappy arguments. Any help is good and we should keep on trying to help those people, however difficult it is.