Homelessness is no stranger in urban environments.
Disparity, economic and otherwise, is visible in older rougher parts of cities, worldwide,where no one with money wants to live. Urban flight has created downtown areas where people, who have nothing. sleep on sidewalks and warm themselves, on cold nights, over fires burning in empty fifty five gallon oil drums.
We have homeless in Albuquerque who construct cardboard houses by the freeways. They push their shopping carts down sidewalks and congregate at bus stops. They stand at major street intersections with hand scribbled signs full of bad spellings asking for money. As most of us, who have volunteered to help, or have been homeless, know, this homeless army is Veterans, college graduates, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, people who have run out of luck,people that no one is looking for. Most have dropped out, many are drug addicted or mentally ill. They are lost, covered with anonymity in the midst of plenty.
Even wealthy societies haven’t come up with solutions.
This soul,in the passageway on my way to Colonial Square, is tossing food to pigeons. They come waddling closer as she throws a handful of popcorn out. They are not timid, not afraid.
There is something Biblical about this scene.
When I see someone with nothing, give what they have,Jesus becomes more than just a possibility.
When I remark that I have a cold, Yuri asks if I want some ” Mama Juana? ”
” I don’t want marijuana, ” I answer.
” No, ” she laughs, ” Mama Juana. It is a local drink, good for colds. ”
Berluis shows me a jug which looks like it is filled with bark off a tree, which, it turns out, is. Research says this alcoholic drink was concocted by local Taino Indians who put rum, red wine,honey, herbs, and bark in a jug to make a happy time drink.The drink is good for colds, flu, digestion, circulation, and cleaning the blood.
” It won’t hurt me? ”
Yuri shakes her head ” no” and Berluis pours us all a little into plastic cups, not unlike my golfing crew’s ” birdie juice ” cups.
We drink to the Dominican Republic, and, happily, no ill effects have been noticed.
The alcohol content is subdued and the drink is sweet, not unlike Jamaica Tea.
” You can’t say, ” Yuri explains, ” You have been to the Dominican Republic without trying Mama Juana. ”
People don’t need to have a health reason to drink but having a real cold makes this sampling real good for me.
Learning about local traditions is always a plus, especially when they taste so good.
The boy walking the sidewalk in front of me is tossing a banana into the air and catching it as he walks. It could be a baseball, a football. a soccer ball, a stone or a pencil. Boys toss things into the air, catch them, and feel good with the world as it is.
Along the way, he stops at a slightly leaking hose that has been repaired before with wire that has become rusted and no longer solves the problem. He kneels down and inspects the water problem, holds the banana alongside the hose as if it would make a splint. Boys like to fix things.
I pass and continue down the sidewalk on my way to the Colonial Zone.
A leaky hose is a problem we can solve in a world leaking problems.
For now, throwing and catching is mostly what is on this boy’s mind
Girls will change his equations, in a few years, and his chalkboard will look like Einstein had a hallucination.
Throwing and catching brings back some of my happiest times.
The last police band i saw was in Cuenca, at a celebration for ex-pats and foreign business development in that Ecuadorian city.
This Santo Domingo events aim is to support women and fight domestic violence in Latin America.This police band provides some of the entertainment. There are uniformed officers patrolling all the tourist destinations in this ” old City.”. and, except for getting hustled to buy things you don’t want or solicited to take a guided tour from one of the many guides in the area, the Zone is very safe.
The police band’s music is contagious, in a good way.
It is good for the police to show their gentle side since most of their job deals with locking up family, friends, and strangers who choose not to follow rules.
Police are still humans, we sometimes forget, who wear guns, handcuffs, badges, drive official vehicles. play in the police band, and put people in jail.
They can never lose their humanity no matter how much bad they have to clean up.
When public servants and institutions lose their humanity, we all lose.
For those who have trouble putting up a shelf on the wall, someone had to build the house you live in, the car you drive. Someone had to educate your kids, grow the food you eat. Someone in the background has to mow your lawn, do your tax forms, listen to your heart, fix the pothole in the street.
In every place Scotttreks goes, people are at work doing unglamorous,tedious, dirty jobs that keep civilization going.
Luckily, people are gifted to do different things.
A world of actors would be all talk and no substance.
In a world without financial men and women, nothing would get paid for.
On a planet without ministers, we would all get big heads and believe the world rotated around us alone..
Without dreamers, there would be nothing new around every corner.
There is always work happening wherever Scotttreks goes.
Working men, and women, are worth celebrating.
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