Artless View of a Homeless Man

Courtesy of NZ Today Magazine

By Felicity Hao'uli.

What I had initially expected to be receiving benevolent and sage advice from a couple of suit-and-tie’d accountants has turned out to be Survivor – Budgeting Island. It certainly didn’t take them long to figure that I was what one might politely call “easygoing”. That is, I haven’t planned a single thing for three years other than what I’m going to wear to work in the morning. The first thing the show’s experts, Neil and Yvonne, decided to do was to get me focused and directional and goal-oriented and setting KPIs (all of that good stuff that falls just short of throwing a cushball to your neighbour in the friendship circle).

This entailed the following: a) sending me tramping and camping — horrendous, just horrendous. It is official, I was not born to appreciate nature from such an intimate perspective; b) had me live on $100 per week — the ultimate crash diet, I must have lost a good 2kg through poor financial and meal planning; and even c) cutting out pictures from magazines — which I did embarrassingly neatly much to the sniggering delight of the camera crew — in order to create a “dreamboard”.

The dreamboard, I might add, is awfully pink and girly, generally every man’s worst nightmare and even the vaguest glimpse of it on my wall is likely to send any man running screaming for the hills so I may as well chop out the ‘relationship’ part of the board now. Anyway, the most challenging of the tasks they have given me to date is this one — to write a short piece on a homeless person — including interviewing at least one homeless person for the story.

When this was announced I was still on a massive high from having survived 49.5 hours of bushwacking and the challenge seemed easy compared with that — at the very least it didn’t involved using a long-drop in any way, shape or form, hurrah.

My interpretation of the point of this challenge was threefold; to push me outside my comfort zone once again, to get me writing (a lifelong dream only recently admitted to aloud) and to further emphasise how fortunate I am and unfortunate so many others in society are. Once I got home the enormity of the task and the morality issues involved hit like a sledgehammer. The idea just didn’t sit comfortably with me — bowling up to some poor old bugger on the street and saying “Hi, could you please share with me your litany of woes so that I can tick off a challenge I’m doing on a reality TV show that focuses on the copious amounts of money I fritter away on vases and shoes? Marvellous, thanks for that, lovely”.

More than once I almost rang the producers to tell them I simply wouldn’t nor couldn’t bring myself to do it. Furthermore, sensing weakness, my old friend Lethargy poked its head around the corner in a last ditch attempt to demand some attention — I had neglected it dreadfully of late. I have to admit that instead of placing Lethargy on the naughty stool and ignoring it until it behaved itself, I gave it a couple of nights of loving attention, wasting even more precious time.

To add insult to injury I had an unfortunate run-in with a homeless man. He, even with a very large pair of beer goggles on, announced very loudly and unerringly clearly to all and sundry in a good 20 metre radius that, and I quote, my “face was a bit shit but the rest is alright I s’pose”. Oh, brilliant. At this point my sympathy for the homeless and the desire to complete this challenge waned in equal and drastic measure. It all just seemed too hard.

Luck then smiled upon me that Friday evening. After a couple of drinks with colleagues I weaved my way towards home, filled with the joys of what the weekend might bring (more budgeting, more spreadsheets to fill in, thoughts of how to spend the $2.70 I had left until Monday). I walked past Daniel.

Huddled in a doorway, his face largely hidden by the anorak pulled over his head, all I could see was a pair of nervous, brown eyes darting from left to right, sizing up all the passers-by. Oddly, I recognised him as the man I had seen earlier that day in a different part of town whilst I was out for lunch with a colleague. I have to admit that a bit of Dutch courage (or Martinborough courage, rather) had a hand in enabling me to turn around and approach his curled up figure ask him if he would take the time to talk with me. He was totally confused and couldn’t work out what on earth I wanted. Over and over, in what I hoped was a reassuring tone of voice, I repeated that I just wanted to hear his story. I then added that I was willing to pay him for his trouble. Upon hearing that last part he sprang to his feet, gathered up his bedroll, dying lilies and his plastic bag and was prepared to follow wherever I lead him.

From the outset I did everything wrongly. I took Daniel for coffee, dragging him out of his comfort zone and into mine. Doubtless, Auckland’s “coffee culture” was a very foreign and uncomfortable concept for him and I could kick myself for having done that to him, but I just did what was instinctive for me at the time. The one shining light in the location debacle was how thrilled he was with the chocolate dust on his cappuccino. He kept looking from his cup to me and back to his cup again with a combination of disbelief and joy. That is a part of those 30 minutes that will remain with me for a long time; to think that someone who lived such a rough, tough life could be so utterly enamoured with something as simple as chocolate sprinkles. Beautiful.

The other thing that really struck me was Daniel’s perfect manners. How he ended up on the streets was a secret he didn’t choose to share with me, but someone had obviously loved and cared for him enough to instil in him an innate sense of politeness and graciousness. The contrast was phenomenal – he smelt dreadful, he was clearly on the come-down from some drug or another, he looked downtrodden, he was, for all intents and purposes, a true model of the “homeless person” but as soon as he opened his mouth all of that fell away. The pleases, the thank yous and the Ma’ams were thoroughly disarming and I must confess that much of what he initially said to me is quite forgotten as I couldn’t get over that contrast.

Daniel’s story is probably a fairly typical one – he is young, Rarotongan, from a poor part of Wellington, came to Auckland to “y’know, M’am, just do my thing,” has a young son somewhere back home — and he has completely lost the will to live. He told me that he wants to go back to Wellington to say his last goodbyes, his final farewells. He believes he has done his time on this earth and that it’s time for him leave.

Shocking words from the mouth of a 21 year old. It is here that his story finishes as I couldn’t bring myself to listen to any more of that — it was too much and it was too sad. For the rest of the conversation I tried to steer him towards the Auckland City Mission, to a rehabilitation centre, even towards God. The latter, I feel it prudent to note here, is not a path I would generally suggest to a person in need, but I was so desperate for him to start helping himself and to find a way out of his hopelessness that I was willing him to try anything.

Here, I can attest to the fact that my interviewing skills are appalling. I got stuck on what are probably irrelevant details (his manners, chocolate dust), I found myself so emotionally involved with the interviewee that I stopped listening and started trying to solve his problems instead, and lastly, I couldn’t switch off afterwards — I still wonder where he is, what he’s doing and if he’s safe, warm and dry.

In summary, this challenge has not had the outcome that I had hoped for. I haven’t written an articulate, well-researched piece of literary prose. Yes, I did a fair bit of research into homelessness in Auckland (I could quote the statistics if required) but I just don’t feel like putting that down on paper. The question I keep asking myself is this: how do you help someone find hope, where they believe there is none? I don’t have an answer for this, certainly not for someone who is so far removed from his family, community and medical professionals and such. Somebody like me, so easily beguiled by good manners and knocked down by someone else’s tragic story, just cannot begin to know where to start answering that question. I need to understand things, to know the reasons why and to find solutions to problems, and as I couldn’t do that with Daniel this challenge has been hellish. I’m frustrated. I thought that at the very least I could get Daniel’s story out there, do that much for him. Instead, I put my own needs first — my need to “solve” his problems — and missed out on an opportunity to really hear him and do something more for him.

I had reconciled the exploitative issues I had previously wrestled with by paying Daniel well over the odds, buying him enough food for a couple of days and then even giving him some jewellery I had on at the time. But I can’t get past the feeling that I should have and could have done more for him and better by him. If Yvonne and Neil intended that I be humbled by this challenge, then it has worked. Maybe not in the way that they intended it to, but they have succeeded nonetheless. I know that my intentions were good with Daniel, but that wasn’t the point, that wasn’t what he needed.

I’ve written an honest piece of work, and to that degree have completed my own challenge, but I can’t shake the feeling that I have failed Daniel in some way with his.