Silence

Today is muggy and hot, with a smog alert announced this morning, which means elderly and other vulnerable people are encouraged to stay in air conditioned surroundings and drink lots of water.

The food bank being where it is – in a bus free industrial area - as I entered and left today I saw two elders walking along, braving the heat and thick air to get their food allowance.

Unbelievably there WAS bread today – long, squishy white loaves that had been sliced lengthwise instead of the typical cross cuts. No matter – it brought a chuckle! As I write my personal assistant is packing sandwiches into the freezer. Remember I have plenty of peanut butter!

Silence is an intrical part of being poor. In many ways it forms a large part of the texture of the day.

For example, today being intensely hot, the food bank was no place of idle banter. The ubiquitous noise of fans and limping air conditioners, and fork lift trucks in the back met no challenge from conversation, excepting only in the tiny computer room where you are issued the dry erase card that permits you to enter the waiting anteroom before the actual food room. When my assistant and I reached the distribution volunteer he performed his duties without uttering a word except to agree that I could have two cans of tuna instead of one can and a pack of hot dogs.

Surprisingly he was both adept and generous. He made all my selections for me (tuna excepted) with clear experience regarding what I could and could not have. He was clearly not confused at all by the complexity of the selection criteria he was required to follow. Yet as we approached the end, where only candy and old vegetables remained, he too began to pop in to my bag an extra carrot and a small sack of chocolates. I was moved again by how my colleagues of meagre circumstances find ways to be generous and to express their compassion for each other’s situations!

My assistant went to the kitchen as soon as we got home and now my freezer is well stocked with curried vegetable soup.

The relative silence of ODSP case workers is also notable. As I mentioned in a recent posting it seems that these people go to extensive effort to deal with the random rulings spit out by the electronic inners of the system that distributes the money. On the occasions I have attended interrogations the behind-the-desk staff have worked their way around to giving me favourable answers, but never have they disclosed their opinions, chatted about their working conditions, answered a direct question or explained why they invariably leave me waiting in small rooms while they do some mysterious thing out of sight and earshot. “I will be right back” is the best you will get.

I believe that the expectation of silence is behind my friends’ initial reluctance to be interviewed for this blog. That I am writing a blog is in itself grounds for keeping quiet and avoiding my questions! I am not surprised – I am pointing out that silence is built into poor people’s way of life.

I believe it stems back to the situation I outlined in my first posting. Everything about ODSP and about other systems designed to “benefit” the poor is based on the Victorian poor laws. The harmonic that we still live with is the legislated certainty that it is a crime to be poor.

Criminals naturally don’t want to tell everything about how they live. Since it is clear that few if any human beings can live on the income that ODSP provides, nearly everyone in this circumstance must be hiding something somewhere – or they would be dead. But moneybags is, or at least so it seems, continuously aiming to close down these strategies. Keeping silent is clearly a smart thing to do.

But silence prevents people from acknowledging and celebrating many of the contributions that they make. Whether it be the volunteer who hands out extra cans of beans and extra carrots or the person who makes sure that another person gets back to their own apartment when Wheeltrans gets them only to the front door (and receives a little extra cash for the service), people cannot say who they are or what they are up to for fear of upsetting their fragile accommodations. But then we cannot say how much the world is benefitting from our activities either.

It is my intention to let the world know how deep the contributions go and how extensive their variety is. I must do so carefully. I am risking much by doing this.

Judith