Louise – Avondale
“Okay, if this is, like, not what you want to hear at all – this is real. It’s real.
I had a phone call last night. It was really important to me. I’ve been trying to help this homeless person and we’ve been trying to sort out what to do with this person, because he’s living on the streets. He needs helps. There are people like this, and most people just walk past people when they see people are lying on the streets. He’s a friend that called me in a time of need at Christmas time, and he just needed somewhere safe to stay for the night. That ended up being quite a long process, because I ended up looking after him until he got the help that he needed through medical detox and Federal Street – they’re places for addiction. This is a real problem that all us New Zealanders are related to in some way.
This guy Dean; he just – he picked up drinking again and he’s lost everything that he owns; all his photographs, all his clothes – everything. The last time I saw him he had a cell phone, and it was raining. I got him to go in for an interview with Pitman House and then he kept falling asleep. This is how it is for some people. He kept falling asleep at the bus stop. I was worried that he’d wake up and just take a few steps across the road and get run over, so I had to take him to a safer place, and then I had to go and it has been really, really bad weather here. So lots of damage to people’s houses – even up in New Lynn. Storm water’s gone across everything, and he’s been out in that rain.
We cannot find him. He cannot stay at my house because I cannot afford to lose my flatmate, because everybody knows that you’ve got to be able to pay the bills.
My last important call that I had was last night; that was with his partner who does not know what to do. We are thinking of putting a missing person’s thing in with the police, but there is no point in doing that when he’s got nowhere to go at the moment. You know, if people on the street call an ambulance and you get taken to hospital, that’s good. We need to have places for these people to go. Because the hospital just keeps them for a few hours and as soon as their vitals are right, they chuck them back out onto the streets again, and they’ve got nowhere.
We had a plan of action; we are going to figure out when his assessment date is for admittance into the alcohol rehabilitation place, and then we will call the Police, do a missing person’s thing, we’ll ring up all the hospitals and see if they can hold him, or if we can hold him until we get him into medical detox. Because to save a life is a really great thing, and that’s what we’re trying to do. There are many people. There’s so many homeless. There’s so many people out there on the streets begging.
You know, some of them, they’re wearing good clothes and they’re just wanting money for cigarettes or alcohol or whatever, and then there are people like me that are struggling to pay the bills. I mean, they’re sending people to Mars and we’re not even dealing with what’s here in our own backyards, in our own home, in our own country. Years ago, before I got pregnant, I wanted to become a genetic engineerist. I went to university, I got pregnant. It was unplanned, and then my main thing was bringing up my child.
I could not continue with the rest of my degree; my child’s my number one priority. My child has ADHD. When he was older I wanted to do nursing, because I’ve always wanted to help people. I think that God gave me the gift of caring, and now I’m not quite sure totally what to do with that. I’ve got a few health problems going on. My thumbs fused so I can’t hold – I can’t do nursing. My parents are both sick, and I’ve just found out I’ve got this neck problem. I’ve known it for a while, but I’ve had the x-ray results back, and I’ve got to deal with that.
When I see somebody that I can help, I just have to do it. A small thing can make a big difference to a person’s lives. Like, if you just stop and talk to somebody at the bus stop; a question like, how are you? If they are receptive they will tell you how they feel, and they can download things to you, but they cannot tell their partner or another person, and then when they walk away with a smile, because they’ve talked to somebody. You’ve got to talk to people – communicate with people.”
