Author: Małgorzata Lampa

Author: Beata Benyskiewicz, Social Emergency Association 

The article was printed in the Street Newspaper, number 4/2005 (6)
01.12.2006

Houses…a bit too big, overcrowded. Every day a few people knock at the door. They are different, but it seems to me that I know their thoughts. There are young people under thirty, without a past and, as convinced, also without any future. Lonely middle-aged people stay here only temporarily - they will soon find a job, rent a room, “become independent” and will live normally…until they lose their job again. There are also the families who once had had their own homes, and then stayed at their acquaintances’ for a long time (as long as it was possible), hoping for a better future. Their main motivator was the belief in a miraculous change of the situation. Today they have already no strength. Those in their fifties are tired with life –  every minute of it is reflected in their faces. All they wish is to have their own beds for a long time; after all, they will not find a job - they have not worked for years, so who will employ them?  

Printed by: Łukasz Cholewicki
03.10.2006

You will recognize them by their carrier bags.  55 is the number of the bus that leaves from Rataje Station and by which you can get to the seat of the Social Emergency at 12 Borówki St. For the homeless, the alcoholics, those who left prison, people with various life experience, travelling in this bus is the first step towards (in the random order) becoming sober, finding a job, better life, home… In other words it is the beginning of the road. Or a chance. I start to speak like a reporter for  the Reporters’ Express (Polish television programme), but I get on this bus, too.  After a few stops the bus is packed – it is about 3 p.m. Young people return from schools, some mothers have just collected their children from nursery schools, students elbow among the passengers, trying to look through their notes. I share the same destination with several other passengers – I recognize that they are homeless. I am not the only one to notice it. Despite the crowd, the place where they stand seems to be surrounded by some invisible line, which none of the passengers of the bus want to cross. I watch them tactfully. They are sober, but look like slobs. They do not resemble noble tramps from William Wharton’s prose at all. Stuffed carrier bags, furrowed faces. Social Emergency came into being just with the thought of them.  

Author: Krzysztof s. Maj

Proloque

Two years ago Poznan Television transmited a commentary about a homeless. The homeless has been living in a scrap-heap a long time. This man almost froze to death. He was saved by journalists. When the homeless was taken inhabitants asked :”Where are you taking him away?” Inhabitants was nervous. They suggested this homeless was theirs. They helped him. I was moved and decided to write this text.