IHS

Our visit to IHS was a very interesting experience for me. I had never been there before, and had generally avoided the type of situation where I would be in the presence of homeless people. First of all, it was quite an adventure for Patricia, Paige and I to try to get to the women’s shelter. Despite the directions given to us, all of our parents advised us to park at Kmart. So we drove to Kmart, saw the men’s center and wandered around thinking the women’s center would be very close by. While walking and trying to find the way, I saw maybe 15 – 20 men all just standing around outside, aimlessly. They were smoking cigarettes and had nothing to do. Further down, we passed two guys smoking pot in the middle of the road and I wondered how they got the pot, or how the other guys got the cigarettes. We finally got in the car and drove around to find it, and when we got there and got out of the car, a big scary dog jumped out of the bushes in attack mode, and some guy down the street started yelling at it. He was situated on the sidewalk w/ some other people, with shopping wagons, plastic bags and blankets.
Once we finally joined up w/ the rest of the group, we were assigned to pick up trash outside the shelter. I was surprised at some of the stuff we found. Besides the regular cans and food trash stuff, I found a used needle, a couple of little plastic bags w/ white powder residue, and Paige found a water bottle filled with feces. The next task was to clean the mattresses that the guests slept on. They were very heavy and didn’t seem all too comfortable, but I guess it’s probably better than sleeping on the sidewalk or a bench somewhere outside. Next job I did was help to clean up the family room. I actually went outside and picked up a ton of trash, but one thing that really caught my attention (besides how much trash was out there, I’m guessing from the guests simply not picking things up) was that above the sink inside was a laminated and illustrated paper with instructions on how to wash your hands.
Working at IHS and seeing people in worse situations and how they live was really eye opening to me. The idle time, lower standards of living and sanitation, living on someone elses’ watch and generosity, and sometimes even the drugs. And many of the people who I saw seemed like good decent people, and I wondered what must have happened in their life, what misfortune, to put them in this place. It is tough and dirty, although many of the homeless are not really dangerous or criminal, they have fallen on bad times or have been predisposed to have some disadvantage in life.