Reflections on a soggy Saturday
Well, I’ve now just about dried out after my day pounding the streets of Birmingham.
The two things that really struck me, in addition to the fact that I really should have checked my shoes didn’t leak – was how much harder it would have been if I didn’t have 3 other people to be destitute with and also how much more restricted my options would have been if I really had been a destitute asylum seeker.
Being part of a team made the whole thing so much easier. Firstly it meant that we could pool our resources - £1 on it’s own won’t buy much but a quarter of £4 is much better. As well as the financial aspect it was also really great to have the support of other people in the same situation as me. There were times during the day – when I had to ring my socks out for instance – when I had a real sense of humour failure. Without my team and a set of tasks I would have felt really isolated and depressed instead of just a little bit tired and sulky. So, thank you team for helping to keep my spirits up – having no money is really isolating and it was great to have the support of other people.
Many of the ways we were able to occupy our time I am sure wouldn’t have been possible if we really were destitute. I can’t imagine the man in the library letting us have free internet access despite none of us having a library card if we’d been asylum seekers. I’d also be surprised if the staff at the museum, who were very kind and helpful, would have let us use their tables to make our poster. I’m fairly sure we would have been moved on from our bullring picnic and perhaps an hour sat in Borders reading might not have been allowed either. All of these things also assume that I’d be an English speaking destitute asylum seeker – add in the lack of language and I really don’t know how I would have made it through the day. This may sound a bit extreme but a lot of the help and support we got from people would not have been available if we’d been unable to communicate.
Back to the atrocious weather – at least my broken shoes are now where they belong, in the bin (still a bit damp) – as a destitute asylum seeker I’m sure that my poor feet would still be in the stinky, damp, cracked shoes doing no end of damage to my feet. I pretty positive that not many of the Refugee Council’s destitute clients have cagoules and umbrellas either – I just can’t imagine being out there in that weather even less prepared than I was.
Another thing that struck me was quite how much we were killing time. This must be the case for a lot of destitute asylum seekers who are just waiting with absolutely nothing to do, unable to continue their lives, stuck in some sort of limbo. It feels so wrong but we were literally counting down the hours till 7pm where we could go back to the office, I’m not sure I’d be able to cope if there was no end in sight to the waiting. On Monday I was back in Birmingham, on a sunny afternoon again whiling away my time until I could meet a friend. Although many of the activities I did were the same – sitting reading in a book shop for an hour or so – I was so much more confident knowing that I had my purse in my pocket and if someone did ask me to leave I’d have somewhere to go and buy a cup of tea, or someone to phone. Even though I didn’t spend much money, it made all the difference knowing that I could.
I really enjoyed (not sure that’s quite the right word) my destitute day and would like to repeat the experience with my colleagues in London to see how we managed there. It has given me a real insight into some of the issues for the Refugee Council’s clients and yet again reminded me how lucky I am.