Homeless life

Greg at Strawberry Square

            Finally, Greg came and shook our hands. There was an Asian man right next to him. Someone told me that he is a Korean. Since I am also a Korean, I wanted to talk to him. “Hey what’s up? What’s your name?” As I was asking these questions, I extended my hand to him and shook his hand. “Kyle,” he responded with an awkward smile. Frankly, initiating a conversation with a stranger is not the easiest thing in the world. Kyle sat two seats from mine and started to eat his sandwiches. Attempting to learn more about Kyle, I asked him several more questions, and he answered them kindly but still smiled awkwardly. Kyle was adopted by an American family when he was very young. He went to University of Southern Florida to major in architectural engineering and got a job at AT&T as a sales man. Kyle told me that he was one of the best sales people in the company and his salary got maxed out. However, he never knew that working hard would ever make him unemployed; the company decided to lay off Kyle and hire a person with a cheaper pay check.

            “I did not save lots of money. I liked to shop clothes. Express can get expensive you know haha.” Kyle admitted his fault in a joking manner. Kyle was a funny person; he constantly joked about everything. I asked Kyle if he wanted to come along with us and he said yes. With Greg, Kyle and Andy, I walked around the city. First place we went was Strawberry Square, a mall in Harrisburg. Strawberry Square, especially during the winter, is like the meeting place for homeless people.  We found a table and sat around it. Greg looked around and suddenly pointed at a black man sitting at a table alone and said “He is the true homeless. He literally has no place to go. Why don’t you interview him, I would like to hear from him as well.”

            The guy’s name was Simon. He is a Sudanese who ran away from the war in the country. Simon tried to find a place to work in the US, but he failed and became a homeless. Everyone was mesmerized into Simon’s stories so that no one realized that people were surrounding us. “What’s up guys?”  A man in a black uniform interrupted Simon. I looked up and finally realized that there were about 6 people around our table.

“We are security guards here. What are you guys doing here?”  He asked us with a serious and intimidating tone.

“We are students from Messiah College and we are doing a project right now.” Andy replied carefully.

“You are not supposed to film inside please turn your video camera off.”

As soon as I turned my video camera off, they left. “So, he needed six people to tell us that” Andy said sarcastically. After the security guards disappeared, we started to talk about homelessness in Harrisburg. However, I was so tired from walking outside so that I could not resist keeping my eyes open. “Issac is sleeping now haha!” Everyone including myself laughed but after few minutes later, I fell asleep again.

            About an hour later, we decided to go to the county library. As we were walking to the library, Kyle looked at me holding up my video camera and said: “I am inspired by you guys. Maybe I should make a documentary about being a college student.”  While we were cracking jokes and laughing we arrived at the library – which we left soon after we entered.

            Our next destination was Daily Bread, another organization that provides the lunch every day. Lunch was quite good and I ate until I became full. Along with the homeless on the other table, however, there was Mr. Boyd – the black man who introduces him as the advocate for the homeless. Mr. Boyd and Greg do not like each other for they blame their situations on different causes – Mr. Boyd thinks that the government and other wealthy people are the causes while Greg thinks that the homeless people’s bad decisions are the causes. When Mr. Boyd saw Greg, he raised his voice and tried to embarrass him. As he became more excited, Mr. Boyed began to talk down on Andy, Kyle and me. We did our best to ignore him; however, Kyle could not hold his anger in. With his determined eyes and blushed face, Kyle stood up and walked toward Mr. Boyd.

Issac Won

Kyle, Greg, and Andy eating at Daily Bread