From A Caregiver's Point Of View

By Lindsay Boyd

From A Caregiver's Point of View is comprised of thirteen chapters. Chapter one, set in Glasgow, Scotland depicts the author's first venture into life as an intentional community worker or assistant. He joins the city's Simon Community, which provides temporary and longer-term housing options for chronically homeless people.

Chapter two describes a visit made to a Manchester-based English friend Ernie, a man in his sixties struggling to overcome the regrets he harbours in life. The focus of the following chapter is a second Simon Community, that of Cork City, Ireland.

Chapter four sees a chance encounter with some compatriots in an Athens budget hotel, notably Alan, a man who has succeeded in making travelling the world his vocation. Yet the peripatetic nature of his life has clearly not served him well in many respects.

In chapter five, at the beginning of a third trip to Europe and before beginning work in another Simon Community, there is a visit to Zorica, a pen pal from Banja Luka, Bosnia Herzegovina and also opportunities to reunite briefly with friends made elsewhere in Europe.

Following further community experience in Europe the interest begins turning toward North America. Chapter six covers the time spent as a live-in volunteer with the New York City Catholic Worker, another organisation serving homeless people, as well as several visits with Teresa, an upstate New York pen pal.

Chapter seven illustrates the largely non-verbal friendship that develops with Kay, a resident of one of the houses that makes up the Dublin Simon Community. A return period in the United States, beginning in 1993, allows for a first experience - in Seattle, Washington State - of life with another group of marginalised people, ie, the mentally and physically challenged.

Chapter nine, set in Manila, continues the focus on life and work with the disabled but concentrates more closely on the physical and emotional needs a caregiver might feel. Guatemala, a country nearing the end of a bitter civil war, is the subject of the next chapter. Dealing in turn with time spent with a local family learning Spanish and then a couple of stints with a group of internally displaced refugees in the country's remote Petén jungle, again it becomes clear that all can be 'marginalised' in their way, that all need and deserve care.

Chapter eleven is set in Mobile, Alabama and like many sections before it, especially the Manila chapter, throws up 'the two sides of the coin' that is the caregiving vocation. The penultimate chapter twelve introduces Jesús, another long-term pen pal, met for the first time on a 2009 visit to Cuba.

Jacksonville's Harbor House comprises the last chapter, specifically focusing on the endearing personalities and ways of the many residents met and lived with over the course of repeat spells with the community in the years 1998 to 2009.

Care giving, it seems, once commenced can never be stopped; it must be applied across the board. If the lessons learnt in intentional communities are truly taken to heart they will last a lifetime and encompass all in need. And, inevitably, in caring, one is cared for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lindsay Boyd
• Release date: Apr 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310352263

Lindsay Boyd

I am a writer, personal carer and traveller, among other things, originally from Melbourne, Australia. Since 1987 I have visited around seventy countries for the purposes of work and / or travel. As a writer I am principally a novelist though I also write shorter pieces, both fiction and non-fiction. I have published, and self-published, poetry, articles, stories and novels. My most recent novels were a trilogy dealing principally with the themes of healing and reconciliation. I also write screenplays and the have made a number of low-budget films.

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FROM A CAREGIVER’S POINT OF VIEW

Experiences of a caregiver around the world

Lindsay Boyd

Published by Changeling at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Lindsay Boyd

Cover by Vila Design http://www.viladesign.net

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

1: Glasgow

2: Manchester

3: Cork City

4: Athens

5: Banja Luka

6: New York

7: Dublin

8: Seattle

9: Manila

10: Guatemala

11: Mobile

12: Matanzas

13: Jacksonville

About the author

Other titles by Lindsay Boyd

Connect with Lindsay Boyd

Author’s note

A version of ‘Manila’ was previously published in hypallage literary e-zine. Versions of ‘Guatemala’ have also appeared in The Big Issue and Quadrant magazines.

I had tasted similar happiness very often in my life – after a fatiguing journey a glass of cold water, a simple goodly shelter, a human heart living unknown in an inglenook of the world, waiting warm and unspent for the stranger. And when the stranger appears at the end of the street, how this heart bounds and rejoices because it has found a human being! As in love, so in hospitality, surely he who gives is happier than he who receives.

Nikos Kazantzakis Report to Greco

Pienso que el hombre debe vivir en su patria y creo que el desarraigo de los seres humanos es una frustración que de alguna manera u otra entorpece la claridad del alma. Yo no puedo vivir sino en mi propia tierra; no puedo vivir sin poner los pies, las manos y el oído en ella, sin sentir la circulación de sus aguas y de sus sombras, sin sentir cómo mis raíces buscan en su légamo las sustancias maternas.

I think men should live in their native lands and that the rootlessness of human beings is an annoyance that in one way or another dulls the clarity of the soul. I could not live outside my country; I could not survive without touching it with my hands and feet or listening to it, without feeling the movement of its waters and its shadows, without feeling how my roots search for maternal substance in its essence.

Pablo Neruda Confieso que he vivido memorias

English translation by the author

Chapter One: Glasgow

May 8, 1988

Grey skies, tenement houses and unflattering high-rise apartment blocks heralded the city on the train’s approach around seven o’clock in the evening. Through eyes that I had struggled to keep open for minutes on end during the journey, I beheld a succession of unprepossessing edifices out the windows to either side. The ride from London’s Euston Station had ballooned to eight hours from the touted six and a half, owing to a diversion about midway.

As soon as we drew to a stop, I collected my bags and stepped onto the platform. The cool early evening threatened rain. Out front of the station I ran the gauntlet of several taxis, black like those in London, and following the instructions received in a letter from the local Simon Community boarded one and asked the driver to take me to Broomielaw. I made a stab at guessing the number, unable to recall if off the top of my head.

The driver turned down a quay contiguous to the Clyde River and proceeded at a slow speed. Are ye sure o’ that number noo? I canna find 191.

It might be 194, I told him. It’s a place for homeless people.

Mebbe this is it, he said, pulling up. He looks as if he canna find a home. He was referring to a fellow roving in fits and starts along the pavement.

Knocking on the door of 194, I realised I had found the place. I returned to the taxi, paid the fare and went inside. Alice, a middle-aged woman with an alcohol ravaged face, took my coat and hung it behind a door. Several people sat watching television in a large sitting or living area. A kitchen bordered it. Two bathrooms and the bedrooms in which the residents and volunteers slept lined the corridor leading off the room.

I took a seat and was introduced to the group at large. A young stocky man with a receding hairline by the name of Gus engaged me in chat. When I explained that I had entrained from London not so many hours after a thirty-two hour flight from Australia, he rightly concluded that I must have been feeling knackered, to borrow his word.

My journey to this community in west Scotland had its genesis more than one year before. Travelling in Scandinavia on my first trip abroad, I entered a library in small-town Denmark and picked up an English-language newspaper. Leafing through the pages, I came upon an advertisement calling for volunteers to work with homeless people in the United Kingdom.

I wrote to England and received an application form and further details in the mail while labouring on a farm in Norway. The work sounded interesting and after completing and posting the application I was advised that my details had been forwarded to the Glasgow Simon Community. Around two months later I was invited to join the community in Glasgow.

The Simon Communities in the United Kingdom operated under the umbrella of a group known as the National Cyrenians. The symbolism was clear. It was with this ‘helping to bear the cross’ ethos in mind that the first Simon community was founded in London in the early 1960s, expressly to address the scarcity of accommodation options available to people newly released from prison.

More than twenty years later the Simon served the needs of all manner of homeless people, whether temporarily or more permanently down on their luck. The residents in Glasgow, without exception, were chronic alcoholics. The community catered both to men and women committed to staying dry and those not yet capable of taking this step.

After thinking things over I wrote to Glasgow with the request that I be allowed to postpone my arrival. I had covered substantial territory in continental Europe on my trip and felt in need of a break from the road before embarking on what promised to be challenging work. I returned home at the outset of the southern hemisphere summer, going on my way again five months later.

Gus eyed my meagre belongings. Travelling light, aren’t ye?

Most of my things are in New Delhi. There was a mix-up with baggage. All I’ve got is what I brought on the plane in Melbourne.

Fran, the English lass who had answered my knock, handed me a schedule for the month and some funds, explaining that she had rung a taxi. It would deliver me to the community’s house at Maryhill, where I was to begin my orientation. She also reimbursed the fare from the station. Five minutes later my transportation arrived.

Lemme look at you!

I turned and faced the woman who had spoken. Lottie’s was a striking physiognomy. She wore her long, dark hair swept back off her forehead and appraised me through a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles. I brought my face close to hers for a split second and then left the building, farewelling everyone as I went. Arriving at Maryhill, I prevailed on Mick, one of the residents, for the loan of a towel. I showered and dropped off to sleep the moment my head touched the pillow.

May 10

My forty-eight hours at Maryhill passed quietly. The house accommodates six men, all of whom have pledged sobriety. According to Christine, one of the two full-time volunteers, the community prefer workers to stay a minimum of six months. But she added that no hard and fast rule has been laid down and that not everyone sticks it out for half a year. In light of this, she reckons I ought not be too troubled were I unable to guarantee this long a commitment.

This evening I attended my first worker group meeting at the office downtown. A meal preceded business. Finances have become a snag for the community and some things, including our allowances, look like being cut back. But no one will know for sure what’s afoot until the management committee meets next Monday.

I met most of the other full-timers tonight. Emma stood out, in more than one respect. She appeared almost exclusively in black, a black leather skirt and jacket topped by a hat of the same colour that she kept affixed to her head. She works at the house in Dennistoun, which I visit for the first time starting next Monday.

In community parlance, Broomielaw ranks as a first tier house. The female residents can drink, but only outside the building. Though this is against the rules of the house, the women still attempt to smuggle liquor inside. I followed my time at Maryhill with a visit to Broomielaw lasting just over forty-eight hours.

This afternoon I went to Tollcross, the community’s one and only third tier house, for dinner with the two male residents, George and Tim. They lived at Maryhill for sometime, making the move to Tollcross when they felt primed to cope with independent living. No volunteers live with the men though the full-timers and friends frequently drop in.

Clearly, both wage a terrific struggle to hold on to the tenuous victories won. Neither is in good health. George appeared constantly short of breath. Tim, on the other hand, suffered a stroke not long ago. But I went away convinced the pair were as tough as old boots.

I bussed it back to the city centre and took the subway to Cessnock. My first week had ended. Steve, the young Glaswegian who volunteered to be my ‘contact worker’ for the month had given me directions to the flat the full-time workers use on their days off. On the seventeenth floor of a high-rise building, my first scout around made me grimace.

A bedroom and bathroom downstairs prepare the way for a living room, kitchen and two more bedrooms on the top level. Up there I ran into Ken, a black Londoner who works on the street, or step, project. He went out straight after my arrival and I twiddled my thumbs until Christine appeared on the scene.

What did you think of your first week?

I liked meeting the people. But it was slow. Is the whole month so slow?

She gave me a meaningful look. You’re not meant to do any work on your first month. The idea is for you to talk to the residents and other workers and get to know the community. And for us to get to know you.

Hmm.

I found it a long month. Many people do. You don’t have a bed you can call your own. You have to drag your belongings everywhere ...

Of the three bedrooms, the one downstairs looked the pick of a motley bunch. I stowed my gear in a corner. As I stretched out, Christine joined me. I didn’t think I’d still feel this jet lagged.

I was about to ask if you wanted to go dancing, but if you’re tired …

Dancing?

Scottish barn dancing. To my amusement, she simulated a couple of steps. You know the idea?

Vaguely. Maybe some other time.

May 15

Ken met me at the door of the office late this afternoon. I walked there from the Cowcaddens subway. I followed him up the stairs and he showed me the bed in which I would kip that night. He added that we would go out around eight o’clock. I began turning the pages of a booklet that Clare, one of the community’s two paid workers, handed over when I met her for the first time late the previous week. Induction of the new volunteers is part of her job. The printed matter outlines the community’s policies and procedures. More than once over the next hour or so my attention strayed from the dry as dust material. I happily put it aside when Ken knocked before eight.

We walked to statue laden George Square, in the heart of the city. The nightly soup run was underway. A number of homeless men and women were on the north side, opposite North Hanover Street and near the Cenotaph that dominates the centre of the square. I watched a half dozen or so folks distribute soup, tea, sandwiches and other food. Ken and I positioned ourselves on the periphery, not far from where Christine stood chatting with a middle-aged man.

Do we ever make the soup? I asked Ken.

As a matter of fact we might be doing that soon. There’s been talk about it. A different group has the responsibility every night.

Does someone from the step project come here nightly?

Usually three or four evenings a week. The other nights there’s often someone from one of the houses.

Ken entered into conversation with an individual he knew. I joined Christine, still with the middle-aged man.

Albert, this is Lindsay. A new worker.

Pleased to meet you, son. He took my hand but was far more caught up in burbling over Christine’s fair-skinned good looks. He touched her hair and would have brought the same hand to the side of her face had she not averted her head.

Stop that, Albert!

Her voice sounded not so much annoyed as quietly determined, but the ecstatic expression on Albert’s face gave way at once to its polar opposite. He lowered the offending hand to his side and muttering under his breath strode to a bench.

Albert once lived in the community, said Christine.

Ken called out. I approached the Londoner and gazed at the well-built man with him. His face bore a disaffected expression. It looked to me as if he was struggling to keep the lid on a fearsome wrath. Do you have a pound? I’ve only got coppers. I brought a pound coin from my pocket. Ken handed it to the man. That’ll get you out there. And you better go now. They won’t hold the bed after half past nine. The disgruntled figure turned and bolted into the night, toward North Hanover Street.

Did you fix him up?

One of the night shelters has a couple of beds free. It’s not the greatest place in the world, but it’ll get him off the streets.

May 16

Ken and I set off early on a fine, mild morning, stopping first at George Square and then continuing to Glasgow Green, one of the city’s parks. Near the exit leading to the Saltmarket, we passed a man throwing up by a clump of greenery. Oh dear! said Ken. An all too familiar sight in Glasgow, I’m afraid.

Minutes later, on the Clyde walkway, heading to Broomielaw, we exchanged pleasantries with Lottie and her companion Janine, another Broomielaw resident. We continued beneath a bridge, where the din of the street resounded as if amplified, until a shout carried, stopping us in the same moment. Turning around, I recognised Albert from the evening before. We entertained him briefly before proceeding.

At Broomielaw there were few people in on the fine morning though Alice sat with a male friend. The harmony came to an abrupt end when the man began roaring at her. I watched his rant, afraid he would suffer an apoplexy if he did not control himself. Before he could spit out further invective, one of the workers, Teri, calmly asked him to leave. He stormed out, adamant that whatever relation existed between him and Alice it was over.

Ken and I had a short lunch break at the office and then set off again, this time concentrating on the west end of the city. In response to my question, he said he had not found himself in too many dodgy situations on the streets. But when he started working on the step project there were a number of places he would not have gone on his own.

~

The first of two planned visits to the women’s house at Dennistoun commenced this evening. Following the path leading to the front door, a bag in either hand, I assayed the partly open tall windows fronting the living room on the left-hand side. The curtains behind them floated on a light breeze. A tall, thin bespectacled young man who introduced himself as Garry showed me in.

In rapid succession, I met three of the women who live at the house, – Nell, Marion and Michelle. Nell, an older woman, responded to my greeting with a humble smile but otherwise sat in silence in front of the television until her bedtime. Marion would be around forty. Perpetually on the move or reaching for this, that or the other, no item held her attention for any length of time. Michelle, a petite redhead with a freckled complexion, almost rivalled her taller housemate’s inability to sit still. She often frolicked with the house pet, a dog called Candy.

Marion and Michelle peppered me with questions about Australia, an exotic land in their minds. They asked so many questions that Garry was relegated to second fiddle until late in the evening. We were in the living room and everyone else had bedded down. Are you a part-timer, Garry?

He took a drag on his cigarette. Aye. I’m here every Monday night. I used to be full-time in the community.

Here?

Castlemilk.

Who else lives here?

Jill. She usually goes straight to bed after dinner. And then there’s Shirley. I haven’t seen her tonight.

May 17

First thing this morning I ran into Eric who, together with Emma, works full-time at the house. He looked up in surprise the moment I entered the kitchen. When did you get in?

Last night. Didn’t you know I was coming?

He had clean forgotten the note he penned to himself in the house diary. A native of Glasgow and a humorous person, as it did not take me long to find out, during our conversation he made a good fist of an antipodean accent. On a more serious note, he remarked that Shirley had ‘broken out’ the night before. Unsure what he meant, I asked him to explain.

She didn’t come back to the house. If she does that and doesn’t forewarn us, she’s gone on the piss. She’s done it several times, stupid girl!

Has she lost her place?

Eric interrupted his doodling in the diary. She’ll do another referral.

It’s possible?

She always does. She’s a binge drinker. Once the bint’s had her fill, she’ll be back.

I spent the day indoors but for the two occasions I accompanied the lively redhead Michelle on shopping expeditions. Marion and Nell passed the day at home, the latter spending the time in front of the television. Alone among the women, Jill had work to go to.

~

At this evening’s worker group meeting, much discussion centred round the management committee decision of the night before. Due to the community’s financial fragility, the proposed cuts will be going into effect. When asked my opinion of the reduction in the allowance, I said it hardly mattered. If money had been my guiding light I would not have travelled halfway round the world knowing I would receive only room, board and a small stipend.

May 18

For more than an hour this afternoon I was one-on-one with Jill, a short, large woman in her fifties. She talked a great deal while we shopped. Her part-time job keeps her busy two days a week. A widow, she has one married daughter, with whom she maintains patchy contact. Her husband died years ago. Jill’s discovery of his lifeless body, one afternoon when she returned home from work, precipitated a breakdown.

Several people visited the house tonight to listen to a man and a woman from an AIDS prevention group. Later, with most of the evening’s guests having departed, I kept Emma company in the kitchen. She is as fair of complexion as Christine. Try as she might, she can neither completely obscure her attractiveness with that ubiquitous hat nor cloud it amid the plumes of smoke drifting toward the ceiling from her cigarettes. With much ardour in her voice, she asked me about Australia.

May 20

On commencing my time off this evening I walked for a couple of hours. So many of the residents and workers in the community smoke that I would swear the sediment has begun tarring my lungs. Castlemilk, another dry house for men, was as bad as any of them in that regard. One of the residents, Derek, came over to Dennistoun to meet me around lunchtime yesterday.

Before going to the house we stopped at the Single Homeless Project on Osborne Street and sat in on a talk. Cardiff-born Reg, one of the Castlemilk workers, also attended. Only four men reside at the house at the moment, someone having broken out on the drink last week. I had met Gus, of course, but not the other men.

My twenty-four hours at the compact, tidy abode was uneventful. Again, I had little to do besides sit with the residents. I suppose the men direct the energy they would otherwise put into paid employment into cleaning tasks, which must be preferable to sitting idle all day long. After this evening’s walk, I returned to the flat and joined Teri, Denny, the second Castlemilk full-timer and, like Reg, of Welsh extraction and Con, an Irishman who entered the community a week before I did.

May 23

I met Shirley last night, at the beginning of my second visit to Dennistoun. In her mid-twenties, her face bears scrapes and bruises stemming from her spell back on the drink last week. She commenced another referral yesterday and went on with it today. We also received an hour-long visit from Martina, her final one before she too begins a referral. I learnt that Marion had gone on the drink. Unless she refers herself tomorrow, more than likely there will not be room for her to regain her place.

For part of the afternoon I received further training from dark-haired, sad-eyed Clare. She said I may go to Dennistoun. In the same breath she revealed that there had been trouble with male workers at the house. Hence the thinking of some that two females would work better, an arrangement not easy to implement. She harped on the importance of choosing the right men for the women’s houses. Steve, with his sensitive nature, fitted in perfectly at Broomielaw. I heard her out with mixed emotions, especially when she said I ‘seem’ to be okay.

Together with Michelle, I attended tonight’s support group meeting. I had thought of her as one possessed of an endless reserve of vim. Not so. En route to the office, she admitted feeling shattered. My experience in the community was item number one on the agenda. I made comments about each of the houses and received positive feedback in every case. Michelle’s disposition stayed the same on the bus back to Dennistoun. In a jocose tone she again told me she felt shattered.

May 24

I knew something was up with Jill when she barely acknowledged my morning greeting. Mumbling to herself, she shambled off to her bedroom. Emma and Christine were downstairs, Christine having arrived from Maryhill to cover for Emma, who needed to go out with Shirley.

What’s eating Jill?

I can’t remember where I put her cheque.

I gave an ironic shake of the head. Is it a big amount?

Three hundred pounds. My maligned colleague entered her bedroom, which opened on to the kitchen.

Moments later Jill burst among us. If she doesn’t find it, I’m going to call the polis! That’s all there is to it!

Jill, no one’s stolen your cheque.

You can sit there, Miss High and Mighty! It’s not your money! What do you care if it’s found or not?! Christine’s cheeks turned a shade roseate, but otherwise she ignored the bluster. The tempest blew over on Emma’s return, cheque in hand. Jill left and I joined Emma and Christine at the table.

How do you like the idea of working in a women’s house? asked Emma.

It’s okay with me. And you’re not a bad gin rummy player.

She laughed.

I can’t imagine Lindsay being the sort of bloke who’d browbeat the women, said Christine.

More like the other way round.

Jill had recovered her good humour by the time we left on a shopping outing that afternoon. She laughed from time to time, the morning’s incident forgotten. Marion, smelling of drink, was at the house when we returned. Big Ted, our Tuesday part-time help and a one-time community resident, had erred in allowing her in. I sat beside her in the living room, sorry to witness the despair drink had wrought. Fidgety from head to toe, Big Ted stood in the doorway.

Marion, I’m asking you to go! I shouldn’t have let you in because you’ve taken drink! When she did not move a muscle, Big Ted dragged her from the room and the house in a far from gentle manner. Closing the door, he leaned back against it and heaved a sigh.

Because we held an extraordinary house meeting, at which we accepted Shirley back into the ranks, Emma and I arrived late for the worker group gathering. We walked in on Con’s evaluation. Evisceration would be a better description; some savage comments were made. I kept my thoughts under wraps until the last part of the meeting.

Called the personal section, it follows the business agenda and represents an opportunity for the workers to speak to each other on a less formal, more intimate level. To facilitate this, the larger group breaks into three or four small groups. I huddled with Emma and two of the Broomielaw workers, Fran and Lisa.

They explained that Con aroused suspicion from day one because he showed up uninvited, before there was a chance to give his application a thorough once-over or check references. In addition, he had made some inflammatory statements over the past three weeks. Even so, from my perspective none of that justified the diatribe meted out earlier.

May 27

I caught up with Con a couple of days after the meeting. During my second stay at Maryhill, I attended an Alcoholic’s Anonymous event with him and Big Ted. Walking toward St Enoch Station in the early evening, we agreed it had been a moving experience. Sitting in on something of the kind would be worthwhile for any newcomer.

We chatted about the previous Monday evening. The burly Northern Irishman laughed and said he believed