Ariel Clark - STUMP 2009

Think about this picture. It's familiar right? That big cathedral in the city across from that park (St. Mary's Cathedral). We all know it.

There's a side to it I never saw. Under this cathedral there's a park, and in that park there lives homeless people. I know because I saw one peeing on a tree as I walked past one day last week. I went back a day later and there was this van set up, the Vinnies were giving tea and coffee and biscuits out beside their huge glittering cathedral to a community of displaced people who seemed to have emerged out of the darkness. It was feel good. But it was also ironic. 

I had a lot of cups of tea that night as we walked around the city I thought I knew but had never really seen. Oxford street. The coke sign at the cross. The little park just next to the jewish museum. The world vision office. The bright strip of restaurants off crown street. I'd been there before. But I didn't ever see past the lights and music.

There's a strip called tranny lane where a person in bright red size 13 heels waited, his mouth covered with a veil. I never saw that. There's a bridge on the way down to Woolloomooloo where those who couldn't get a bed sleep in ruffled bunches of blankets and beanies. They called it the bridge hilton. I never saw that.

There's an injecting centre across from a club I once went to in the cross where addicts can safely use and stumble out the back to wait out their fortnight until the next pay and the next shoot up.

Near the City there's a quiet building masked in blue marble called Samaritan House. Inside are women who have seen hardship unlike anything I've ever experienced, who were displaced and powerless in this strange city and have now found a safe place. I met a woman there who was married in Cambodia to a man who brought her to Australia, where she was forced to work from 6am till 10pm everyday, not allowed to leave the house, made to sleep in the living room while her husband slept with his girlfriend in their bed. She had overcome the loss of her home, her family, her freedom and also lost a child, she had experienced all that and survived and she was only a few months older than me. We sat and drank tea together and we laughed about silly things, worlds apart but still the same.

Across from 'the wall' famous for male prostitution, I met a woman named sam outside a food van who was looking forward to going home and getting wasted she said. She said she wished she had a job. She picked at sores on her face constantly and was missing some teeth. I'd never met a person like her before last week. But she wasn't so different to me, she paints when she wants to forget and she loved to laugh.

There are people in this city that just get broken by life. I'm not ok with that. I learnt a million things last week, little bits of wisdom that I'll treasure for life. And a lot of them I learnt from these broken people.

One lady named marie told me that there's a lot of people in the world that seem rough, but they might be angels in disguise. And that if I can be open to them and trust them then they will trust me. People aren't looking for handouts or pity or the occasional altruistic act. They don't even need people to understand their world and have had the same experiences. They need friends, they need brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers who are whole so that they can offer enough love and patience and unrelenting grace to start to mend brokenness. 

I want to make it so that no kid ever ends up there in the broken dark corners of this city, and I want to be a place where kids can come to escape that darkness and become whole again. That's what I realised at STUMP and I hope that I carry that for the rest of my life.

• Tags: 

• community,
• homelessness,
• woolloomooloo,
• world-vision