homelessness

I'm learning that there are various states of homelessness. For example, there are your classic homeless folks, the panhandlers in big cities, sleeping under cardboard boxes and filling soup kitchens. I currently interact with homeless street boys, those that sleep wherever they fall, usually high on glue or drunk on cheap liquor sold in plastic bags. There are also refugees, chased out of their land by one threat or another and forced to live at the mercy of their new hosts and the international organizations who attempt to keep them alive. And then there is me, a slightly higher class of homelessness, maybe, but still homeless nonetheless. I'm now completing my 4th month of being a vagabond, rarely staying in one place more than a week or two. I left North Sudan in late December with a weeks worth of shirts and underwear and a few pairs of pants and am still making due with that wardrobe, the resulting wear and tear pulling me closer and closer to looking like the rest of my homeless brothers. I've slept in no fewer than 16 different homes, apartments, hotels, and hostels since leaving Khartoum. To take a further step back, since the beginning of 2008, I've lived (staying at least one month) in 6 countries.

Am I complaining? Certainly not. This sort of priviledged homelessness that I "endure" can only be dreamt of by most people. I can say, however, that it's time to at least gain some control of this nomadic lifestyle. I could use a home base of sorts that I can go back to. Maybe a place that has a closet, so that at least occasionally, I can unpack my suitcase. These might be petty requests--when considering the street children and refugees that I see on a daily basis, they certainly are--but perhaps I'm just not strong enough to be homeless. An interesting thought: to be able to survive a homeless life, you must be either completely crazy, or incredibly strongminded. Apparantly I'm neither, although I feel like I'm moving closer to the crazy side every day. In fact, if within the next year you stumble across a smelly, sunburned white guy with an afro and bushy red beard sleeping on a park bench with the sports page of the local newspaper as a blanket, remember this message and buy the guy (me)some coffee, or fried chicken, and try to understand as he mumbles to you in an odd combination of English, Arabic, and Spanish about his prior life as an African nomad trying to save the world.


what I might look like after a few more months of homelessness...be on the lookout for this guy if I go missing: