Bea West Israel

5/1/12

What is Enough
All people in the world were created to be equal--but it's easy to forget this when they have such
unequal circumstances put upon them. Austin's homeless population is no different: people who
may not have chosen their lot in life, but are not often looked at or treated as equal. As service as
well as out of a desire to do something--if only for a few other people--our group, in a service
program called Think Globally, Problem-Solve Locally, Act Neighborly (TGPLAN), tried to help
them in any way we could. We started by giving them a Sunday morning meal and a light,
though true and honest sermon.
The morning started at 7:30. The Nubian Queen Lola, later known as "Ms. Lola," drove
up in a short school bus with eyelashes over the headlights, got out, and promptly gave every
member of our large group a hug. She let us in, we got to work cracking eggs and preparing
tortillas to be put in the microwave, and then folded tacos until we had filled two wide bowls.
Loading back up onto her bus outfitted with Mardi Gras beads, we set out: first to twelfth street,
and then to the Arch in Austin, Texas.
A fact that was quickly evident to me was their manners--some of the men we served
were more polite than working men, one of them murmuring, "Thank you, princess," as he
nodded and took the two tacos I handed him. After I poured his half-cup of orange juice, he
walked away and we were driving again, to a place where people with sleeping bags and
blankets gathered. There, Ms. Lola gave a sermon that was full of inspiration and less than five
minutes long, then called for some decorum and had them all file into a line. Until 10:30 we
served: two tacos and a half-cup of orange juice each. Pictures were taken, stories were told and
stories were made, and then it was back onto the bus and again to our normal routines.
But the morning was unsettling--because there were people who held grievances, anger,
that sometimes came out when we least expected it. It was life-changing, because those people
came back to apologize and humbly took their tacos, and in those moments I could understand
them. And it lifted a person's heart, because in that understanding one could actually care for
them.
"People don't know a whole lot about [the homeless] except for the ones who have made
it their business to know," says Faith Edson, director of Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN) at
First Presbyterian Church, "Lots of people are a bit fearful of homeless people." She has been
around them for long enough to know the nature of their situations, and claims that "they often
don't get good press and lead precarious lives." Unlike her, many people have had only limited
exposure to the homeless, and are indeed a bit fearful, purely because they don't understand it.
But Edson, whose parents worked with people from all kinds of circumstances, has had a chance
to understand it very well, and has chosen to do what she can to help it. (Edson, 2013)
But her help is, unfortunately, mostly local: on any given night in Washington, D.C.,
25,000 people are homeless--nearly half families with children. In London, England, life
expectancy for homeless people is more than thirty-four years below the national average. And
50,000 people in the world, mostly women and children, die each day as a result of poor shelter,
polluted water, and inadequate sanitation. (INSP, 2013)
But we know that the problem doesn't only persist at the national and global level: "As an
elementary school teacher on the East side," Edson begins, "I have had some students that are
homeless as well." She goes on to say that the families who are helped by her program (IHN) are
not usually homeless because of drug abuse or chronic conditions, but by a trick of fate--such as

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the death of a family member, a loss of a job--and need only a helping hand to get back on their
feet again. The Interfaith Hospitality Network (run by the nonprofit Foundation for the
Homeless) is a program within cooperating churches that provides food, entertainment, and a
place to stay for the night. Families stay in the program for three to four months, staying for a
week at a time at different churches, and volunteers from the congregation stay in shifts to
supervise them. Donations like refrigerators, TVs, food, plates, and blankets are often made by
the congregation as well. But, more than providing food and shelter, IHN gives families a way to
get back into the world. (Edson, 2013)
Edson tells the story of a woman who went away to bury her father--and in her absence,
the landlady sold the woman's house, her furniture, and everything she owned to make the rent.
The woman returned to find nothing, that she had no place to stay and no belongings, and most
of all, no family anywhere nearby. She had a job, but made barely enough to scrape by. These are
the kinds of people that IHN helps, with whom Faith Edson has made a difference.
No one person can solve homelessness. But we do what can be done, because what can
be done is enough.
There are 48,000 hungry people, helped by the Austin Food Bank each week, in Austin.
(Austin Food Bank, 2010) Some of them are served by Nubian Queen Lola on Sunday mornings
with a sermon and a hot breakfast. Her volunteers, as well, serve and are served--presented with
the opportunity to scramble two hundred eggs, pray in the kitchen with infectious soul music
playing in the background, to ride in a little yellow bus with eyelashes and realize that quite a
few of the people being served were as conversational, as pleasant, as we were.
We saw them with open eyes. We learned that, too often, they are only given money,
when what they need is for a driver to roll the window down and strike up a conversation. It is
not so inhuman of them to want to talk to someone, and for those who take the time to see them,
there may be a faucet of the human race--like an exceptional resilience or a stunning goodness-in them that was never evident before. It is easy to grow to care for them, for the people who
were once unknown.
Do what can be done, because what can be done is enough. Sometimes it is volunteering
at IHN, or at Nubian Queen Lola's, or at the many other organizations doing the same thing as
those two. Sometimes it is only being aware, being open, and rolling the car window down to
spend a red light with a conversation. These are easy things, but people don't attempt them
enough. And, as happened to us, things may be found that are better than what was expected-because sometimes the intangible things, like relationships, are what people need most.

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"Global Homelessness: The Facts." Fighting Poverty. International Network of Street
Papers, 2013. Web. 01 Apr. 2013. <http://www.street-papers.org/fighting-poverty/>.
"Hunter 101." Hunger Facts. Capital Area Food Bank, 2010. Web. 01 Apr. 2013.
<www.austinfoodbank.org/hunger-is-unacceptable/facts.html>.
Savlov, Marc. "Faces of Homelessness." The Austin Chronicle. Austin Chronicle Corp., 9
Oct. 2009. Web. 01 Apr. 2013. <http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2009-1009/891226/>.
Edson, Faith. "TGPLAN Homelessness." Personal Interview. 1 Apr. 2013.