Getting our feet wet

Hola. I thought I'd start out by introducing myself since not all of y'all know me. I'm Ben Bear, the rogue male here in the Cincinnati volunteer house. Before moving out here to Cincy I was living in Bethel, Pennsylvania, not too far from Anne and Katie. My original stomping grounds are back in Nokesville, Virginia. This is my second tour of duty with BVS having originally joined in the fall of 2007 (Unit #277 - holla!). I spent the year in Alamosa, Colorado working at a shelter and food bank. Basically my entire life up to that point had been a predominantly white, middle-class experience; my time in Alamosa was oftentimes a challenge and taught me a great deal about myself and my perceptions of the world around me.

Less than a year after leaving Colorado I find myself back in BVS, this time as part of a much-anticipated intentional community house. Personally I believe that you get more out of BVS if you take on a project that you know will challenge you rather than one that you feel completely comfortable with. Because of this ideal I am now training to be a case manager for homeless families with kids. My placement is with an organization called Interfaith Hospitality Network (http://www.ihncincinnati.org/). As with any program that works with people in transition the place is a zoo at times, which was a bit overwhelming at first. After a week and a half working there I am beginning to feel like I have a clue as to what's going on around me. I'm still training on how to do the intake process for new guests; the goal is to be flying solo on intakes in another week or two. We also have a family mentoring program that we're hoping to revamp and revitalize which I'll be helping to coordinate. There are other odds and ends tidbits I'll be working on as well, but those are two of the main objectives to tackle for now.

Working with homeless families can be a real struggle mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. There is never any one reason why the moms and/or dads end up in our program; it's a combination of seemingly every aspect of their life pushing them down. They fight drug addictions, deal with sick kids with no insurance, and fight for a chance to be considered credible enough to rent a one bedroom apartment that most of us would pass over without a second glance. Child support doesn't always come through, Medicaid never quite covers it all, and the bills somehow keep piling up. Faced with the daunting task of overcoming all that seems to be going against them, it's hard to imagine being positive looking to the future.

This work becomes personal for me. True, there is a line that needs to be drawn so as not to get too involved. However, to make these people and situations completely a business-like affair isn't possible. For example, I realized today that one of our guests is one day younger than I am. It makes her plight seem so much more real to look at where she is and think, "That could have been me." She has five children between the ages of three and eight. Nobody wants to rent to a single mom with five kids who can't find a job in a depressed economy, but what is she supposed to do? Yesterday I went with another guest to help her move her belongings; she had been asked to leave due to non-compliance with the program. We pulled up in front of the building and she whisked away her three kids - all under the age of three - into a building that no person of any age should be asked to live in. As I helped her carry in her earthly possessions, walking through hallways littered with garbage and up stairwells reeking of urine, I wanted to imagine that this wasn't happening. You can't see things like that and remain indifferent - it's personal.

Back to the non-work side of things... We ventured out on Saturday to Findlay Market, Ohio's oldest public market. It was about a two mile walk with some hefty hills to traverse along the way (and a couple of wrong turns). Holy cow, was it exciting to be there! There were fresh meats of every kind around, vegetable and fruit stands, gyros, gelato, spices, plants... sensory overload to the max. It kind of reminded me of the last Disaster Relief Auction I went to, but with fewer Brethren folks. We tried to check out all the vendors before doing any shopping but decided that we needed to eat lunch - it was almost 1:00 - or we'd try to buy up the entire market. We all had gyros plus Laura and I split some feta and spinach flaky bread things (sorry, Laura; I don't remember what they're called). We split up after lunch and tried to get the items on our shopping list. Fail. We got everything on the list and then some. Seriously, would you pass up delicious avocados for a dollar each? I didn't think so. On our way back home we each were laden down with a bag of delicious goods to go with our chrysanthemum which Anne and I took turns carrying. I can only imagine how conspicuous and entertaining we must have looked trudging back up and down the hills.

Here's one last story for your entertainment. Our first Sunday here I went out for a run to see what some of the places around our neighborhood looked like. At one point on my way back I took a wrong turn and got a little mixed up with road names and directions. The next thing I knew I was running on the Columbia Parkway (which I thought, at the time, was Taft - it is most definitely NOT Taft). For the visual effect, imagine a three-foot-wide sidewalk with a retaining wall on one side and four or six lanes of traffic on the other. Whee. I got off at the next possible road and made left turns at all of the intersections that looked kind of big until I found a road that I'd run on earlier. This time I did not take the wrong turn and ended up back home... an hour and 55 minutes later. I'm guessing I ran 14 or 15 miles; the original gameplan was four. I ate ice cream and cookies that night.

I'll forego all the other stories spinning through my head right now and call it a blog. Talk to y'all again in a few weeks.