It
was Sunday afternoon (February 17/2013) I was bored sitting at home
and then decided to hunt for some stories and went down town at place
locally called Medborgareplatsen
(citizens place, its literal Swedish meaning) a hub for super trendy
cafes/restaurants filled in with rich people with fat-wallets and
homeless and or drug/alcohol addicted people are selling Situation
Stockholm
(local magazine about homeless people) or begging for alms or a few
of them boozing on cheap alcohol or roaming around aimlessly. When I
came out from the tube
I saw these small black make-shift tents with
lots of activities and some young musicians playing songs not showing
any sign of pain from the frostbite. And then, I saw a
sign
SoppKök
written
on a discarded cardboard on one of the tents where homeless people
were being served hot soup of different types by young men and women
in their 20s and 30s; what a jackpot! I read about their activities
for a while on twitter but I was never able to do a story about
it for
various reasons. Unlike
other places where similar services are being given, here the vibe
was jolly, everybody was taking care of the homeless people as
human-being with respect and dignity; there's neither hierarchy nor
the phenomenon of ”giver-taker”
relationship.
Alright,
I will talk to you about SoppKök
now
let me go back to the homeless person who was walking every single
night for more than three hours in this freezing cold winter.
The
accident turned my life upside down
I'll
call him Mr. J. since he wants to be anonymous; life has such an
interesting twist, I met Mr. J. a couple of years ago while both of
us were hunting for jobs here in Stockholm. He was muscular, good
looking, energetic, ambitious, bighearted person who wanted to help
newly arrived immigrants by giving them tips where to apply for a
job. Then he disappeared where we used to meet (Kulturehuset) a
hot-spot for tourists, newly arrived immigrants, juvenile school
traunts etc and I saw him a few months ago changed beyond recognition
where we met at,first. He is obese, depressed and limping; I was
shocked and couldn't believe my eyes it was the same guy that I met
years ago. I just pretended I didn't know him not to hurt his feeling
by asking “what happened”? Well, the founder of the SoppKök
recommended
me to interview him; I was just blabbering for a few minutes before I
started asking him sensible questions. The 40 years old Mr. J had a
well paying job until he got fired due to an accident which injured
his knees. To make matters worse his daughter's mom allegedly accused
of him something which turned out not to be true and he left the
house without taking anything with him, Misery loves! He's been
homeless for the past two years and sought help at various places
which he alleges treated him with degrading respect and that's why he
wanted to make it by himself. He spend the days at various libraries
in town and the night at various fast-food chains, or subway stations
until they are closed (mostly around 2 or 3 in the morning) and
afterward he walks with a pain in his leg the remaining hours
sometimes at temperature below -17 degrees until some of his hangouts
are opened (mostly between 8 & 9 on weekday but at 11 0'clock
on weekends). What's is interesting is Mr. J. still dreams of getting
back to work and taking in charge of his life regardless of his very
difficult situation he has been through. Good luck brother and I hope
I'll see the same guy (confident, energetic, ambitious) that I met
years ago. Let me take you back SoppKök
A
Soup-kitchen with NO money!
I'm
not kidding, it is true, it's doable and happening here in Sweden and
maybe somewhere else as well; but it is not a Swedish invention and
it dates back as far as Egyptian times where some people felt the
moral obligation to feed the hungry. I read on Rebecca
Solnit's
A
Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in
Disaster (a
must read book)
that this
form of soup kitchen started in America by local victims who wanted
to help each other, in the aftermath of the 1906 great earthquake
which stroke San-Francisco. Solnit
chronicles the most altruistic and humane similar soup kitchens or
other service providers initiated by concerned citizens who wanted to
take charge of their lives and people around them during and after
natural or man-made calamities where a normal life became eventually
dysfunctional due to the absence of the common actors (government,
civic organizations, etc). Like I said earlier, SoppKök
is
an initiative run by like-minded private individuals which doesn't
accept money; it prefers your support either in kind ( food items,
hygienic materials, clothes, shoes etc), spending your times by
getting involved in the activities ( borrowing/transporting logistics
necessary for the kitchen, preparing and serving food and drinks,
providing the basic necessities etc) or using your talents be by
playing music or mounting up a tent but above all mingling with and
listening what these marginalized, stereotyped and disfranchised
peoples' reasons as to why they become homeless. Young, old, men,
women even children accompanied with parents are welcomed at SoppKök
to
give service so long as they left behind their hang-ups about
homeless people; that's what it makes SoppKök
different
from the rest of service providers which treat these vulnerable
people with utter disrespect and power hierarchy. Sadly, SoppKök
which
started giving services a year ago opens once in a month (on Sunday
between 12:00 -18:00 GMT local time)
and
I asked Tanvir Mansour, the founder of SoppKök,
instead
of giving the fish why don't his association give a hook to the
people to do the fishing. Mansour told me that they are not here to
solve every individual homeless person's life but instead to break
the silence about homelessness in Sweden so that the politicians to
do their job to solve the problems of homeless people either by
building more apartments or identifying the root-causes of the ever
increasing homelessness problem in the country. In that regard,
Mansour said they made an impact and now the general public and the
politicians started to talk about homelessness and how to solve it.
Thirty-five
Homeless
people
in
Sweden
I
was freezing and shaking and all I wanted to do was go home, eat and
drink something hot. I tucked in my warm bed and I felt ashamed for
still freezing and not being able to move my fingers, after spending
just a few hours there filming and yet people like Mr. J. are walking
at the wee-hours in this weather because they don't a have a place to
sleep in one of five super-rich countries in the world. Recent
figures show the scope and magnitude of homelessness is increasing
but unfortunately it is not the priority list of the politicians;
there are over thirty-five thousand homeless people ranging from
small children to as old as seventy-five years old in Sweden of this
eight thousand of them live in Stockholm, the of
capital
the
world's top fifteenth
richest country in the world.
It
is no brainer to know the majority of these homeless are
either
undocumented
asylum-seeking and/or
migrants from other non-EU member countries who
are the most vulnerable and risk groups not entitled in
many cases to
financial aid, accommodation, schooling or any other forms assistance
from Swedish authorities unlike their peers who are in the same
situation. It's your choice either to spend from a few minutes to
some hours of your
life
with this noble cause either by getting involved or donating the
basic necessities to homeless people who don't
choose to be or just pay hundreds of Kronor on over-priced beef-steak
5dl expensive drinks at
the nearest a fancy restaurants/cafes across the street.
Click here
to be part of this group and make a difference in Mr. J's life or
others. Tusen Tack SoppKök
for
the wonderful experience. Hoppas
vi
ses nästa
månad.
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