Secrets of the Homeless

Well a lot has changed since i first came to Barcelona. First there was culture shock, then sympathy for the homeless, then an interest in them and now I want to get deep into the understanding. Today i had a long talk with Hawra about how hard it is to tell if someone is homeless or not and it has been bothering me for a while now. I remember hearing a statistic from Washington DC, some people that pose as homeless culture are not and could be making as much as $80,000 a year.

There is a large arabic homeless culture in Europe that i have noticed while touring it on my free time. They all know each other and they have very set locations and signs that i have noticed are new almost every day or week. While in Fes someone said something very important..."if you are to give money to the homeless give it to the people that are not bothering you for it. It's the ones that are just sitting there." I realized that when you see these arabic homeless "women", which is interesting because they are all women, no men, they dont have anything with them. You would think that they would have there own personal things with them because they don't have anywhere to leave it. They also bring there children with them and try to play the sympathy card i feel. Well i have stopped giving money to them because im afraid im not helping the people that really need it.

I only have 3 weeks left in Barcelona, but im hoping that i will be able to finally answer all my questions that i proposed in one of the very first weeks here. Im finding it hard to communicated with the local homeless people but i will do my best to dig up the dirt.

Final thought for the night....I once thought that it was the homeless culture that were searching through the garbage looking for anything they could find, but it is very clear that people actually do this regularly to find things to sell or for themselves. Very interesting to see.