Camp Refugees

 

                This Sunday morning, I was admiring my teapot on the table, the harmony of colors and form with the great-grandmother’s milk pitcher and a purple mug we picked up at the Sylvia Beach Hotel years ago. The light outside was grey and rainy, the house was snug and orderly. We do not live a High on the Hog life, but we are secure, safe, and comfortable, surrounded by our lives and possessions, unlike the reports coming out of the radio about the situation in the Ukraine. Corvallis, having a sister city in Ukraine, has rallied around the people there, sending money, prayers and thoughts, and a resolution in support of the people there. We worry about the refugees leaving their homes, carrying a few possessions and the family cat. There is a Go Fund Me account set up for support. Facebook is full of photos of sunflowers and blue and yellow flags. This is a right, and good, and what I would expect from my small city.

                However, in the next two weeks, Corvallis will be facing a refugee crisis of its own. In a perfect storm, the city, the Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the railroad have all decided to post illegal camps for clearing by the end of March. Over one hundred people—no one is sure of the number, but it is large—will be forced to move camp. Some will get a couple of weeks notice, some two days. Some have moved regularly; some have been in the same spot for a year or more. And, although many of the camps are a jungle of bike parts, tents, blue traps, and boards laid down in the mud, at least one has built an impressive framed shed out of scavenged materials to protect himself, his belongings, and his dog.  He just wants to be left alone. All consider these spaces home. Very few, if any, know where they will go or how they will get there. They will be refugees.

                The system is in crisis. Unmanaged camping is an agreed upon disaster. No one, no one, thinks that allowing people, often with mental and physical health challenges, to camp in the mud for the winter is a solution. But-- the list for a micro shelter or a room in Third Street Commons in Corvallis, is over two hundred people long. If you have HUD funding, or section eight, the wait for a space can be years because there is not enough housing for all of the vouchers. If you need mental health counseling, and are in crisis, the line for counseling is at least six weeks, if not three to six months. And that is if you have insurance. Providers are struggling to hire people to act as case managers so that they can safely and effectively expand services. It is hard work which often requires expensive training.  On a national scale, the shift of good jobs to the coastal states, the constant defunding of mental health facilities and the growing inequality between groups of people make this a complex problem to solve.

                But the people camped along the railroad tracks don’t care about all of this. They are, as a whole, struggling to not slide further downhill, often literally. Their tents leak in the rain, their sleeping bags get wet, and, like all Pacific Northwest residents, they want a cup of hot coffee in the morning. Sometime in the next two weeks, for one hundred of them, a truck will pull up with a dumpster, there will be bulldozers and excavators to gather up the trash, and a few people to help them relocate their lives. Where will they go? Many of the usual places are being cleared this month. At least one hundred local refugees, with no place to go.

 

If you want to support these local refugees, the Drop In Center and Unity Shelter need supplies—tents, sleeping bags, and other camping equipment.

    

          Family story: My mother came to school one day to drop something off for the PTA. She saw a small, grubby child on the playground—collar chewed, white socks down in her shoes, sweater looped through lunchbox and tied around the waist. “I did not recognize my own child,” she told everyone. “She looked so sweet heading off in the morning.”

My mother desperately wanted a tidy, soft girl child—but she had me. By the beginning of third grade, my mother gave up. She stopped perming my hair into a mass of fluffy curls. She sewed five sturdy corduroy jumpers, one for each day of the week: gold, orange, blue, red, and green. Each one fell straight down to my knees and buttoned at the shoulders. No pockets. Underneath, I had a turtleneck  (no collars to chew on): gold, orange, blue, red and green. I was forbidden to mix the colors. No patterns to experiment with—I loved wearing plaids and polka dots together. She purchased tights, again in the five colors, rather than white ankle socks that sank into my shoes and turned grey in the dust.  To cap it off, she found a packet of underpants that were labeled with the days of the week, which I really tried to follow. I did not mind; it was easy to get dressed in the morning.

When the pandemic started, I put all of my school clothes into the spare room closet, because I am no more tidy now than I was at seven. For a year, I wore my old clothes everywhere, including school, because no one was going to see me in that echoing, cold building.  I wore out socks and tights and a couple of pairs of jeans. When we came back to school this fall, I brought a few of my skirts back, leaving the rest in the spare closet. If they do not migrate back into rotation this year, they are leaving the building. I now have four skirts, three pairs of pants, and I my collection of shirts from the Golden Crane, where Ruby, the owner of the business,  sold me on them—heavy cotton, three quarter sleeve, great colors, no collars. Neat. Warm. Proffessional (ish).  Black, green, purple, grey, and gold.  Almost every morning, I pull one on, with skirt or pants. I don’t mind; it is still easier to get dressing in the morning with fewer options.