Homeless at the airport
I met G. at Frankfurt Airport during a stopover on my way back to Canada.
I was sitting outside the departure hall enjoying the May sunshine when I noticed a woman pushing her luggage cart. My first thought was, if it wasn't the airport, you could think she was a "bag lady". Turns out that the joke was on me because she actually was a homeless woman - living at the airport.
My video camera was running when she came over. We struck up a conversation, excerpts of which are reproduced here. I never asked whether she'd be ok being filmed. I didn't want to ruin our conversation. But I wasn't sure whether it was right to upload this conversation, in which G. remains anonymous. I decided to do it because G. is an excellent example of a homeless woman who is intelligent and well-informed. We talked about surveillance, the Internet, language and identity. Like so many homeless people, she was derailed by a mental illness, brought on or exacerbated by a thyroid dysfunction that she mentions.
Above all, I was stunned by her ability to converse in English - high school English and what she picked up in the media, as she points out. We started out in English, and though as a native German it was slightly duplicitous of me to give her the impression I only spoke English, in hindsight I believe it was the right thing to do. In German, she might not have appeared as smart as she did when trying to function in a foreign language.
Plus she will have a much wider audience because we spoke in English. What is equally interesting is that she "lives at the airport" - the only person I've ever heard of who does. Yes, it's true, she is homeless, but it's also true that she felt safe and preferred this setup to any alternatives available to her. She is known by name to the police and others working at the airport, who make up her neighbourhood and community. This gives her security. She lives on what she receives from the German welfare system - 400 Euro a month. If she had a flat or a room she was renting, the government would kick in up to another 400 per month. She prefers her home at the airport. G. enjoys the fairly comprehensive health benefits of the German system, including coverage of her medication costs.
Is being a homeless person living at the airport imaginable in other countries? Do you know of any similar stories?