I walked all around the Downtown Vancouver, from False Creek to Granville, all the way up to Gastown, past Chinatown, all the way down to Yaletown.

I was looking for a shoe store when the pleasantries and quaintness of Gastown turned rather dark. There was a noticeable change in the atmosphere, the way the people dressed and a certain look in their eyes. First there was a vacant eyed men murmuring to himself in a determined effort to continue walking; there was in the winter air a half naked man half comatose in a doorway. Skin head vagrants were yelling threats across the streets, a young woman with with a worn face wearing ill fitting and soiled coats staggering hurriedly. Gangs of homeless and drug addicted congregated on street corners. The maniacal and paranoid carting their belongings in bags and trollies. I could smell the rain drenched mold of their attire as I walked by. I ardently prayed for safety.

I had not any intention to stumble in to what had been to me previously the mythical and highly exaggerated Downtown Eastside. It was exactly, if not worse than friends had described. Literally hundreds of homeless, prostitutes, destitute, poverty stricken, drug addicted, abused, sick and mentally ill all communed in this hushed up part of town. They had all found community within themselves, all captive, free to abuse drugs, alcohol, sex and each other. All free to do what they’re enslaved by, all communally chained to one other through addiction and poverty.

It reminded me of a ghetto, something like the Walled City in Hong Kong that is now demolished. I cannot fathom nor described how concentrated the poverty was. It was like the garbage dump of the city, the unspoken refuse, the people like litter on the streets that no body wanted to clean up.

Fiona and her rotting fingers

Looking back at this all, I am reminded of a women I saw in the streets of Leeds, UK, when we were feeding the drug addicted and homeless. I’m not sure what her name was, but I remember her as Fiona. It was the end of the night, and we saw a woman sitting in a wheelchair in the doorway of a busy street. She was alone. She had already lost one leg, one arm had little mobility or co-ordination, and the other arm I cannot forget to this day.

Her right hand had already lost one or two fingertips, the two digits that remained were blackened, shrunk, dead and rotting. He bones of her fingers were actually protruding out of her fingers. Her bones were uncovered by flesh and exposed. Her fingers had already rotted off somewhere.

I have never seen anything so horrific in a first world developed city. Yet the sight of another Fiona on East Hastings would not be uncommon. I didn’t dare document it, but other people have, so here’s one of their videos.

There are people and organisations who have heard their cry, like the Union Gospel Mission. There are a good bunch of people who used to be on the streets who have been given the gospel through the work of the UGM and now serve to save many more lives.