We don't have to be scared

I went for a walk with Ruhi today.
We walked around Albany as usual but this was much more further than anywhere else we have gone. We went down to the river, I showed her 'The Palace', and then we walked home. But we went the wrong way... kinda.

We ended up in a super poor area. I've never seen such an area before in my life. I see it on TV or I hear or read about it, but never in my life have I actually experienced being inside this area, alone, and scared because it kept getting darker and darker with no way out. It was 8pm.

The people who were out were dirty, so many children, boarded buildings, sketchy alleyways, destroyed homes... it was poor. Honestly, I wasn't so sure what would happen to us if we were stuck there. We walked up an alleyway and as I past one home, a man walked out and stared at us as we walked out. A taxi came by and I was almost tempted to take it, and it stopped for us, but I moved it along.

I'm glad though.


I'm glad that I was able to experience this. Because it's not that I was ignorant, I just had no idea that this is what the ghetto is. This is what actually being scared is that something bad CAN actually happen to you. But the environment was so sad as well, I just couldn't possibly imagine what kind of living situation that is. Or what it's like. I was stunned to be walking the street like this.

What was even more stunning was how fast it was to get back to the rich area. We honestly thought we'd have to walk all the way back downtown to get anywhere safe before there was no more light, but then we saw these stairs in the trees leading up. This area was literally boarder line. It wasn't even a gradually moving into poverty type of thing. It just happened once you went down a hill. It was so depressing that something so close could be right there. It made me feel terrible about how the city of Albany was handling this type of issue.

What I have here are two pictures. The one of the taxi doesn't do enough just as to what I have seen tonight and I would have taken more but I was afraid to create too much attention when we need to get out. The boarded homes are what is something beautiful to me, and I'd love to go back in the daytime to take pictures. But I'd need a guy with me anyway. The second is of the stairs we found.

But I also wished I stayed a little bit longer or ventured deeper into this poverty. I know it's scary and risky... but I want to understand this better. I'm so.... confused I guess. I want to know more about the living conditions, I want to understand what it's like to live there, I want to know what the community is like... I just want to stand in it and take it all in.


I feel like tonight gave me the biggest wake up call.
I want to wake up more though. There's so much about society that I don't understand. There's so much about the level of classes that we live in. I know little of the poor. I feel like I need to know more. I want to go back. I want to know why we really are so scared. And I want to understand their fear too.