The Beautiful Things I SeeA story of life, love and hope

By Rajeev Busgeeth

The Beautiful Things I See

A story of life, love and hope

By Rajeev Busgeeth

© 2012 by the author of this book. The book author retains sole copyright to his contributions to this book.

All pictures and text by Rajeev Busgeeth

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Maya Angelou

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank

Judi and Bree Hartl, who were more than willing to share their stories with me and gave me their time for this project.

Jane Alexander and the rest of the staff at Churches United for welcoming me every time I went there.

Dave Arntson for his support and help throughout the project.

Jon Andreas Sanne and Andreas Føreid for their guidance.

Introduction

Churches United for the Homeless is a shelter for men, women and families. It is located in Moorhead, MN. The shelter provides dinner and a roof for a number of residents, and also accommodation in case there is an overflow of people at the shelter.

I went there and took pictures for the first time in January 2012. Over the few months that followed, I have seen many people leave, while others came in and replaced them.

This book is a collection of the pictures I have taken during that time.

The Community

One of the things that stuck out to me the most while I was taking pictures was the sense of community and brotherhood that prevailed around the shelter. The people there were always happy and smiling. It seemed like most people at the shelter were part of a big, happy family. Not only did they have a good time together, but they also included the professional staff at the shelter in their shenanigans.

I met many people, from a former radio DJ to a traveling man from St. Louis, MO on his way to the oil rigs in Western North Dakota.

Whatever the reason for them being at the shelter, their age or gender, everyone seemed to get along really well, and that was the first thing I noticed when every time I went there.

The following pages are a few of the people I met during my visits.

Judi and Bree Hartl

Judi Hartl and her daughter Bree moved in the shelter in November 2011. Their story is interesting because Bree Egert is a full time student at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Since she receives financial aid for her studies, she does not qualify to stay at the shelter anymore. She moved from her friends’ place to other shelters quite a few times between January and May 2012. Judi, on the other hand, is studying to get her real estate certification so she can get a stable job.

Between her school schedule and figuring out her housing situations, Bree tries to spend as much time with her mother as possible. This usually consists of bringing her homework over to the shelter during dinner hours. Dinner is open to everyone in the community, whether you live at the shelter or not. While it is actu-ally residents of the shelter who help making food, sometimes local charity or church groups donate and even serve food at the shelter.

Dinner seems to be the social bonding time at the shelter. Although dinner is only served for about 45 min-utes a night, I have spent many hours just sitting around a cup of coffee and cookies and talked to the resi-dents. One of the nights I will never forget is when one of Judi’s friends came back to the shelter with a tablet she had checked out from the local library. She was the center of attention around the dining table. That same night, I met a guy from St. Louis, MO at the shelter. I talked to him for a little a bit, and I was very surprised by how smart he was. He was in the military, and had traveled to many countries in Africa. He was one of the very few people who actually knew where my home country of Mauritius was, which immediately made me become friends with him. He told me he was on his way to Williston, ND, to work on one of the oil rigs. However, he only had enough money to pay for gas till Moorhead. He planned on working some odd jobs in the area until he could gather enough money to head west again. I went back to the shelter the following week, and I didn’t see any of the two people again. It did not seem to bother anyone. It felt as if they were dew on a morning leaf; very fresh for a little while, but when reality kicked in, they were gone.

Judi’s real estate management exams cost $50, and she says that she will pay to take the test once she is confident enough to take it. She says it is not easy to study when you are not sure when you are going to have your own bed to sleep on.

Judi says that she spends most of her time at the shelter with the other residents, smoking, and watching television.

I went to visit Judi and Bree over Easter week end. Not only did chocolates and the remarkably warm tem-perature make the day better, but Judi was very excited because she might have a lead for an apartment that she could potentially share with Bree. She was very excited and was already making plans to have her friends from the shelter over. However, at the time that I published this book online, she did not have her apartment yet and was still at the shelter.