09/02/2018
So, I was walking towards the Vatican City up the main stretch to take pictures of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the night. As I was walking up I couldn’t help but notice the amount of people sleeping rough right outside one of the richest cities in the world and one of the most religious.
I came across one man who was awake so I asked him if he spoke English which he did. His name was Anatolij Jawokski. As we all do we assume he is homeless and must be begging for money. I sat down with Anatolij and he asked me where I was from which I replied ‘Liverpool in England.’ He then says, ‘ahh John Lennon, The Beatles’ Then starts singing different parts of The Beatles songs about love and hope. He was so happy, he has hardly any money, no roof over his head in a completely different country and he was just smiling and singing. Anatolij is a refugee from the Soviet Union who currently lives in France and has traveled around Europe for 20 years, so he classes himself as a ‘Traveller’. He told me about his times travelling around different countries sleeping rough and getting around with little or no money. He has a girlfriend who lives in Poland and speaks 6 different languages and has learnt to live off very little money. (That is better than a lot of people in the UK!)
The stories he told me about his life were amazing, but it was just like i was the first person he told them too. So many people walked past this man not even acknowledging he was there. He wasn’t begging, he was just sitting there, with his sleeping bag, a little bag of belongings without a care in the world, with so many stories to tell. He was so happy I stopped and spoke to him. As I left he wished me well on my travels even though I was going back to a bed and he was sleeping on the street. It goes to show that not all ‘travellers’ are bad people and not all people who sleep rough want your money and beg, a lot of these people would just like somebody to stop and talk to them or even just give them a smile.