Tuesday 12 February 2008

The Ghetto

I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and have decided that there is a strange sense of wrongness about the Ghetto. There's a strange, malevolent evil in the air, an underlying aggression which I have never experienced anywhere else. Driving in the other day, the road was blocked off. Turned out someone had been put in hospital the night before after an "incident" outside the local pub. He was in a critical condition, apparently. A couple of months ago, some young guy was kicked to death outside the pub in what passes for the town centre.

It's manifested in everyday life as well. Mothers screaming at kids in the street, women screaming at men, in the middle of the afternoon, on the public street. People wandering around with cans of Stella. People wanting their tablets now with a furosity unmatched anywhere else.

There's a strange black cloud of depression that hangs over the entire town, with the epicentre being the slough of despond that is the Ghetto Pharmacy. Whatever it is, it is not a healthy environment to be working in.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i know the feeling, i work in a ghetto as well. sometimes, it makes me feel like a do-gooder; the fact that i drive 20 minutes from my more affluent town to service the needs of the less fortunate somehow proves that i am not a snob. mostly though, i realize that i am entering a neighborhood where a man will steal a bike from a child, and use it to commit a crime. then, he will come to the pharmacy with a $4iced coffee in his hand and beg for a few pills because he doesnt have the $1 for his copay.