Sierra- UCP- Day Two

The second day at UCP was a lot less fun than the first, just because we worked with maintenance rather than participants. I think we all expected to be directly working with UCP members the entire week, so it was a letdown at first. But we wanted to do whatever we could to help so we were glad to do it even if it wasn’t very exciting. The men we worked with were so nice and friendly that it made the strenuous labor a lot more bearable. We began with cleaning out the maintenance room and stocking the shelves according to items. It took a couple hours to organize the room, and then we went into a trailer by the maintenance room and starting cleaning and organizing that area. We sorted through a ton of boxes full of random items from plumbing to electrical to Christmas decorations, and consolidated like items. We made several trips out to a trash area to throw away unwanted items and recycle cardboard boxes. Then, my favorite part of the day, I learned how to operate a forklift. It was actually really easy but something that I’ve always wanted to do! I picked up heavy construction items and moved them to another location where they were sorted and bundles, then brought back.

I’m not sure what I expected, but I was really surprised with how much the maintenance workers cared about the participants and loved their jobs. Our task instructor told us he’d had jobs in the past where he didn’t look forward to going to work at all. But he said that with this job, it’s easy for him to get out of bed in the morning and he genuinely looks forward to work every day. I thought hearing that was really special, because even though he doesn’t work directly with the UCP members, he still feels touched and is affected by their everyday struggles. He said it makes him complain less and appreciate life much more, which I think is going to be the main lesson we learn from this experience.

After we got done, we were planning on going to the zoo since it is half price on Tuesdays. But we didn’t end up getting done until 4:30 and the zoo closes at 5, so we decided to go on a drive. We drove through downtown to the Alabama Theater and then to West End. The west side of Birmingham is known for being among the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods, so I really wanted to see that side to get a better perspective of the diversity. I actually didn’t think it looked that bad, just had some rough houses and businesses. Right after we saw that, we went to Mountainbrook, which is among the wealthiest neighborhoods, to compare it to the west neighborhoods. It was very beautiful, but a little sad to see the poor distribution of wealth.