ByeBye Bama: Day 8 at CASA

When we heard it storming last night, we knew we wouldn't be painting wheelchair ramps for CASA clients as planned.  So we contacted Lee and asked if there was anything we could help the garden with instead.  We didn't set any alarms this morning, we just planned on getting phone calls from Lee and Tracy at CASA. 

So we slept in for the first time til ten, and were given the quick and easy task of taking three grocery bags of produce from the CASA gardent to some clients.  It took us under an hour to take the vegetables to three different houses on the same streets.  Only one woman actually answered her door.  Her name was Ethel.  She was very thin, with a gray afro that looked untended to.  When she asked us in, we hesitated a little, but knowing that socializing with her was part of the mission, we agreed.  Though she had a whole house, she seemed to be living in one room converted from a garage to a living space.  She had a giant armchair in front of a TV and a firewood-burning stove, and there was clutter everywhere.  She told us she slept during the day, and spent her nights listening to the broken TV, cleaning her yard, and chopping firewood.  Her family didn't live nearby, and she didn't get many visitors.  It seemed we were talking in circles.  Her memory didn't last very long.  We told her several times where we were from, when we got here, when we were leaving, and she told us several times about growing up in Butler, Alabama and visiting Mobile next to Meridian. 

We listened and asked questions and shared about ourselves.  All thewhile I was taking in the surroudnings.  It was a pretty dismal state of affairs.  Very dusty, very dirty, and she didn't look very well taken care of.  While we were there, Meals and Wheels showed up and took a picture of us.  She was grateful for the company and kept apologizing that she wasn't able to give us money.  We assured her we didn't need any money; we were volunteers and happy to meet her. BBut she said "I know when to give people money!  And you surely deserve it.  It's wonderful what you're doing."

It's a myth what people think about retirement.  For every well-off old person out there who has a nice house and a deal in a timeshare, there are many more who can't afford their meds and grocery bill, let alone a retirement home or a yearly vacation to Hawaii.  What CASA does providing food and assistance to the aging is a wonderful thing, but it's not enough.  Our government needs to invent better policies, because obvioulsy Medicare and Social Security is not doing enough.  But I guess that's a question of poverty in general, and that's a much bigger issue to tackle.

Anyway, after that we did a quick interview with CASA about our experience.  They offered to write us all recommendation letters and said that everyone who had met us on our trip had come back to them with tons of praise about how wonderful we were.  I'm happy to have been able to satisfy their expectations.

I guess what I learned on this trip had less to do with building bridges between the young and the old.  I learned more about the economica state of the elderly and what we're up against as we age.  A limited income just at the point that expenses beging to go up is a recipe for disaster.  And often there's no one to take care of aging people, not even their family.  I don't think we're paying enough attention to this issue, which is a shame because the elderly are not a minority.  We're all aging.  All the time.  The question is, are you going to age well, and if you don't, what resources do you have?  No one thinks about this when they're young, and only CASA seems to be thinking of it now.  We need to be doing something about it now.  I know when I leave Alabama, aging will be at the front of my mind, and it will definitely affect my decisions and activism from here on out.

Ciao for now.