Kansas Girls Work Harder than Alabama Girls: Day Two at CASA

Let me just say, no one was excited to go work in the garden again.  But Day 2 turned out to be a lot easier than Day 1....in some ways. 

We arrived at the garden and were told to begin by pitchforking more wood chips into yet another bare spot of the garden.  As we picked up our pitchforks to do our duty, an older volunteer said to us "Kansas girls work harder than Alabama girls!  You'd never see an Alabama girl pick up a pitchfork!"  We joked about how we have to be strong to hang on in tornados, but I was pretty grateful to hear some appreciation.  I know we're supposed to serve and not expect thanks, but it's nice to get some recognition.

Piling the wood chips didn't seem so bad this time.  I think we've just gotten really good at it.  (I'm adding that as a special skill to my resume...just kidding...maybe.)

The hard work today was weeding...weeding for three hours.  We started with this nifty hoe tool that allows you to stand while scraping small weeds out of the dirt, but by the time I got to the cabbage row, it just wasn't working.  Cabbages have HUGE leaves, so weeding with a hoe just breaks all the leaves, and besides there were so many weeds, and so deeply rooted, that you really had to pull them out by hand.  It took me a full hour to do one cabbage row.

Karen and Lee were there today, but they were mostly doing their own thing.  Karen told us how different Huntsville is from other places in Alabama.  She really emphasized the education level and the empathy and action of citizens. 

In the afternoon, we were glad to spend time at Manna House, a food kitchen that distributes one-day expired food from the grocery store and donations to Huntsville's hungry.  It is an impressive operation.  We walked in expecting an orientation of some kind, but it was clear there was no time for explanations.  We were put to work immediately bagging bologna sandwiches and desserts.  There were about a dozen other adult volunteers there.  They were all shocked to discover we were from the University of Kansas, not because they couldn't believe we were from Kansas, but because they couldn't believe we weren't in high school!  "Young looks young!" one of the women explained when we asked if we looked that young.  The women I worked with were older, African-American women who dedicated a few hours a week to keep Manna  House running.  They were great fun to work with, joking with us and each other.  They called one of their friends "Bread Lady" and kept calling for her when she wasn't fast enough getting us new bread.  And another asked her friend, "Could you loan me twenty dollars?  I'll pay you back the 12th of Never."   For them, this was a daily event.  They didn't volunteer to get service hours or certification, and they weren't wealthy or particularly "magnanimous."  They were just giving back to their community because they should.

We were very rushed making sandwiches. Miss Fran, who runs Manna House, wanted to open early because it was very hot outside and the people who had been waiting outside (hours early), especially the elderly, were beginning to feel faint.  She led us in a quick prayer over the good, and then the train of people came in.  They first went through a room of produce and eggs, and then came through the sandwich, bagel, and dessert room.  At the end of the line was a small clothes rack where they could buy hand-me-down clothes.

Eventually, I was put on the sandwich distribution line.  At first, I was very excited to be there because I had been wanting to actually interact with people the whole trip, but it quickly became disheartening.  Most were appreciative of the sandwiches, but there were several who would get very upset when we enforced the rules on rationing.  Miss Dorothy, who may not own Manna House, but she certainly is the boss, makes rules about how much food people can take per person per family.  These rules are not to be broken.  Manna House is open four hours a day, and hundreds of people flood in all day long.  If they gave everything away early, there would be nothing left for the last half of the line.  I understood that, but how can you say no to someone who just wants an extra sandwich and obviously needs it? 

One situation that particularly got to me was an old, African-American woman who wanted an egg salad sandwich for herself and a bologna sandwich for her husband.  The sandwiches are packaged in twos, and since there were only two of them, she could only have one package of bologna OR one package of egg salad.  She was very upset that she had to choose between her favorite or her husband's favorite.  Just as I was struggling to convince her to move on, an old, African-American man came up behind her and said "What do you want?" and she said "An egg salad sandwich, but she says only one per person" and he turned to me and said very politely, "I'll have an egg salad sandwich please."  At that point, I had no official way of verifying whether they were, in fact, from the same family or strangers, but tme smile on her face and the love in his eyes when he handed her his egg salad sandwiches told me they were husband and wife still deeply in love.

Over in the produce room, people were allowed to take as much as they wanted because of a spontaneous donation of $20,000 the day before, but much of the produce was already going bad.  These people took it anyway because they had no other option.  We're so lucky to be able to choose not only freshness, but between namebrands at the grocery store.  These people just take what they can get.

Many of them were Mexican workers.  Many were impoverished white or African-American citizens.  But there were also a lot of older people, some of them with fancy phones and bluetooth technology, who had suddenly taken in three grandchildren or had suddenly ran out of retirement money.  They had worked hard and planned ahead, but their savings just weren't enough.  And with unexpected events, like taking in grandchildren and the economy crashing, there was no way they could have foreseen how their retirement would dwindle away.  They're forced to supplement their groceries with donations from Manna House, just to keep everyone fed.

One of CASA's missions is to provide healthy, fresh, organic food to the elderly because it keeps them healthy and out of the hospital.  Some of the chemicals from non-organic produce conflicts with medications.  I can only imagine the complications involved in eating not only non-organic produce, but also rotting produce in old age.  Just at the point they are most vulnerable physically, impoverished elderly are forced to consume unhealthy food to survive.  Happy as I was to feed them, I wish there was a way we could do more.

Ciao for now.