Food parcel Day part 1

I woke up after a very good night’s sleep with a full belly. Breakfast of granola, eggs, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms delicious as always. We are off to JL Zwane for Food parcels. The language has been fun to listen to, but not always understanding the dialogue can be frustrating. Are they talking about the “white Americans” or other things? I would say a large number of them know English, but some of them need translators. We have gotten to know a group of them and they will be the supervisors of our food parcel day. We are asked to assemble 250 food parcels that contain cake flour, maize, rice, beans, sugar, samp, vegetable oil, and frozen chicken. These 250 parcels cost 101,000 rands, which approximately costs $15,000. To sponsor one of these costs $50. So a personal THANK YOU to all who donated to help me participate in this great day. It was a blessing to be here and help all these people feed their families.

So to start we had to unload all the ingredients into large piles, so we started a “offloading chain,” more or less and assembly line and threw each other huge bags of flour and rice, etc; gently of course. Then we waited at least an hour for the second truck to come with the sugar and chicken, Africa time we call it. Then we assembled 100 piles of the food because people had been waiting since 10 AM for their food. They had been watching us unload the food and stack it. By noon our group had been getting hungry, but kept going because we knew that our hunger is nothing to what these families go through everyday. At about 1PM Spiwo, the Reverend, began to read the list of names. This was where it got hard to smile. Families came up and got their food and we would help them carry it out to their grocery carts or cars. Most of them were grateful to get this food, and the stories they told us were touching and made me tear up more than once. Many of the families would transport each other’s food or share grocery carts. The community feeling kept getting stronger and stronger.

Kevin Winge of OpenArms and the author of “Never Give Up” came and helped us with the food parcel process. The 250-food parcel contribution happens twice a year, once in January, and once in April. Since our class was going to be here in May, they decided to do it now. Suzie and I have been volunteering at OpenArms in Minneapolis in the kitchen, so it has been amazing seeing the other side of this organization. JL Zwane and OpenArms of Minnesota have been partners for ten years. Providing the community with lunch during the week and these food parcels.

At about 2:30PM, Spiwo the Reverend announced to everyone that it was time for the University of Minnesota group to break for lunch in front of everyone waiting for food. That was kind of awkward for us because we would have kept delivering the food to families until each and every one was gone. But we had to break for lunch. So we did, but it was physically hard for me to eat and think about eating when some of the people outside had not eaten for 2 days or more. Every meal we eat is precious and I am ever so grateful to have the food that I am given. After a not so light lunch that I ate slowly while deep in thought, we went back to distributing the food parcels to families with waiting grocery carts and vehicles. We finished about 3:30PM and could then go volunteer with the after school program or Aaron could let us go reflect in our journals. I decided to journal with a few other people including Brittany, Kelsey, Chelsey, Elisa, and Alexis. Kevin came and sat to chat with us. Part II to come soon!