Contributions That Make Things Work

I am in hot pursuit of four new interviews. In the meantime, I have been to the food bank again. This caused many reflections on other contributions I have been experiencing from poor people. I thought I would share this with you.

Once again there was no bread at the food bank, and in fact there wasn’t any in the back either so my “helper” and I were unable to take liberties. However, the absence of bread proved to be a conversation opener as I was waiting in the “holding tank” to go in and make my selections.

The person I am thinking of is a young woman, possibly in her mid-thirties, of slight build and gracefully dressed. She was accompanied by her son and daughter, both apparently between the ages of eight and twelve. They arrived just after we did.

The cause of our waiting proved to be that there was only one volunteer actually distributing food, another volunteer whose job it is to check us off in the computer system was absent from his office, and we were immediately preceded by a very chatty man who wanted to demonstrate his swollen feet to the computer volunteer when he finally did arrive. And so, the line was moving lethargically this particular afternoon.

As I believe I have written about before, an issue with being poor and being served is the constant message in the ambience that you are needy and helpless. My response to this ambience is to intentionally and ongoingly create strategies to shift the emotional atmosphere for myself and others. And so, I engaged the young woman briefly in joking conversation about the process of choosing, (and I use that word in ironic jest) from the meagre selection that would become available to us when we were ultimately allowed into the food room.

I started by asking her to bet whether or not there would be bread, but she wasn’t taking me up on that one. Her immediately response was “No bread!” and we laughed. As I peered through the window at the person with the big feet chatting up the volunteer, I noted out loud that there was a plentiful supply of peanut butter. We had a quick and affirming chat about how many cans of cranberry sauce and how many jars of peanut butter we had already collected from previous visits.

At this point I learned a strategy! The woman told me that she had frequently made peanut butter cookies for her kids. Now, as I’m sure you recognize, there is no flour or butter at the food bank. I realize that she had adopted a similar strategy to one that I frequently use; that she takes what is available and uses her small resources to buy something so that together she can make a food that is acceptable and nutritious. I’m not saying that I’m a genius for inventing this strategy – it is pretty obvious in fact. But I felt affirmed as she expressed a bit of her own story.

By this point, her kids were sitting quietly and we were chatting happily. It soon came time for me to enter the food room.


Once again the distributing volunteer was very generous, openly acknowledging that she was giving me more than she was supposed to, i.e. an extra can of salmon. There was fresh fruit this time. Perhaps the greatest moment was the point where the volunteer virtually thrust a packet of chocolate candy into my assistant’s hands. Although I cannot eat these things, I recognize her gesture as one of bringing a sense of abundance and gratitude into the space. I happily took the candies knowing that my personal assistants will make short work of them.

This reflection is about how poor people contribute to each other. The food bank is ninety percent run by volunteers, and ninety percent of those volunteers are also recipients. (These statistics are visual, not accurate.) Like the majority of the service system, the food bank could not run if it weren’t operated by the people who are served by it. Without access to the decision making, the intake or output processes, or any of the planning, it is poor people who are stepping in to the situation, working their way around the glitches, and making it work for each other.

Here are some of the contributions poor people make to the free food distribution system:
- Sorting the food, including disposing of rotten fruits and vegetables that arrive daily. As my assistant and I entered through the receiving area, we noted one young woman busily packing rotten potatoes into a disposal container.
- Distributing information, both globally and personally. A couple of small rooms are devoted to both legal and social questions and someone is always there to hand out pamphlets. Aside from that, individual questions are bantered around in the waiting rooms and in the line ups and around the coffee urn.
- Managing the emotional temperature. The line ups, the waiting, the sense of being personally inadequate, the struggles to meet the quirky schedules, the endless interrogation about whether you are poor enough to deserve this benefit, and oh yes did I mention the WAITING? – all this and more is trying on the temper. From friendly banter to authoritative restatement of the rules to sharing a cigarette to offering somebody a task, people take care of each other’s mood, ensuring that tears and outbursts are rare and easily deflected.
- Finding tasks. It doesn’t take very much observation to realize that several people who are volunteers are not actually doing anything productive. This can be annoying when one is waiting at the food room and there is only one volunteer there who is authorized to distribute food. But aside from this annoyance, the fact that many people are actually doing nothing is a time honoured way of keeping as many people involved as possible in a work related situation. I’m not kidding – I’m sure we have all observed as one person is digging a hole and two people are watching at a road construction site. There are many similar situations at the food bank – one person managing the sign up book and one person watching (and sometimes two), one managing the forklift schedule and three drinking coffee, etc.

It was a major disruption in my life that brought me to living in south Etobicoke, in poverty, in the first place. I am benefitting greatly from this particular contribution of poor people showing me the ropes, managing my mood and including me in activities.

My next story will be about silence and learning to break it tactfully.

Judith