One morning in every month, I volunteer at the Soup Kitchen. I go there for a range of different reasons, one of them being (quite selfishly) that there I feel like what I am doing is worth something. But let’s pass the motivation and self-analysis, this is not the subject.
I went there for the first time because of my dearest friend Heather. Let’s call her Sweetie from now on.
Sweetie and I were flatmates last year, and in my busy and tedious life, she soon appeared as a sort of sunshine, giving my brain / mood / state of mind the break it needed. She was in London for a year, an American student doing her Masters, but she was doing much more than that, and held a happily busy life. One of her occupations was to go to the soup Kitchen a number of times a month. I never went with her, but she entertained me quite often with little stories from there, and would keep me posted on who had done what, how and with whom. Finally, we had ‘our day together’ during her last week in London, and she introduced me to the Soup Kitchen. I liked it. And decided to go back, and continue what she was leaving behind.
Quite funnily, this Soup Kitchen is run by the American Church of London, although I am neither American nor a believer (I don’t think Sweetie is a believer either) - and I wouldn’t advise any of the volunteers there to give me any speech about religion. It is open 4 mornings a week. J. the Chef is Peruvian, studying art therapy, and is assisted every day by three to four volunteers, all of whom come at different intervals. They all come from different backgrounds, from American housewives who came in London thanks to their husbands’ jobs, and get lonely or bored, to American students, but you also have the random outsider like me, or this funny British guy T., who works at home and plays the drums. There are also some real unusual people, like S., Californian teacher, who heroically comes to London three months every winter and gives most of his time to the Soup Kitchen.
The work there is pretty straightforward: preparing the food and drinks from 9.15 to 10.00, and then opening for our ‘clients’ from 10.00 to 12.00. Plus fifteen minutes to half an our to tidy up and leave the kitchen all clean for the following day. We actually serve pretty nice food, J. preparing gorgeous-smelling soups, and everyday different hot meals (donated by posh chains of supermarkets), plus toast and sweets. Toast is important, because our ‘clients’ take six at a time, and put them in piles in their bags for later.
What makes the soup Kitchen though, is really them, our ‘customers’, the homeless, the destitute, the poor, the drug addicts, the drunkards, the depraved, the rejected, alienated, discarded, unwanted, abandoned by society, or refusing society.
It seems pretty hopeless doesn’t it? It actually is in some ways, but the atmosphere is much less tragico-pathetic than you would expect after this listing.
There reigns some kind of strange harmonious ‘entente’, rarely breached, and incidents or dramas are _ extremely _ rare - although this is today the subject of my blog.
Every day, most of them are already waiting by the gate when we open to greet us and peacefully queue up for hot drinks and soup, which they will ask for politely and gratify us with a warm ‘thanks darling’ or ‘thanks mate’, a smile or a wink.
It is a rather small Soup Kitchen (between 20 and 40 people come here I guess), and there is a certain kind of community feeling, in the sense that you always see the same faces – which is why I chose the word customer, instead of any reductive adjective such as homeless or poor. They have their little habits, favourite seats and table-mates. They have their little ‘gangs’ and can be very protective of each other.
Very different people come here, and one can be struck by the variety of people rejected by society, who fell into the extremity of having to rely on charity. There are obviously the few young junkies, destroying a life which could have been bearable maybe, and for whom you wonder what pushed them there.
One person, so thin that I still haven’t managed to find out which gender she/he belonged too, always refuses food, but asks for spoons of honey in her / his tea. One of the most obvious ways to recognise the drug addicts, apart from the unbearable sight of their incredibly thin features, is their obsession for sweets and refusal to eat anything solid.
Some of them are so young, you wonder if they ran way from home. Others are well-dressed clean and healthy looking, and you wonder if they should actually be coming to the Soup Kitchen. There are also the few gentlemanly looking guys, with excellent manners, language and sometimes education, so obviously fallen from middle/upper-class and you wonder with a chill which misfortune made them lose everything. There are the foreigners, who managed to immigrate to England, but never found a job. Among them, a strange looking guy from Ivory-Coast, whom you cannot stop once he starts talking, came as a student to do a PhD in Philosophy and finally got here. When I start imagining how his hopes have been deceived, how is life is different from what he expected, maybe how he wishes to go back home but cannot afford it… my head starts spinning and leaves me with a sensation of dizziness.
There is the funny looking punk (no Mohican haircut though!), always wearing red-tartan skinny legged trousers, army boots and old ragged leather jacket, drinking his cup of tea with the little finger in the air. Always very precious.
And you have the women. As tough as you can imagine, but as fragile as strong in their dignity, in their will to keep their identity as women. They are incredibly proud too, and I witnessed once the scary fury of one of them who nearly threw a chair at a guy twice her size (I am barely exaggerating) and half her age, because he insulted her.
And you have, as well, the Sweet Guy. Capital S and Capital G. Please, mentally underline, in bold, red and with sparkles these two words. Without exception the favourite of all the volunteers and customers alike. John, whom I nicknamed ‘single-tooth John’ because of his last remaining incisor. I already ‘knew’ him before I started, as Sweetie would always mention his kind manners and joyfulness. How to describe him? He is below average height (maybe shrunk by old-age), always carefully dressed (never goes out without a tie) of indeterminate elderly age (wrinkly and white haired, he could be any age, in between 55 and 75), and has a very peculiar laugh: like a kind of rattling sound, but also suckling air. Among other particularities, he greets indiscriminatingly every woman (young, old, ugly, beautiful, fat or masculine looking) with a tender kiss on the hand. Quite the gentleman, isn’t he? He is also among the ones who help to tidy up before we close, help the ladies to carry their bags, packages, rucksacks, handfuls of plastic bags filled with the usual bric-a-brac that homeless collect to keep themselves warm and sheltered. He always sits with a middle-aged lady in black with curly hair and a strange hat. Oh Sweetest John.
I think that one of the most important aspects of the Soup Kitchen for all of them, is not only the food – and, in the winter, the vital warmth of the soup, the coffee and tea – but also the fact that they get to ‘exist’ in the eyes of ‘normal’ people. I remember how shocked I was on my first day, when, giving a portion of pasta and pie to one of them, I was greeted by a ‘I would not give that to my dog’, which I’ve now been getting used to, along with the ‘they would not serve you this in prison’ or ‘do you really believe you’re going to feed me with such a small portion’. Even better are the similarly regular ‘Do you have skimmed milk instead?’, ‘I do only eat low-fat’, ‘Do you have any rye-bread?’, or ‘Don’t tell me there is salt in this soup? I cannot eat salt, I bloody told you!’… But this is not ungratefulness, or spoilt-childish reactions. Volunteers are the only people who care for them. Talk to them. Look at them. In the eyes. Answer, or even smile. They are being ‘served’ and can, for a few minutes, feel like they are ‘normal’ people, that they do ‘exist’, have a ‘place’. They have someone to listen to their groans – moans – whinges , and can have the luxury to complain about the quality of the food, rather than the harshness of the cold, the difficulty of sleeping in the street, the presence of rats… all those things that would be unthinkable for us privileged people who have a roof, home, bed, full fridge, job, social life, family, etc.
Spending a morning at the Soup Kitchen is, finally, quite an enjoyable moment, and each month I look forward to see the other volunteers, and our ‘customers’. Until today.
Yeah, incidents happen. Two days ago, J. banned a guy from the Soup Kitchen because he was drinking alcohol. There are no particular rules at the Soup Kitchen apart from: no alcohol, dugs, arms, and, lastly, rude behaviour to the volunteers.
As a result, J. received a death threat. So we were going to open today under the condition that the police would come to protect J.. The police did not come (for a series of circumstances too dull to recall here), and as a consequence we had to remove the food from the stalls. All of this, within plain sight of the starving-looking homeless, clutched to the gates.
Sadder was to come: J. told me that John passed away last week. Silently and quietly at the hospital.
I do not believe in god. But if he DOES exist, I have a message to transmit through the ethereal waves of the World Wide Web: please, look after John. I did not really know him. I did not know his name. I did not know his story. But he was a great guy.
