Yesterday, we went to Food and Friends. Food and Friends is a food preparation place that makes and delivers meals to people suffering from HIV/AIDS. Our group split up: some opus worked in the kitchen, others packaged meals, and still others went on delivery route.
Compared to our other volunteer experiences, Food and Friends was a much less personable. We didn’t interact with any actual homeless people. We didn’t even interact with any actual food– everything was already cooked and prepared when we got there; we just put it into bags. It didn’t feel as “good” or as “warm and fuzzy” as it could have, but volunteer work isn’t always about feeling good and fuzzy: it’s about getting work done. We packaged a lot of meals for the terminally ill.
For lunch, we went to a market. There were a lot of babies there.
In the afternoon, we went back to ROJA. It’s funny: I always thought I hated children, but I realized these past few days that I really like them. My girl and I bonded over our similar names. She asked me if I could stay forever and it kind of breaks my heart that I can’t. We did homework, we read some books, we played with dolls. It was great! I learned that little kids really like glitter. All of the little girls were fighting over it; I had to make them “glitter packs” so that they could take some home. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the greatest idea: glitter is impossible to clean up. Oh well, they were all really excited about it. All in all, it was another exciting day of service.