Weight-159 lbs.
I was back at the pantry today conducting more interviews. I was nervous again starting off. It is hard to approach people and ask them why they are there. It is even harder to explain what I am doing there. But as the afternoon went on I began to develop a groove. As clients would be called up to the counter, and their eligibility checked was being checked in the database I would introduce myself and ask if they would sit down with me for a few minutes and share a little bit about how the pantry has helped them. Most people agreed to sit down with me although some were pressed for time.
One of the women that I asked who couldn’t sit down with me because of a prior engagement had just lost her house to the floods. Another woman had to go and pick up her kids from daycare. Another woman had carpooled in and while she was able to sit down with me for a few minutes, she had to cut things short when her ride was leaving.
It was great to talk to people, even though it was difficult to be able to get a full picture in such a short amount of time. But the staff and volunteers at the pantry helped to flesh things out for me a little more. Some of them were cynical because they had seen the way that folks who use the pantry abuse the system. Although when you talked to them more about the pantry itself they could not say enough good things about the good work that it was doing. I really appreciated the frankness of our conversation and because most of them were, are, or will be social workers in the future they were able to intelligently identify the problem, it causes, and possible solutions while still honoring the facts that hunger is a tough thing to beat and that simple solutions are probably the worst ones.
The director of the Pantry, Kim, sat down with me at the end of the day and we recapped everything that I had seen and talked to folks about. Eventually the question came up, about what you do with people who abuse the system. And even if they don’t abuse the system what if they just have poor spending habits. As I spoke with Kim I began to wonder if part of our problem is that our Midwest American decency prevents us from saying the hard thing that could really be useful in pulling them out of poverty. Kim agreed with me that accountability is important. But then she pointed out something really important about pantry, and something that should be really important to us all. “We gave up holding people accountable, so we can feed them.”
Whether right or not the Rock River Valley food pantry is taking the call to feed the hungry seriously. Even if the cynic in you says that it is all wrong, what other choice do we have?
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