Today I returned to Colridge to work with Maggie and the folks at the soup kitchen. Maggie said that she wanted to make fry bread today–I have some skill with bread dough and I think they wanted to play to my strength–but she said they lacked the money to purchase the yeast and oil. I offered to pay and so we walked over to the nearest tuck shop. The total amount, which included a few other items, came to 160 rand—or a little over 13 US dollars.
Around 9:00 a young man came to the soup kitchen. He was introduced as their music man. He pulled a pair of big speakers out of a closet and began blasting a South African Christian song. The song was good, but it was on perpetual loop. We heard it non-stop for over six hours. After 3:00 pm, when we were well into the clean-up phase, I went and turned the music down. This meant that you could actually have a conversation. But after 20 minutes, the music was back to full blast, though gratefully a new tune had been found.
A group of older people came by the soup kitchen today. They sat in a circle under a tree by the road and chatted. It was, of course, too loud in the soup kitchen itself for them to hear each other. I was introduced around and we gave them soda and fry bread before the meal. Maggie said that one of them was the leader of the Khoi-San people.
The soup kitchen has a large structure. They have a kitchen and professional grade portable gas burners. I cooked the fry bread on a kitchen stove inside, but all the rest of the food was cooked on a fire outside the soup kitchen next to the street. The main pot was an impressive looking kettle that the weird sisters of Macbeth would have been pleased to possess. A spoon the size of a small canoe paddle stirs the pot.
At meal time, they put a big tub of clean drinking water at the entrance of the soup kitchen. The soup kitchen has two tin cups at the tub. The students dip a cup in the tub, take their drink, and pass the cup on to the next student. By the end of today’s lunch, dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of students had used those two cups.
When I helped at the soup kitchen last Friday, I would estimate that we served about 100+ students. We had extra food and went to the shantytown to distribute the rest. We heard that the buses that brought the students from Huhudi, the black township, had been broken on Friday and many students were absent. The buses were running today. We did a first serving of lunch with the elders and youngest children, but wave after wave of ever older students kept coming. Lunch was bean-and-meat stew and potato salad with biscuits (cookies) for desert. We served a couple hundred students and then ran out of potato salad. Then we ran out of stew. At that point, we began making sandwiches that were beef fat and gristle on fry bread. After handing out over a hundred, we ran out of fry bread and gristle. Then we began handing out all-you-could-hold servings of the biscuits. Girls used their skirts as containers to carry as many as possible. Eventually there was nothing left to give, and Maggie shooed away the 40+ students hanging around outside the soup kitchen entrance. I regularly take students to work at meal programs in San Francisco. One thing I’d never experienced is a line of hungry folks and no food to serve.
Maggie continued to treat me like a benefactor. She was kind and gracious, telling people how much she’d learned from me in our two days together. I was introduced to many people who came by the shelter, was invited to speak before the meal, and was welcomed and thanked by one of the elders. Like the third-grade girl who calls me ‘my husband,’ I’m afraid that I’m going to disappoint Maggie.
No Foreign Lands 