Today at the kitchen an elderly West Indian gentleman, a frequent guest, asked to speak to me privately away from the the other guests. We walked to the edge of the pavement where the Palestinian flag was flying. He took his mobile out. One side of the case was a wallet, he opened it and carefully went through the different compartments looking for something. There was no money in any of them, until the last one where he found a folded ten pound note – the only money in an otherwise empty wallet. He carefully took it out and offered it to me “I want you to have this for the food drive”.
I had known this gentleman for several years. I had noticed that whilst he would take bread, tinned vegetables and hot meal, he would never choose items that require cooking like rice & pasta. l asked if he had access to a kitchen? He explained that he was not sleeping rough, he did have a flat, but didn’t have any electricity or gas so couldn’t cook. So we offered him items we usually keep for rough sleepers – instant pot noodles, pot pasta, pot porridge, which only require hot water which can be gotten from local cafes, or in his case his neighbour.
When we introduced our wishing tree and pebbles with messages painted on them, he asked if he could borrow the pebble with the quote from Nelson Mandela “Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid it is man-made”. It was from Mandela’s speech at the Make Poverty History rally in Trafalgar Square in 2005. He wanted to show it to some people, and returned it the next week.
Back to today, and his donation. Despite his repeated insistence, we of course couldn’t accept it. I explained that his willingness to give was more than enough, it was worth more to me than the money – it was in fact priceless.
His generosity deeply moved me. Time and time again its those with nothing to give that give the most, it is they who teach us what humanity is.
I asked if his situation had improved, suspecting from his looks that nothing had changed. He replied “cant complain…” and looked up at the Palestinian flag flying above us, pointing he said “I don’t have bombs raining down”.
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