Conditioned To Suffer Alone
It was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that declared “there is no such thing as society – there are [only] individual men and women..” that “people must look after themselves”. We are still seeing this legacy of denying community being pushed by today’s elite. Rather than acknowledge collective responsibility for the suffering in our community, people are told it’s their personal failure, and are conditioned to feel shame for their poverty, even though a UN investigation on UK poverty clearly revealed it’s the government that is at fault – shamelessly targeting the poor with unnecessary austerity cuts, plundering the welfare budget in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
People are conditioned to suffer alone in silence rather than share their pain. Our guests often don’t share their circumstances with us, they don’t want to burden others with their suffering and ‘shame’. So, we are left to read the clues as to each guest’s circumstance, and then hope that through talking with them they will feel comfortable enough to open up and share their situation with us so that we can try and help.
But now that our humble kitchen is getting busier, with a lot more guests coming each week, this inevitably means we get to spend less time with each dear guest as there is a queue forming behind them – this week we had 19 guests waiting in the queue just as we opened. With less time with each guest, we have less time to determine their needs. Sometimes clues get missed and unless the guest says something to indicate their situation, we can get it wrong and fail them.
This week, one of our guests revealed that apparently when he visited our kitchen last week, unknown to us, he was living in a tent in central Croydon at the time – yes during that heavy rain storm. He only revealed this to us now, as alhamdullah, he has just been given temporary accommodation by the council. If we had known at the time, we would have at least made sure he didn’t leave without a full provision of suitable food designed for rough sleepers, that doesn’t require cooking facilities, from our emergency homeless box.
Please if you have any special needs, if you are sleeping rough or don’t have access to cooking facilities, please let us know so we can try and help. Sometime we miss the signs and get it wrong, please don’t let that happen – help us to help you. Just tell one of the volunteers and they will call me over and once you have done your ‘shopping’ from the main stalls then I will guide you to the emergency box for you to select what you need. At the moment the emergency box contains the following items:
- Pot Noodle meals ( Curry flavour etc)
- Pot Pasta meals ( Tomato Herb, etc)
- Pot Oats ( Golden Syrup, Cinnamon, Berry & Cherry, Apple & Blueberry )
- Cup Soup – Powdered Soup sachets (Tomato & Minestrone flavours)
- Tinned Rice Pudding
- Tinned Peach Slices
- Biscuits
- Cream Crackers
- Jam
- Tuna
- Sardines
- Fruit Squash ( Orange & Apple/Blackcurrant flavours)
Please let us know what else we should add to the box – we are guided by your suggestions. With winter coming we are also looking at adding non-food items for rough sleepers.
Of course providing just food when what someone really needs is a home and a stable living income so they can buy their own food with dignity, is a severe limitation of what we as a food kitchen can provide. This week a homeless person looking straight into my eyes asked “can you give me a home?” I, breaking eye contact, looked down at the tin of kidney beans he was clutching, was left speechless at the gap between what we provide and what they really require.
Hidden Homeless
We are finding that more homeless guests are coming to our kitchen then we had previously realised, many of these are the so called ‘hidden homeless’. Crisis, the homelessness charity says:
“Those who experience hidden homelessness are hidden from statistics and services as they are dealing with their situation informally. This means staying with family and friends, sofa surfing, or living in unsuitable housing such as squats or in ‘beds in shed’. All these situations leave the person extremely vulnerable and many have to sleep rough at some time.”
This week I met two guests at the Reflection Table, as we got chatting about the display, it transpired that both guests were surviving by ‘sofa-surfing’ at friend’s places.
A third of homeless people who are sofa-surfing in the UK have been doing so for more than six months, according to research from Crisis. This inevitably puts pressure on the host households and often the homeless person is asked to leave. According to Shelter, just in the last year, 23,169 people have had to leave – the second most common cause of people losing a roof over their heads, resulting in many having to sleep rough.
No Pastries
Whilst we buy nearly all of the items that we stock in our kitchen – everything from fresh fruit and vegetables, to non-perishable items like rice and pasta, etc., the exception is the pastries and the bread. They are surplus food donated by a local supermarket. So, we have no control over what exactly we will receive or what quantity, it just depends on what the supermarket has left over at the end of the day. Usually we receive plenty of pastries, but this week we received none – apologies.
Fruit Squash and Squashed Fruit
On the positive side this week we introduced bottles of fruit squash for the first time – in orange and apple & blackcurrant flavours – on a trial basis. They seem to be popular with our guests.
A volunteer of ours pointed out that some of the fresh fruit in our fruit packs were damaged – specifically a few of the bananas. Apparently because we are filling deep bags with fruit packs to bring to the kitchen, the packs at the bottom are getting squashed and the bananas are being damaged.
It’s important for us to ensure that our fresh fruit reaches our guests in the same condition we buy it – apologies this didn’t happen. The fruit is bought fresh on Friday or sometimes Thursday (a lot is ‘ripen at home’ so the extra day helps) before we pack it and serve it at our kitchen on Saturday. From now on we will use shallow crates to transport the fruit to ensure no damage. If you encounter damaged fruit please let us know so we can look into it.
Survey
Next week will be our three-month anniversary, so it’s important we take stock and evaluate our service, and recalibrate to ensure we are meeting the needs of our diverse guests. As always, we are guided by our guests, so in order to do this, we need the help of our guests. We are planning a short anonymous questionnaire for our guests to give us feedback on our provision, and information on their situation, so that we can learn how to improve, both in the running of the kitchen, and in understanding and meeting the needs of our guests.
The survey will of course be optional, but we hope all guests will participate, and we do have a small treat as a token of our thanks to our guests who help us by taking part in the survey. Depending on the weather the survey will be conducted within the next few weeks inshAllah.
Other Interesting Posts:
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 40
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 39
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 38
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 12
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 10
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 9
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 8
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 7
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 6
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 5
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 3
Resistance Kitchen Update – Week 2