Day 4 A xmas score

My sistah roommie activists and I arrive at the Tijuana headquarters of the fabulous World Central Kitchen minutes before the promised rain begins to drench the muddied streets. Once inside, we see the space is organized into two separate rooms with a smaller storage room all the way at the back: the room on the right is dedicated to cooking and cleaning, the room on the left is where all the food prep and packing takes place, as well as storage.

Immediately, the 20 or so volunteers who have showed up to prepare and serve meals today are assigned tasks and put to work.

Stacy and I begin making coffee, first on the list. Other volunteers begin to put together tables for work spaces, chopping veggies, cleaning and organizing. We have to make sandwiches for at least 800 people.

The 2 rows of tables stretch at least 20 feet each and are covered first in neat columns maybe 8 deep of bread, then each slice spread with a spicy mayo before generous slices of ham, then cheese are once again recovered with more mayo then the last bread.

Notice the lack of fresh veggies - not a slice of tomato nor a leaf of lettuce. Perishables are harder to come by as most people donate non-perishables and not funds to buy fresh veggies.

When the ham and cheese is gone, the process starts again with peanut butter and then jelly until all the loaves of bread have also been turned into sandwiches.

Each have to be wrapped in saran wrap and stacked into stainless steel containers which are then put into slotted shelves of the bigger plastic containers on wheels to be wheeled outside and into the waiting trucks.

By 11a.m. lunch has been prepared, stacked into proper containers, and set off in a couple different trucks in a couple different directions.

There are hungry people to feed all over Tijuana, like all huge cities, and then there are the refugees. For so many today is a time of eating way too much and getting way too many things, and making gads of trash piles.

We have succeeded in both feeding lots of people and making lots of trash: not just all the plastic bags that held bread and cheese and ham or empty jars of peanut butter and jelly or aluminum serving trays and single use utensils, but the outer wrappings of cabbages and remains of squeezed limes, the bad spots cut out of potatoes and burnt rice, a few trays of leftovers that have spoiled in the heat or before they could be connected with the hungry.

We bag up our garbage in huge black trash bags and set them outside next to the overflowing dumpster. Then it is time for the rest of us who did not go to serve the food to begin preparing the evening meal.

Outside, two men, whose billowing trousers are tied on minuscule waists with straps of plastic, with frayed backpacks slung over their jutting shoulders and wire carts listing behind rickety bicycles have attacked the pile of garbage. One of the womxxn organizers rushes out to hand them a couple of fresh sandwiches, which they reach for and accept with gnarled hands, downcast eyes and and shy smiles.

She tries to convince them they will get sick if they eat from the food we threw away but they are not deterred from their swift, organized raking thru each bag and reorganizing mounds of scraps into piles they then shove into emptied plastic bags, stuffing them into their carts, their backs, around their necks.

Their xmas score.