Wednesday, Friend and I started what we hope will be regular visits to Martha's Table, a food kitchen in Washington, DC that serves about 1,000 meals a day to the homeless and hungry and also runs a child development center. It was a great day beginning with a bus ride to the Metro, then a Metro ride to the U Street corridor, the home of Martha's Table and the Washington landmark, Ben's Chili Bowl. Our first job after donning hair nets (I took along my ball cap so I avoided the dreaded hair net), was to cut two crates of oranges into eighths and place them in plastic sandwich bags. Sounds pretty easy, except after about 40 oranges each, we learned we were cutting them wrong. Luckily we were not asked to start all over, but just started cutting them in 8ths the correct way so that all of the pieces were slices of the orange, not chunks. I'm not sure how else to describe this. Next we made meat and cheese sandwiches with bread donated by local stores (Safeway seemed to be the major donor). Each diner will get two slices of turkey and one slice of cheese. As I fulfilled my responsibilities, I kept thinking of who would get these sandwiches and what it would mean to them.....can't imagine being hungry and lining up at a truck to get these lunches....well really I don't think I know what real hunger is like. Our worst job, because the chicken was so HOT, was to de-bone two LARGE pans of baked chicken. It smelled so good, but was so hot hot hot. I believe my thumbs have 3rd degree burns. We will make this a regular volunteer activity, but switch to Thursdays (so we don't miss Body Pump.)
Martha's also provides winter coats and gloves to the homeless when the food trucks go out. I am going to take a couple of mine and try to pry a few from hubby (he loves his coats---this could be a battle). They also need business type clothing, which they provide to the poor who are going for interviews. I've got plenty. May be a time to start getting those out of the house, too. I'll hit up some of my friends, too.
Of course, we could not resist the chili dogs at Ben's. That is an activity that we cannot continue as a regular stop.
I'm not sure that this is THE volunteer activity for me, so I've signed up with the Fairfax County volunteer office. Let's see what else might be in store for me.
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