Sunday, Aug. 13, volunteering at St. Anthony's in San Francisco. Today was a penetrating experience. St. Anthony is in the heart of the Tenderloin, the area of San Francisco most infested with drifters, homeless drunks, itnerant crazies and drug users with matted hair and soiled clothing. And they all come for lunch on Saturday. We fed them 2,600 meals of turkey and stuffing, with cookies, cake, kool-aid, salad and bread - and a second plate. It was tiring and we 30 or so volunteers were exhausted. But we all felt good about helping, especially a group so obviously down on their luck. We also felt - I was not the only one to admit to it - quite a bit uneasy at being emersed in so ragged a crowd.
St. Anthony's is Franciscan, I believe, efficient, low budget and geared toward serving people instead of redeeming them. Thank god for that. Starting at about 11 am on Saturday, the line forms outside the soup kitchen door, and within 30 minutes it extends down the block, around the corner and down the next block. Everyone waits patiently for their chance to come inside and eat. (I saw just one scuffle.) It's quite the operation, and without it, many of these people would no where to turn.
It was not a threatening atmosphere for us. Many of them are very polite, some in wheel chairs, other with cains, most with tattered, thrift-shop clothing and dirty old bags with which they cart their belongings. Some read books, joked with their friends, and most appreciate that we are volunteers doing them a favor. But it is a world alien to most of us and we felt strange and apart from it. I found myself not wanting to brush up against filthy clothes and uneager to get close enough to smell their bodies. I chatted with a few, but we had little to talk about. At one point, the stale, stuffy air - a combination of food smells, dish water from the nearby kitchen and unwashed clothing - almost made me dizzy and nauseous. Even now, hours later, I am a bit queasy. I was glad to have gone, but moved. As I said, it was a penetrating experience.
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St. Anthony's is Franciscan, I believe, efficient, low budget and geared toward serving people instead of redeeming them. Thank god for that. Starting at about 11 am on Saturday, the line forms outside the soup kitchen door, and within 30 minutes it extends down the block, around the corner and down the next block. Everyone waits patiently for their chance to come inside and eat. (I saw just one scuffle.) It's quite the operation, and without it, many of these people would no where to turn.
It was not a threatening atmosphere for us. Many of them are very polite, some in wheel chairs, other with cains, most with tattered, thrift-shop clothing and dirty old bags with which they cart their belongings. Some read books, joked with their friends, and most appreciate that we are volunteers doing them a favor. But it is a world alien to most of us and we felt strange and apart from it. I found myself not wanting to brush up against filthy clothes and uneager to get close enough to smell their bodies. I chatted with a few, but we had little to talk about. At one point, the stale, stuffy air - a combination of food smells, dish water from the nearby kitchen and unwashed clothing - almost made me dizzy and nauseous. Even now, hours later, I am a bit queasy. I was glad to have gone, but moved. As I said, it was a penetrating experience.
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posted by Mark Boslet at 8:58 PM
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