Since I temporarily suspended having riots and blocking streets in the area of the Food Bank, I took the food out to poor neighborhoods. Here are a few of the pictures that Irene took.
The first photo shows Tibi and the van he and two friend brought to help. These people are rromi and were a tremendous help in preventing a neighborhood riot. If I did have a riot I do not imagine I would be able to get the Jandarme to come out there to help me!
The second is of one of the dirt roads in the area we visited. From the photos you can not see much of these shacks and the living conditions. To reach this "neighborhood" you have to leave a main road and wind through a maze of dirt paths and go through mounds of trash and garbage. All these houses are due to be bulldozed in the future - the land belongs to a university and all these people are squatters. A foundation here is working with the mayor to get a land grant so they will have a place to go. I have started searching for heavy canvas tents. This same foundation also has a day center and we need to meet so I perhaps can supply them with food boxes to distribute from their center.
The next is the site of a shack that had burned down just the night before. We are looking at helping with some materials to rebuild. The family that was burned out was a family that we had worked with many years ago.
The last photo is the crowd beginning to form around my truck - I am in the middle somewhere.
On Monday, with the help of those awesome high school volunteers, we will begin to assemble cartons and pack them for another distribution food for around 200 families.
I need to visit some other neighborhoods and assess the need. It is much more labor intensive and time consuming for me to have to do the distributions away from the Food Bank but the important thing is that we are getting the food out to hungry families.
I have previewed and edited this entry about 3 times but when it publishes it is totally different - I give up! I hope you can make sense of it.
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