Food for the Poor

On Wednesday, Corey, Meg and I went to an organization in Port au Prince called Food for the Poor. Any trip outside of the school is kind of exciting – just for the opportunity to see new things, and the – um – adventure of driving in the crazy traffic. The highlight of the drive was when the driver took a left hand turn and actually went between two tap taps coming in the opposite direction. OK. Deep breath. The tap taps all go really slowly (since there are people hanging out the back) so whenever anyone’s behind one, they cross into the oncoming traffic to pass it. So we did that for a while, then turned off the main road onto some outrageously bumpy, busted roads. I thought the roads in rural Honduras were an adventure … this is unbelievable. Corey and I both put on our seatbelts in the backseat when we got in the car, but after a few too many murderous bounces, as the seatbelts got tighter and tighter and came closer and closer to strangling us, we took them off.

We got to Food for the Poor – which is an absolutely huge warehouse and went into the office to talk to one of the managers. The office was air conditioned! Amazing ….. Our purpose for going there was to sort through a huge donation of books in English that they had received and take what we thought would be good for the kids at LCS. Now, when I say huge box of books, I’m not kidding. There were probably 2000 books in this thing, and at one point I was sitting in the box, only taking up about a quarter of it. Here’s what I inferred about the school that donated the books: It was a California middle school or K-8 school. The books came from either a library, or a combined ELA / social studies classroom with lots of Spanish speakers. In California in those grades, they study California history, early American history, and ancient civilizations. We found lots of great books – in English and Spanish – that will be wonderful for the library here. But we also found so much absolutely ridiculous stuff in that huge box, as well as in the boxes all around it, that it really made me question what goes through people’s minds when they think, “I know, let’s make a big donation of stuff to poor people in Haiti!”

Here are some of the things we found that seem pretty ridiculous to donate Haiti:
1. Hundreds of books in English about American history
2. \A book called “punch out masks of the Pharaohs” …. But all the masks were already punched out
3. A used spelling workbook
4. A box full of “nude” (for white people) Leggs pantyhose
5. A box of Halloween themed gummy candy
6. A box of little sample sized Garnier Anti Wrinkle Cream
7. I’m not kidding here …. A box of prepackaged olives and olive picks for martinis
8. A box of flavored straws that make milk taste like cookies and cream

There was also so much wonderful stuff there – and the staff were moving boxes and boxes out to waiting charitable organizations constantly. We got boxes and boxes of toothpaste for the school and the neighborhood. There was cleaning solution and bottled water, and medical supplies and sacks and sacks of rice. But the whole time I kept thinking of the people who had donated some of the ridiculous stuff. They had paid so much money, I’m sure, to ship those boxes here, but how much thought went into what the people here really need? The school in California was probably so proud of making such a big donation to kids in need, but so much of that material will be useless here. So I guess the moral of the story is: if it’s crappy, throw it away, don’t give it to a charity.