Service Learning

Last friday afternoon I spent a few hours down at the Fish Food Bank where a couple of my fellow classmates were also working. However, I had to get there a little later than them due to a few minor incidents so when I arrived there, they already had their assigned tasks and I ended up being separated from them. This ended up being okay because I got paired with this very sweet old lady named Martha (who incidentally reminded me a lot of my grandma), who was in charge of weighing and keeping track of all the donations that came into the food bank. We got to talking and she told me all about her life; how her husband died four years ago, and how they used to have a house up here in Washington and one in Arizona but that after her husband died she sold off the one in Arizona and now she wishes she hadn't, how she used to be a birthing nurse and it was an amazing experience, and how she's been doing volunteer work her whole life. My point of explaining our conversations was because I was almost taken aback by how willing she was to open up to me and tell me all about her life. It made me happy that she thought I was someone worth sharing her life's story with, and with the work that we were doing, putting out and counting the donations, it was a good day. It felt good.
One interesting thing I want to add about the day was Martha's need of a watchful eye. She pointed out a jar of mayo that someone had set aside in a dish rack, where it had been intentionally hidden away from the rest of the donations. She told me to watch to see who of the workers had taken it and set it aside for themselves. This caught me off guard because I had never thought to watch the other volunteer workers because, I don't know, I wouldn't think that someone would just take donated items like that away from the people that really need them but apparently they do. I just thought that was terrible. Incidentally, I never saw anyone take it by the time I was leaving, so I wonder whatever came of that mayo and who of those people I had been working with would even do that.