The Saga of Famine and Disease

I'm back at work now. Finally. I was really starting to get bored.

Michael got really, really sick Thursday night. Really, really, really sick. Badly sick. It was not good. In addition to my not being able to help him at all, I was also worried about getting at least some sleep before I went in for the 30 Hour Famine retreat with my youth on Friday. Michael was really sick. I couldn't do anything. I felt guilty, but I left him, and moved to the couch for the night. Then, Michael comes in and tells me to take the bed and that he'll take the couch. He was sick and he felt guilty for keeping me up. He said, "I want you to have the bed." I said, "I want you to have the bed, and plus you need to be near the bathroom." I won, although it didn't feel like much of a victory.

By late Friday afternoon, I was pretty well sure I was getting sick too. But I was also pretty well sure that I'd put in a lot of work to get the 30 Hour Famine together, and I'd be damned if I was going to miss it for a last minute stomach virus. But it was okay, really, because I have this deal with my body that I only throw up when absolutely necessary, so we worked together and managed to hold all that nastiness off for awhile.

In the meantime, we did the Famine. Oh boy, did we do the Famine. We started by handing out registration forms that one of the girls had made up for us. The youth coming to the Famine were going to be homeless people checking into a shelter. Karina, who made the form, had garbled up the letters, and when the youth asked us about it, we got impatient with them, asked them if they could read, were they on drugs, treated them like non-humans. Afterwards, we went through their bags, looking for "drugs and weapons", but really just looking for Ipods and cellphones, which were not allowed.

We had a discussion, asking the youth how it felt, the way we treated them, asking them to imagine being treated like that every night, asking them what they would do if they knew their choice was to either be treated like scum, or to sleep on the street. We asked them to come up with their own background stories, their own reasons they couldn't read the form properly-- some of them were on drugs, some of them had never much gone to school, some of them were just hungry, some of them didn't speak English very well-- but all of them still felt they deserved to be treated like humans.

Later that night, Dan and I did a skit about a job interview. As the manager, I was hardnosed and condescending to the smelly homeless guy who showed up late to his interview because he didn't own a watch. But he really needed the job, and promised to do well. Afterwards, still in character, we let the kids as questions, and they blasted me-- why didn't you hire him? couldn't you even try to help? can't you see he was trying?-- I laid down some heartless facts-- the guy smells bad, I can't have bad hygiene in a restaurant, he was late, he doesn't have a place to live, I can't even call him if he doesn't show up one day...

The teens turned their questions to Dan-- how did you get to where you are? is it hard? why can't you get past this? do you have no one who can help you overcome these problems?

We then had a discussion about what "binds" the poor-- what are the things they need to overcome in order to do things that you and I don't even think twice about, ie, being able to put a phone number on a job application, being able to shower beforehand. All of these things make life so much harder-- kind of like, hm, say, running a relay race while you're tied up. And so that's what we did. They had a blast. We had another discussion at the end, how the game felt both for those in charge of the tying up (the haves) and for those who were bound (the have nots). It was a vastly different experience, a fact that was lost on none of them. We also talked about what we, ourselves, can do in our own lives when we come face to face with these inequalities. I ended the discussion with the big question-- even if I hadn't hired Dan in the end, would it have made a difference if I had at least treated him like a human being during the interview?

We had a candlelight vigil that night, and then offered the teens the option of "renting" their blankets and pillows back from us. If they didn't have the Famine Dollars, or didn't want to spend them, they could always dig through the garbage and use some of the hundreds of newspapers that just happened to be there.

We hardly slept at all. :)

In the morning, after prayer and check-in, we took the group to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, where we boxed up 5000lbs of food for distribution to food pantries and kitchens around the Chicagoland area. We were all so hungry-- even me, but especially the kids and Dan. I'd been eating little bits because of that whole hypoglycemia thing, but just enough to keep my bloodsugar up. They'd not eaten at all, and found it a cruel sort of torture to be thrown in with all that food and unable to eat any of it. But maybe a fun sort of cruel torture. They kept waving food in my face and demanding, "Look at this! I'm not eating it!" and then throwing it in a box. Everyone kept reminding each other that we really did have the option of throwing in the towel, quitting the Famine, and going home to get food. But the people we were feeding with our work here, they didn't have that option.

In the afternoon, we played soccer. After a few minutes, Dan blew the whistle and I threw myself on the ground yelling, "Get down! Get down! Get down! Duck and cover! Now!" Everyone threw themselves down and I explained to them we'd just had a huge natural disaster, a 9.0 earthquake that flattened the city. Our persons, our families, our communities, our city, the economy, everything was crippled because it had all been destroyed. And unless you have 4 Famine dollars, you don't have enough money to buy your way out of this problem. One girl did, but she chose not to spend it. We finished the game of soccer with everyone blindfolded and on their knees to represent the crippling nature of the disaster. Daena and I ran around the court with the ball yelling, "Follow my voice, it's over here."

Yup, blindfolded soccer. Awesome.

Before we broke fast, we talked about whether or not begging for money really was the "easy way out", if it really was so much more preferrable to getting a job. How would it feel to be that person standing there on the street corner with the sign? So they made their own signs, and then Daena and Dan placed them around the front of the Church while I went in and set up for Mass. During Mass they read petitions they had written, offering the congregation insight into their experience over the weekend. It was incredible how it affected them, the things they had reconsidered, the connections they had made.

At the Break Fast Meal afterwards, we had the teens sit at a table, and I brought out a paper plate of food for them to see-- a sandwich, pear slices, cookies, crackers-- and told them that the cost was 2 Famine dollars. No one really had that much left. I said that if they didn't have enough to buy a plate of food, what they needed to consider was whether or not they were hungry enough to eat from the garbage. I dumped the plate, napkins, and food into a grocery sack and shook it up. Their shoulders slumped when they saw me do that, but they nodded, getting the point. And as it turned out, they were all hungry enough to eat from the garbage.

AFter that, we just kind of broke off. Some ladies from the Church had come to Break Fast with us, and the families of some of the kids. We started cleaning up. Daena had to leave early, which left me and Dan. My energy was sapped. I hadn't eaten THAT much, but I was definitely feeling sick, and had no strength. But luckily, Dan's a better person than me, and didn't complain that he wound up carrying almost everything as we got our stuff together (I did do the dishes, at least, and I carried light stuff).

I was so cold. I didn't feel like I would ever be warm again. When we got in the house, I sat down by the heater in the front room, and promptly fell asleep. I dreamt even, although not more that a couple a minutes passed. I fell asleep again on the kitchen floor a few minutes later, after putting a pot in to soak. Then I made my way downstairs.

Michael was doing better, although was not well, but I was getting dizzy and just went to bed. Within 2 hours of getting home from the Famine, that deal I had with my body came up again, along with my dinner. Michael heard me and came into the bathroom to hold back my hair, which I have decided is an extraordinarily loving and affectionate thing for a person to do. It made it seem not so bad.

Of course, I was up ever 45 minutes the rest of the night, delirious with fever, and having some sort of delusions that my blankets were actually a series of paperwork that dealt with various aspects of the developing Palestinian government. We made really great progress with Hammas at about 6am. Michael asked me how I was and I had only enough presence of mind to realize that if I told him things were going well with the Palestinians, that he wouldn't know what I was talking about. Then I went back to the paperwork. I finally got warm at about 8am.

I lost 8lbs in those few days, which has left me weak to all hell. I'm such a wimp now, and it's really frustrating me. Today, Thursday, is my first full day out of the house and back at work. At first, everything I managed to do was a milestone-- Yay! I made tea! Yay! I drank half the cup! Worn our now, time for a nap!-- My energy has mostly returned now. I'm walking now rather than shuffling, didn't need a nap yesterday, stairs don't intimidate me anymore, etc., but I still can't carry weight for anything. I'm going to start yoga again tomorrow, and work on building my strength back up. Yes, and my weight. Acturally gained 3lb back already (waterweight, I imagine) so I suppose it's more accurate to say I netted a 5lb loss. Still. I weigh less than I have in 7 years, and I'm not too keen on being underweight. I still have this fear that Mom's going to swoop in and force-feed me cans of Ensure. Gross.

I know, poor me, right? About 2/3 of Americans are overweight and I whine about this. I'll get over it.

Back to more important things-- on Monday, when I was technically well, although still lacking energy and strength, Dan and I went to Su Casa Catholic Worker House. We met with Julia, the Volunteer Coordinator, and talked about some options for working there. Then we had dinner (I could really only have water) and played with the kids and talked with the other volunteers and the residents and figured out what we could do if we were to go volunteer there. I think we might have a good fit. At any rate, I think we might see. We've been given applications to fill out, and they said once we get them back, it'll be a few days to a week before we'll be able to start. Dan's going to go ahead and do 2 days a week, and maybe will eventually up that to three or more. I'm going to start with one until after Easter, then will up it to two.

So yeah, things are changing, life is going. All in all, a very good thing.