I have been going to chop vegetables every Saturday for the Homeless for the last month. The charity I help is a local one called Food For All, based in Kings Cross. They manage to feed 1,000 hot meals a day to the homeless, students and whoever else wants one; Monday to Saturday.
The charity is run by an eccentric Irish Man called Peter O’Grady, also known as Parasurama Dasa. This isn’t his real birth certificate name, but was given to him when he decided to devote his life to being a ‘Hare Krishna’.
I was attracted to the ground level work he continually does, running on a tight shoe string budget.
The food is close to or just past the sell by date and is collected from supermarkets and cash and carry’s, he has developed a network of these contacts over the decades he has been doing this work. So it comes to him for free, his costs are plates, spoons, petrol and logistics. To me this is an ingenious idea, which has been thought of and executed by him almost single handedly.
To me he doesn’t even seem totally human, he seems like he is a cross between an Irish man and an Elf. Often I’m strain myself trying to listen and understand him through his thick Irish accent but none the less nod politely when he talks and even laugh when he does. But the man has spirit, ingenuity and audacity, and I like the work he is doing.
A couple of weeks ago there was a trip to Calais planned to feed the refugees there. I mean it is all very nice to chop vegetables, in the safety of the kitchen, but in truth I didn’t actually like the idea of going to feed a whole bunch of refugees, as I had watched some unofficial Youtube videos of German villages being overridden, and in Calais there were houses being broken into and the local police where powerless to stop them. So I had my reservations about going there.
So I agreed to commit to simply going and helping to preparing the food for the trip. It was going to be packed into large thermos type containers so that when it got to Calais it would still be piping hot. The morning started early, at 4:00am in order for the food to be ready and reach Calais by midday. That was our plan anyhow.
So as I was chopping away, I surprisingly saw a familiar face by the name of Sanjay come through the kitchen door, he was someone who I had known since I was a teenager as he used to arrange demonstrations in community gatherings whereby he would break bricks on his back and break bricks on other people’s backs. He used to be a practitioner of the art of Kateda, a Martial Art stemming from Indonesia. This had stuck in my mind having been to Indonesia several times.
He had come for two reason one was to do his weekly drop off of vegetables and the other was to go on the trip to Calais. Unfortunately for him the van could only accommodate three people and it was already full. So Parasurama suggested perhaps Sanjay could take his car and ask the other vegetable choppers to come.
Spookily, I discovered I had my passport in my pocket, I don’t usually walk around with my passport in my pocket. But had done on this occasion, as I was supposed to see the bank manager about opening a new company account.
So it looked like I was supposed to go on a spontaneous trip to Calais, like it or not. In the end there ended up being four of us on the trip in Sanjay’s car, along with the three in Parasurama’s car. Two of whom also decided to come along when the trip was confirmed, neither of whom had any intention of coming earlier in the morning.
We drove to Dover and then took the ferry to Calais, the first thing when we arrived which struck me was that the port looked like a high detention concentration camp, there were double fences and barbed wire everywhere.
When we went into the town it looked pleasant enough, lawns mowed well, but eerily quiet.
We drove around for about half an hour to finally arrive at the camp, there were no signs of any refugees anywhere, that was until we got to what seemed the industrial area of the town, and then we saw them, walking down the road, from the approach to the camp of refugees.
A couple of weeks’ prior, half the camp had been bulldozed and burnt, in order to concentrate the refugees into an even tighter space.
The entrance was guarded by Police, dressed in black and armed. The place looked like what I would describe as a shanty town, something you would see regularly in developing countries. The roofs and construction was from makeshift materials, wood, corrugated sheets, and tarpaulin type material. Parasurama had brought his batmobile, which was a van which seemed to me to have everything in there. He also brought a trailer which contained lots of pieces of wood, broken pallets and other random left over construction bits.
We parked our car well outside the camp and walked in with the van, going deeper into the shanty town. We didn’t really know what to expect. We stopped momentarily to adjust the trailer which carried the wood. As soon as we did the trailer started to get raided, people came from nowhere and started helping themselves.
As the trailer was open from all four sides there was nought we could do to control the situation. It seemed a few stronger leaders helped themselves to all the wood. I didn’t fancy a piece of wood on the back of my head and therefore let them help themselves to the loot. This was a need identified by Parasurama from his last visit. In the cold weather and at night they need wood for fuel, as well as for construction and repairs to their makeshift homes.
After the trailer had been raided and was empty we decided to park up and then start serving food. Even before we got a chance to set up the van was swamped. We foolishly decided to serve from both sides of the van, from the back and the side through the sliding door.
The van was crowded almost instantly, like bees to honey. They were pushy and uncontrolled, and aggressive. No queues were formed just a rush and push to the front, with the strongest ones getting to the front.
They were also surprisingly choosy, not wanting the hot food but trying to make a grab for the fruit which was inside of the van. I assume this was because they wanted less perishable food which be kept and traded. It got scary at times.
There were Afghanis, Bangladeshis, Sudanese, Pakistanis and Somalians, but not many Syrians which from what I understand was where the bulk of the refugees were supposed to be coming from. They were surprisingly absent from the crowd.
As the crowd continued to get more aggressive and unruly we took the decision wisely to stop the distribution and shut both doors to the rear and the side and move out of that patch with food still remaining.
The new plan was to go out to the entrance where we would not be so packed from all sides, and where there was some police presence and start the distribution off from there by opening only the side door. This time there were three of us just on crowd control.
Here we were able to maintain orderly lines, and finish the rest of the hot meals off in a saner way. Having emptied the van fully we were ready to leave.
For me it was a great way to spend the weekend and an amazing experience. I would encourage the readers, if inspired to do so, to sponsor the work that this great man does, either by sponsoring the daily meals for the homeless here in London or sponsoring other projects like Calais. If you wish to make a donation to this worthy, grass roots cause please visit https://www.justgiving.com/foodforalluk.
Matchless Gifts
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