No Hablo Espanol

One of my regular stops is a latino community center on the southwest side of the city. It is one of those places where you can pick up a truckload of day laborers if you can pay in cash. When I serve lunch there, everyone is very appreciative, but I can't communicate with them because the ones I talked to didn't speak english, and yo no hablo espanol. I usually just smile.

This week I took some friends with me that know spanish, so when we pulled up, Kurt asked the dude out front if they wanted lunch and if there were more people inside that wanted lunch too. We ended up staying for about 30 minutes. Kurt and Emily went inside (they are both fluent) and met a bunch of the guys. I waited outside with Santos. Santos told me about his 8 boys and 1 daughter (and 2 wives). I hardly had to say a word, Santos had a lot to talk about.

I was curious to know the story on the community center. The area is heavily populated with latinos, and before the community center, they all hung out at a local liquor store. That started causing a lot of trouble for the community, so someone built the community center (I think there are some apartments above it), and people wait there to be picked up for day labor. Santos said that it helped to clean up the neighborhood.

I have worked with the latino community several times on different projects, and I always go away feeling thanked and appreciated. It is different from the feeling I get when I leave the east side location. Up there when I leave, I feel glad just to be alive. I don't know what the difference is, the circumstances are about the same, there is just so little hope on the east side. I think that is what keeps me going back. It doesn't matter how much money anyone has, if someone loses hope, they are in a bad spot. Nothing is good.

I want to be able to offer what little hope there is in knowing that there is a meal coming on Saturday. I don't know if that makes a big difference in someone's life, but from what I have observed so far, it makes some kind of difference in their day. And that is good enough for me.

On a side note, I handed out more lunches, and had more volunteers this week than I have ever had before. That was fun.