Two Encounters With Strangers
This month has been the one for Canadians. We have a group here this week from Windsor, Ontario. we have several policemen amongst them. They have brought unintended hilarity and pathos to our camp.
One of elderly people whose home we are working on (the one who couldn’t afford the fee to cut the gas off and on), has an antipathy towards the police and has been quite blunt with her assessments. She has yet to discover that a majority of the people working on her house this week are police.
Our volunteers have seen her brightened markedly in their presence as the shade of loneliness and despair is brushed aside, if only for a few days. She has taken one of the women frog and lizard hunting in the back yard today. The volunteers are far more relieved by her transformation into an interacting person with a hint of joy in her voice to worry much about her opinion of police. Our crew has a close affection for her and are admirably good sports about her negative commentary. Tomorrow or Thursday when they finish her home, they are going to surprise her with their true identity.
Will she laugh with them? I think so.
One of the guys went on a donut and coffee run for his crew early this morning. He had his hands full with donut holes and several cups of coffee. One of the young employees, a woman in her late twenties perhaps, offered to carry the donuts to the car. Of course he said no, it was no problem, but he said why not come out and enjoy the sunshine (We had a heavy frost this morning.)
She did. When she saw the magnetic sign on his car “Presbyterian Disaster Assistance” one thing led to another as she found out what he was doing in Gulfport. She started talking about her situation.
She has two young children and it doesn’t appear there is a man in their life to help out. She lives in a FEMA trailer but the officials are pressing her to move out into permanent housing by the end of the year. The officials found an apartment for her, it rents for only $1,000/month. She makes $7/hr.
She hadn’t heard of PDA but asked a lot of questions. After the volunteer returned to the work site he realized how blind he had been (Oh, Isaiah!). This might have been the opportunity their group was hoping to find, someone very needy to help. He was full of remorse and talked to our construction site manager who agreed to take an application form over to the donut shop later in the day.
When the site manager went in to the donut shop late in the afternoon and asked around, one of the other employees said she was not there. She was the one that was fired this afternoon.
Will we find her? I hope so.
No comments:
Post a Comment