WCK

Last week I worked at an intake facility for Ukrainian refugees in Barcelona. I volunteered with a company called World Central Kitchen. It’s a non-profit that deploys needed food and water to disaster stricken areas of the world. All they need is a disaster, natural or manmade, and they show up with enough food to feed the responders and the victims. They’ve been around for about 10 years and have served tens of millions of meals. I found it when I googled “chefs without borders” and upon landing on their landing page I recalled hearing about it and its founder Chef Jose Andres a native spaniard. There were opportunities in Barcelona so I signed up. I had no idea what to expect but I knew it would be good for my soul and I had some time to kill.

Though I didn’t know what’d be doing, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to cook a thousand meals in a big cauldron over an open flame, the sky peppered with helicopters making that chchchchchchch noise while ferrying the tragically injured to a MASH unit away from the frontlines. No, nothing that intense…I mean it’s Barcelona for cryin’ out loud. Though I have found a direct correlation between expectations and disappointment, I was nonetheless giddy with anticipation.

Chef Jose Andres cooking for American citizens in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

Luckily the day began with the most arduous, time consuming, and frustrating task of the entire experience….finding the fuckin’ place. It was part of a convention complex adjacent to the Plaza D’Espana. There were several big buildings on either side of a not insignificant boulevard with no median. Automobile access was blocked and I thought perhaps dignitaries would arrive soon but I later learned it was for the Pride Festival over the weekend. The Uber driver dropped me off as best he could but nowhere close to the venue and with no directions of its exact location.

This street was empty on Monday. On Saturday it was filled with tents and vendors for the upcoming Pride concert.

I finally found the correct pavilion; a 50,000 square foot convention hall that was sectioned off with stantions and curtains. I quickly inferred that each section was for a different social service available to the refugees, medicine, living quarters, job placement and etc. I was directed to a food truck at the back end of the hall. “OK, I get it.” I thought, “our job is to feed the refugees and the folks working here.” I found Fernando who was the resident WCK employee and who managed, the truck, the volunteer, and the logistics of getting the food onsite. He gave me a T-shirt and directed me to some cases containing boquadillos, the quintessential tapas sandwich. I sorted the sandwiches from ham and cheese to only cheese and set up a modest buffet lunch.

Beds set up for the refugees. Luckily, they were empty....

And that was it. I stood in the truck made instant coffee and answered questions. “No senor, esta es jambon con quesa y esta es solo queso” Truth be told, there were more, way more, relief workers than refugees. After the lunch rush of about 8 people, Fernando and I stepped outside for a break. We chatted a bit. He has been with WCK for about 4 years and lives in Seville. He was at the La Palma earthquake site for 6 months. As we sipped our coffee and pulled on our cigarettes, he shared that this particular deployment was particularly difficult. His family would holiday on the Canary Islands when he was a little boy and witnessing first hand the destruction of meaningful haunts hurt, deep.

Fernando and me

When we reentered the building, there was a line of folks at the reception desk. They were smartly dressed, most were on their phones and more than several were wearing apple watches. They all had roller suitcases and it looked like a typical line of tourists waiting to check into a hotel. But these weren't tourists, this wasn’t a hotel and they were not on holiday. They were refugees, this was an intake center, and they were on the first stop of a forced sojourn that had no end in site, much less a final destination. These were refugees? There were no distended bellies like the starving kids in Biafra nor were there any bulging cardboard boxes tied up with twine. Nope. At first glance there was nothing about these global citizens indicating their recent arrival smack-dab in the middle of a new diaspora.

Thursday's Lunch-Spaghetti Bolognese

Though I was hoping for more action and activity, I had a new purpose, namely do anything I could do to reap a smile, ease even a smidgen of burden or just listen. I met Luka and Angelina who were both finishing dental school when they fled Odessa leaving everything they owned behind. They are engaged, in their mid-twenties, and only a couple of months ago, they were looking forward to a beautiful wedding, setting up their own dental practice, and living happily ever after. There was Misha a feisty 6 year old boy who came up to me, grabbed my hand and started bringing me somewhere. At the very moment I started to connect with this friendly youngster, he showed me where Fernando had stashed the chocolate. And demanded some. Loudly. Like at the top of lungs. His dad rushed over and traded his apologies to me with admonishing Misha. We spoke for a while and we chatted. He was a lawyer from eastern Ukraine; also left everything behind. A lawyer. Everyone reading this knows at least one lawyer and at least one dentist; imagine those people frantically stuffing their suitcases with only the most necessary clothes and anything else they cannot live without. Now, imagine it's you. No really, don't gloss over this; seriously, picture yourself.

Comfort Dog

Misha eating some chocolate

I guess the highlight of my first day was when I was leaving. I was walking out the door and I saw a woman, had to be at least 80. She was sitting on a bench, her head covered in a scarf sort of deal, and she was tired; the fatigue was dripping off her face. I scanned her entourage and recognized a couple of the women for whom I had made coffee during my shift. She had probably been enjoying her last months on the planet after a lifetime of toil eking out a less than modest existence, but an existence nonetheless. I envision she lived her entire life in one of those Cold War housing projects, the epitome of Utilitarian Design, which is an oxymoron. Two small bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen barely big enough to hold a stove and tiny eating table covered with one of those plastic table cloth things and a den. She’s sitting on her sofa one night, watching the latest episode of The Ukraine’s Got Talent, and boom a bulletin screams across the screen that her country has been invaded and she needs to pack a lifetime of memories and gewgaws into one roller board.

The good news, she had her dog. It was a toy, looked Pomeranian-ish, white fur and a long pointy nose. He was perched on a little doggie bed on her lap. I’d passed this woman several times during my shift, as she wasn’t too far from the mens' room. Given that I hit the trifecta of old, Jewish, and full of fiber, trust me, I saw her several times. But I didn’t notice the dog. I said “whadda cute pupper wupper widdo dawgie loggie snoggie who ate a froggy” under my breath in my best dog-talk as I breezed my way out the door. I hadn't gone more than 5 paces when it struck me. Sometimes in life the most profound events brush by us like a stranger in the crowd. This was one of those moments but thankfully I had the mindfulness to pause. I knew what I had to do and it was so easy, so simple, so seemingly insignificant, and involved a marginal 3 minutes of my life. I did a 180, walked back into the convention hall, passed the matriarch of the recently deposited Ukrainian refugees and felt the weight of her glare. I found Fernando and asked, “Nosotras tenemos comida para perros?” He says “si” but in that long drawn out Catalan way when you have to reach into the inner folds of your diaphragm to grab the really deep stuff and says with a sing-songy baritone, lisp “theeee” and shows me a bag of dog food. We get a salad bowl and put some food in it and I found a dish for water. I triumphantly marched toward the family, and I caught the woman's eye. I could see her watching me and trying to figure out what I was carrying and as I inched closer her eyes widened just a bit and her cheeks started to crack a smile…she knew what was afoot. When I reached her, the entire family smiled in unison, patted the lil' pooch on the head and said a bunch of stuff in Ukrainian. And yes, one lonely tear was streaming down her face. I had several.