a lesson in poverty.

I spent my weekend at a sort of Catholic center in Camden, NJ this past weekend. Before going, I thought I would simply be staying in this place, not having any real interaction with the people there aside from eating and asking them where to find forks and things of the like. I was sorely mistaken and discovered I was not in Camden to serve those less privileged than I; it seemed that I was actually brought there to learn that the only real way to help save the poor is through Catholicism. If this were true, the poor people who showed up to mass this morning wouldn't need half the services that the government has to provide. 

I knew little about Camden before going there. I knew it was in Jersey and that it was a really terrible neighborhood, especially because everyone in my life told me they hoped I would come home alive. I picked this trip because I wanted to go away for a weekend and do something useful and helpful for someone else. Instead, I was, in a very strange way, being forced to live in the shoes of the people I was helping. The program and the idea behind it are intriguing. You go to Camden to this center and you do service, but while doing the service you are pretending that you are on "welfare" and are only able to eat a certain amount of food. Statistics show that the government provides a family of 4 with an average of $12 per day in foodstamps, etc. So I had about $3 worth of food for me. I ate pb&j and buttered pasta, along with some dry cereal. Being that I was not prepared for any of this and thought I was simply being housed by the Romero center, I was angry and resorted to eating the Kashi bar in my bag. I was starving, getting a headache, and needed to make sure I got out of Philadelphia alive. The system as it stands does not work. Welfare helps people to the extent that it gets food in their stomachs but fails to consider that basic nutrients can not be found in products that would meet a $12 per day budget. This bothered me immensely. 

For my service, which was less than 4 hours long, which frustrated me the most, I worked in a warehouse called Share, a program that puts together low-cost food for the poor or lower classes. I helped organize canned food upon the shelves, as well as assemble boxes of food meant to last a month. The amount of food in these boxes would not last half the people I knew a month, especially not houses with children. Brand names I've never heard of, canned beef, and tomato juice, all supposed to be eaten and last over a month. Simply unrealistic, unheard of, and extremely disheartening. In a country that has so much, it is unfathomable to picture that so many people in the areas of Camden and South Philadelphia have so little. I hoped I would have been able to do more, work for longer hours, or gone to several different work sites. 

I suppose what I realize after coming home is that I am a much smaller person than I originally thought. I do not make a difference for these people or for any of the people that I help in my various community service activities. Perhaps I can brighten a child's day, but that is just one day, and there is no lasting effect. I can pack a box to feed a family for a month but I cannot break their poverty cycle or help them find work or cheaper housing. I cannot rebuild the city of Camden and solve its deep rooted problems, or rid it of the animosity from neighboring towns. I cannot save a prostitute or a drug addict from their self-deprecating lifestyles. I find this heart-wrenching and overwhelmingly distressing. 

My call in life is not to be a Catholic and go on mission trips to learn that God loves the poor and that it is humanity's fault that people mistreat other members of their species. My call in life is to make sure this doesn't happen to me. When I left Camden, I cried. I cried because there was nothing I could do. There was nothing any one person could truly do. No matter how much information is sent out about Camden, or how many students make a trip similar to mine, the problems will still exist and that kills me. To live in the greatest country on earth and see what I would imagine to have seen in a third world country is disheartening. Where are the funds going? Why are their children living on the streets and playing in parks with needles? Why was I sheltered from all of this for so long, locked away in my little suburban town? 

I cannot say I have not felt some of the pains that these people have; worrying about food being on a table, worrying about the electricity being on, worrying about having to move and having to abandon the people I love. 

I suppose what hurts me most is the fact that this can happen to anyone. I just fear it will be me.