Life goes on.

This is a story that starts off on a whim. It's been three years since I have done any volunteer work of substance. Although I helped train a member of the Special Olympics last year, it really wasn't anything of any great substance. So when John asked who wanted to go to Flint, MI to meet do a service project I jumped at the chance. We left Minnesota at 4:30 in the morning. We drove straight through to Flint arriving at 7 pm. We had to wait two hours for the guys from VT to arrive. It was good to meet six other men from across the country who share our desire to help the less fortunate. We told Tim the guy from VT who was coordinating the entire project that we wanted to be outside. He assigned a team of five of us to go to the shelter. Upon arriving we met Gary. The shelter was the size of a small house and he informed us that sixty five people call sleep there every night. Our project for the day was to expand their garden and move the grass to an area where they wanted to create a playground for the children. We spent the next six hours moving the lawn for them by hand.

It's hard to describe the poverty level in Flint, Mi to other college kids in Central Minnesota. Most of them have no idea what it's like to go without, or to have to live in a condemned structure. Even after spending three months in the lower 9th ward in New Orleans it was a shock to come back to a place where I didn't have to sleep in a room with fifty other people. The concept of privacy had become foreign to me and I was used to dealing with a crisis everyday. It never occurred to me though that people would live in those kinds of conditions without some disaster. In Flint we saw homes that should have been condemned. Houses boarded up and other properties that used a tarp as s roof... Previously I hadn't thought of people living int hose kinds of conditions outside of some form of disaster area. I didn't believe that the standard of living had that much disparity in America. Let alone from Minnesota to MI. I know that now, and that's pretty special to me.

On another note that's special men from three different states came together to work on various projects. The only thing that tied us together at the start of the day was three letters and the guiding principals behind the fraternity that each of us are a part of.

I wish that I cold do more, in the future I will.


J