Grey Cucumbers and Good Intentions

Today I had volunteered to help pack school supplies like pencil sharpeners and snacks into backpacks at a Berlin charitable organization, but even more volunteers showed up than expected and the organization needed people to sort the fruit and vegetable donations that rapidly rot in the summer heat. So instead I wandered off to the other side of the great hall in the Berliner Großmarkt, at the edge of a shipping canal, in the Wedding district.

*

First, after stepping out at the Beusselstraße S-Bahn station and climbing into the urban landscape, I had arrived at the great hall by walking down a narrow entrance, past a now-disused porter's gatehouse, alongside trucks with Netherlands license plates, through the charitable organization's vans and up a staircase and through one of the many berths with blinds acting as a door, before following the arrows to the volunteer assembly station.

There we were asked to write our name, address, telephone number, and email in a form. We were also asked to sign our names to a promise not to eat or take home any food that we'd sort. And we were directed to switch out our street shoes for proper safety shoes, which were made available with a change of clean socks in a nook with a kitchen and washrooms leading off it.

The highlights of the safety instructions were probably
1. that we were not allowed to sort anything if we were drunk, and
2. if we had an accident traveling to or from the charitable organization's location, we were covered by the organization's insurance.

Two cameramen from the local Berlin and Brandenburg TV station were in the hall, too, which made me antsy as a camera-shy private citizen but also greatly fascinated me as an amateur journalist.

But the men were there to film the school supply packing.

Since I wandered off to the food packing area, the 'fifteen seconds of fame' that the charitable organization's volunteer coordinators jokingly promised us were no longer likely for me.

*

So in sorting the fruit and vegetable donations, which are picked up by the organization's vans from grocery stores around Berlin, we worked with plastic crates (the German technical term is Europaletten, I think).

These crates held the produce that was sometimes not, sometimes partly, and sometimes all rotting, and all jumbled together. We chose one crate at a time, carried it over to a sorting table, then began throwing away what had gone bad and sorting into clean crates what was still good. A watermelon, tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, onions, avocados, bell peppers, spicy peppers, lemons, oranges, carrots with and without greens, potatoes, apricots, cauliflower, broccoli, red currants, blueberries, green onions, pak choy, plums, two daikon radishes, regular radishes, watercress, coriander leaf, and chives all ended up on my table.

It was by turns incredibly disgusting work — ash-grey cucumbers and a mushy brown broth of decomposed watercress were likely my least attractive finds — and at other times quite agreeable. Oldies were playing on the radio, until 3 or 4 hours in when the rest of the school supply packing party joined us and the music was turned off, presumably so they could hear the volunteer coordinator's instructions.

The safety shoes were comfortable, and it was only as I entered the U-Bahn in my regular street shoes after 7 p.m. that the soles of my feet began aching.

To be pragmatic, I'm not sure that my volunteering really helped, except to boost the morale of the people at the organization. I was only one person and didn't put much of a dent in the piles of produce; part of the produce I sorted might still go bad before anyone gets a chance to eat it; and a lot of food and other resources will still go to waste. (We had to be conservative in deciding what to keep, because it was possible that the fruits and vegetables wouldn't reach a consumer for another day or two.)

Not to mention that I went through 2 or 3 pairs of rubber gloves because (for example) I didn't want slimy decomposed radish leaf to travel to the pristine apricots I was sorting next.

Besides I took a bottle of water from the supply that we were allowed to take. So to be strict I'd need to deduct the negative environmental impact of bottled water from the positive environmental impact of saving produce that might be thrown out...

But tomorrow I'll return as promised, and we'll see if I feel more useful then.

***

Fortunately my other 'world-saving' enterprise of the past month has been more rewarding.

I've watered three trees near the apartment, a process that takes at least 2-3 hours at a time if done properly. I haul the water in a bucket, using the undrinkable water from a late-19th or early-20th-century street pump so that I don't waste the city drinking water.

But... Now I might not need to make the effort any more: it's been raining a lot. My aching tricep muscles and I are glad if Mother Nature is the one transporting the water, not me.