Servathon 2012: Volunteering at Anna Cooper House–SOME

This morning I volunteered at S.O.M.E.’s (So Others Might Eat) Anna Cooper House. A group of volunteers from HandsOn Greater DC Cares put together a “Healthy Lifestyles” event for the residents, which entailed making breakfast, setting up for a Zumba class and making lunch. While I loved the idea of serving a couple healthy meals to the residents, there were some debatably healthy menu items. For breakfast, I was in charge of making the smoothies and oatmeal. The oatmeal consisted of boxed individual maple and brown sugar packets, which turned out to be a huge hit with the diners. I was actually proposed to by one of the men. I can be kind of a purist, but I think we could have easily opted for old fashion oats in place of the sweetened instant version. And perhaps lost the almond coffee cake. Still, the spread was impressive: apple sauce, granola bars, chopped fruit, smoothies, oatmeal with fixings, coffee cake, and dry cereal.

For lunch, we made a batch of tuna salad, veggie burgers, simple salad with cucumbers, carrots and tomato, carrot sticks (cut out of the largest carrots I’ve ever seen), leftover fruit, etc. It was incredibly rewarding, albeit disturbing hearing some of the residents say this was the first time they’ve had fresh vegetables in a while. The residents were sweet and very thankful for us.

It made me really excited about my upcoming trip to Ghana this June. I’ll be spending the month volunteering at an orphanage and living in Edem’s house in Kpando. This is Edem:

So, there’s a very real chance that I’ll fall in love with one or more of the orphans and pull an Angelina. It’s definitely an interesting destination for the first time I leave the country, but I can’t freaking wait.