Return of the fruit bar

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while may recall the well-organised fruit salad bar we helped with in the food tent in Krakow. Today we started a scaled down version in the refugee centre in Lviv, using donations. Along with 3 volunteers from our advanced English class, we went to local markets and bought apples, bananas, apricots and cherries, which we made up into 50 bags and distributed in 3 different locations.

We focussed mainly on children and one little girl helped to hand out the bags. We should be able to fund this for another 9 days over the next 3 weeks. It was so well received that it would be wonderful to be able to continue it. People are fed reasonably well, but the food is fairly unimaginative and doesn't include much in the way of vegetables, and no fruit that we've seen.

Along the same theme, the beginners English class compiled a shopping list and each person had to repeat all the items: " I went shopping and I bought an apple, a chicken, garlic, etc." Then they had to try to remember the list. Strangely, the one item everyone remembered was a bottle of champagne!

None of these people should be in this refugee centre - from the little girl helping to serve fruit to the elderly woman who gave me a hug. But for now it's their reality and their lives have become part of ours.

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