My arrival at Milaby’s house was announced by 4 year old Blanca, standing in a towel, declaring, “Bañame Nina” (Bathe me Nina!). At the age of four she speaks with authority. Blanca led me to the water and I filled the bucket. Then she stood stoic, in a way I’ve never seen a 4 year old and instructed me to pour the water over her head. As the cold water covered her, there was no squirming, shout or whine. There was a strange sense of honor in bathing her that I don’t know how to explain or describe. When she announced that her bath was finished, I wrapped her in the towel and picked her up in my arms and she became the tiny, little Blanca who I feed, who wants to be held. Blanca’s family has become a part of me.

I came to know this family through the Comedor Infantil Pasionista, a free lunch program in the poorest neighborhood in Talanga, which we opened this past November. Blanca and her 9 year old brother are but 2 of the 24 children who come to eat every Monday through Friday. On those days you will also find several of the mothers, who come to cook, clean and care for the children.

Though there is no typical Comedor day, one might look like this: We volunteers walk to the Nueva San Diego neighborhood, better known as Pantanol (“Swamp”), on the other side of town around 10 am to open the Comedor. If Marlin isn’t already there, she soon arrives, opens the kitchen and fires up the wood burning stove. As the fire gets going, two mothers show up and prepare vegetables, make juice and clean the floor and tables.

While the Mothers work in the small kitchen, the children delve into the coloring books, jump ropes, play dough and soccer balls. The noise level steadily grows until someone pokes their head out of the kitchen and declares the food ready. At this moment, the chaos peaks, as everyone scrambles to clean up, call the kids from the soccer field across the street, and have them all standing quietly in a circle. Grace is said, a line forms for hand washing and then there is a miraculous moment of silence only to be broken by spilled juice, requests for second helpings and loud declarations of “I’m finished”. The mothers clean up, children fly out the door, the refrigerator is checked for tomorrow’s supplies and the whirlwind 3 hours of Comedor are over, until the next day.

As we leave Comedor, we run into the crumbling shell of a building next door that was intended to be a community center. Empty and abandoned, it seems to sadly represent many people’s sentiments for Nueva San Diego. And yet it is the Comedor that has now become the community center. Inside there are reading classes for illiterate moms and children who aren’t in school, a medical brigade offers check-ups and medicine to people with little or no access to health care, Christmas parties, birthday parties and farewell parties all take place here.

Most importantly, Comedor is an arena for building relationships and here the people embrace us and take us in as their own. They invite us into their homes, tell us their stories and listen to ours. They laugh, dance, cry, play and work with us. Like Blanca, they teach us and guide us. It was in the opening of the doors of Comedor that the doors of Nueva San Diego were opened to us.

Joanine (Nina) Carey is serving in Jamaica with Passionist Volunteers International.

Watch a video about the Comedor at: http://www.thepassionists.org/Lunch.html

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