Supplies for Shabbat

The last time we were stuck in shelters for a long time was operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996 when the previous Mayor was in office. Then we received a leaflet at our door detailing the various activities available and even though the bombing was less constant, with army authorised ‘shopping breaks’, every Friday they came round with a box of rations including fruit and vegetables so people would have supplies for Shabbat.

On Wednesday we visited my parents so the children could say goodbye to their grandmother before she went to England. My Dad mentioned that another pick-up full of food packages had gone past.

Although the TV is always informing us that so and so has donated such and such to the residents of the North so far we have received nothing. And that didn’t seem right.

My parents’ neighbour works for the municipality and had mentioned that he was delivering donated supplies to various addresses. He was surprised that my parents, being pensioners, haven’t received anything but kindly dropped off the occasional leftover items.

I phoned up the town hall and asked why neither my parents nor I had been informed of what was available both in the form of supplies and activities. After quite a heated exchange the crux of the official’s argument was that they felt there was no need to inform residents of what was available, we would become aware by word of mouth and then phone the town hall to ask.

I pointed out that in the present situation there wasn’t must socialising and I could either stand out among the katuyshas to check on what my neighbours were receiving or I could phone the town hall every hour. Would he like me to phone the Town Hall every hour?

Naturally he didn’t like that idea and I pointed out that system of ‘by word of mouth’ meant that only people connected to, or neighbours to, people working for the municipality would hear what was available which was not an equitable way of distributing items that had been donated to all of the people still living in Shlomi.

I added that in such a small town with about 50% of the residents ‘gone south’ it wouldn’t be an impossible task to phone round to each house to check who was still at home so they could make efficient deliveries.

After my rant the official gave some bluster about me needing to be signed up even though I pointed out we were already signed up, from the trip to the water park. He said they would phone me.

Surprise, surprise but come 12:30 pm Friday and no one had called me. I heard one of my neighbours outside complaining that something ‘Just wasn’t right!’ It seems another pick-up had gone past laden with food packages but had delivered to no one in our road, even though the house opposite are government housing with many pensioners, new immigrants and one parent families.

At this point my husband arrived home from work and in order to prevent a meltdown, mine, I asked him to phone the town hall to find out what was going on. He was answered by a nice lady I know from the children’s after-school activities. She said we were definitely on the list so there must have been some mix up. She would sort it out and call back.

I also mentioned that many people were upset at the way the distribution was being handled and any perceived lack of fairness would not sit well with donors.

My Dad didn’t receive a call either. When he phoned to check they confirmed he was on the list but my Dad is not quite as proactive so he didn’t charge down to the town hall and despite their assurances nothing was delivered to him.

A few minutes afterwards they called back to say they had a food coupon for us, that could be redeemed at the local supermarket, but we would have to pick it up immediately. My husband jumped in the car.

When he got home he had the coupons as well as several boxes of supplies plus bottled water (I have never drunk so much bottled water in my life!)

He reported that the emergency centre was a chaos of activity with just about everybody who worked for the municipality manning the phones, including the mayor himself, in an effort to get the donations distributed before Shabbat. Seems they had finally realised that the ‘word of mouth’ system just wasn’t going to work and lack of organisation rather than nefarious intent was the cause of the distribution problems.

My husband is always the diplomat and went to personally thank the mayor for his efforts of those of the town hall staff.

ES