Feeding the Five Thousand (genuinely - and no fish)

One of the most impressive things for me about the fortnight was the organisation of the catering and accommodation. I stayed in a large warehouse (not quite the truth! - confession in accompanying blog), several miles out of the city in a commercial area - conveniently the last stop on a bus route, stopping right at our gate. On the night of the large march (12th December) we had 1100 people sleeping on pallets. 500 people had already moved on from us to a school gym that day and another warehouse type site to the north housed similar numbers to ourselves. There were kitchens at each facility, another in the city centre and one more at Christiana serving filling, wholesome soup throughout the day and usually an organic, vegan main meal as well. These kitchens provided for more people than just the few (!) who were in the large sleeping areas, for example many who participated in the Klimaforum sessions and those living in various other accommodations around the city. it was completely remarkable - well, certainly to one such as me who makes a fuss about feeding 3 people most of the time. The people's activist kitchens - Food for Action (see their website) - were all co-ordinated by a tiny (relative to the work) dedicated team from Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and UK and overall they had paid out many thousands of euros befin advance on diesel, gas, equipment and ingredients, most of which thankfully came back eventually in donations.

The free accommodation too was supported by just a few hard-working people who had hoovered up layers of dust, sorted electrics, created partitions and worked hard in just 2 weeks to create a safe space for so many tired people to come and collapse into. This made for a fantastic atmosphere - very laid back but very much looking out for eachother. Early on hundreds of people had little more than 2 flush loos between them with some dry compost loos arriving shortly after and thankfully a whole compartment of pristine toilets not long after that (things were created round us, they just manifested gently) but despite this, the politeness and kindness of most people in these fairly difficult circumstances was utterly remarkable.

Like many of us, I have a friendly Jehovah's Witness in my life. She keeps holding out that I will eventually see the light and I know how far I can tread and still keep her as a friend but I overstepped that boundary briefly in our conversation prior to me going away. I was so excited about the idea of the accommodation I called it "heaven on earth" which ofcourse is significantly outside the JW parameters of that phrase. To many of our arrivals it was far from heaven on earth with its hard floors and cold warehouse, queues for the loos and dining outdoors in the snow (some shelter) ... but to me it did still come close. That many people from many countries co-existing, looking out for eachother; the accommodation maintained and offered free to whoever just wanted to come and be part of it; people volunteering for shifts at night to look out for us (fire, security, etc) and the dream of something bigger and more enduring too. The small team who had set it up had the promise of keeping the facility up to April 2010. They have a dream to build a 'floating city' and will use the centre as their base. After their generosity and hard work it is great to think of something exciting and further reaching coming from it all so we need to 'watch their space': I'll let you know.