This year I also started volunteering regularly (another part of the turning 30 and doing more meaningful things with my life). I joined Greater DC Cares, which disseminates volunteers to places that need them. I started off trying out a few different types of volunteer work including sending books to prisoners, packing food for the terminally ill, yard work and feeding the homeless.

I finally settled on volunteering with a program called Loaves and Fishes, which operates out of a church in Northwest DC. Even though it’s a little out of the way for me (I have to switch trains), I like how it’s on a weekend and not super early in the morning and I guess I like that they know me there now and I get friendly hugs when I arrive. I know exactly what to do when I get there and there’s always lots to do once service begins, from plating to serving to clean-up. The kitchen and dining room get loud and exciting and I can’t explain why I find it all fun but I do!

All the food is made from scratch at the kitchen and served until every bit is gone. At the end of it all, a few hundred hungry people are sent off with full bellies and sometimes a bag of seconds. And I don’t think they’re the only ones getting immediate gratification from the service every weekend.

Ronald McDonald has a giant house in DC. It’s got a game room in the basement, a living area with a tv on every floor (I think it’s about three stories tall), a kitchen with both an electric and a gas stove, and an elevator! You don’t have to be rich to live there, just be from out of town and have a sick kid in an area hospital.

I know this because I was there some weekends ago, thinking I was going to help clean up a needy family’s yard. But when I arrived and realized this house,already spick and span, was the assignment, I was disappointed. The weird thing about volunteering is you want to do as many chores as you possibly can, when in your own home you’d avoid them like you would worms frying on a sidewalk on a sunny day.

There were so many volunteers that day that the entire job was done in 45 minutes when we’d all alloted 3 hours for it. Still, the house with comfy couches, pillows all in order, colourful building blocks in their rightful boxes, giant soft toys with big smiles on their faces, all looked so sad.

Maybe it’s because on most days, the building and all its luxuries can barely bring any comfort to the parents who sit around sickly, waiting on news about their ill children. It’s one house I’d never want to live in.

I went to an orientation with Greater DC Cares, a non-profit group that basically galvanises volunteers to a more effective way of reaching out to the DC community. There are different levels of commitment and also leadership training. I decided to take it one small step at a time and so picked something off their monthly calendar called Books to Prisons to do one night.

A small group of maybe 10 of us gathered in the basement of a church where there was a mini library of donated books. We were supposed to read letters sent by inmates to the organisation requesting books, get those books or similar ones to send and also include a letter if we could.

The idea of sharing what you felt was a great read with someone who had no other means of entertainment seemed quite cool at first. Then it became a burden when you realised this was all they were getting for maybe a couple of months and if they didn’t like it, that would really suck. But there were so many letters to answer and not a huge variety of books to pick from that you really stopped thinking about it so much.

Reading the first few letters made me choke up a little. I have never known anyone who has been to prison before and reading a personal letter saying “i am incarcerated…” is kind of shocking and sad at the same time. I didn’t think about the crime that led to this but the idea of being imprisoned, stuck in a cold hard place surrounded by strangers. It was slightly comforting though to know that some had heard of the program through another inmate, they had a friend at least.

There was also the matter of writing a letter to these strangers. What in the world do you say to someone who is stuck in prison and wants some reading material that might help them when they get out? My first letter was so incredibly idiotic. I said “It’s cool what you are doing with your time in prison.” COOL?!! UGH!! I am such an idiot. But I didn’t want to waste the limited letterheads so i moved on. It got easier as I did. I concentrated on their choice of books and apologised for not being able to get exact requests and said I hoped they liked the selection. Some of the inmates asked for tons of books but because the organisation, which is independent of Greater DC Cares, was running at a deficit and postage was their main expense, we had to try and keep the parcel weight under 2 lbs.

I also signed off each letter with only my first name. It probably would’ve been better of me to print my full name but I was paranoid too since I’m pretty sure I’m the only person with my full name. I know, there is so much inconsistency in all of that, I’m sorry.

Anyway, I went home hoping I’d at least eased someone’s boredom.