THE LAST SUPPER
Joanna Wane on the demise of Tuesday Night Community Kai, where invisible people found a meal
On the Tuesday before Christmas, tables and chairs were set out in the square. For once, it didn’t rain. Crammed into the small kitchen at Auckland’s Ellen Melville Centre, a team of volunteers wore Santa hats and reindeer antlers and Christmas tree earrings with flashing lights.
Outside, a queue stretched down the side of the building to where the Orange Sky mobile laundry van had hooked up to the water supply, providing free hot showers and clean clothes. Everyday luxuries most of us take for granted.
At 6pm, the line fell silent for a karakia and then more than 120 guests filed past for service at Tuesday Night Community Kai. “Thank you, sister,” a young man said, ducking his head shyly as we loaded plates with food that had been donated, scrounged or bought from the communal kitty. “Appreciate it.”
They’d come for a hot meal, as they did every week — some so ravenous they were asking for seconds before we’d worked our way through the line. But it was a different kind of warmth that kept drawing them back to this windswept inner-city square where, for an hour or two, they were treated with dignity by people who met their eyes with a smile.
Jamie joined Tuesday Night Community Kai (TNCK) in central Auckland as a volunteer two and a half years ago, keeping it going when the previous organisers moved on. “Some of the bros scared the bejesus out of me in those first few months,” she says, with a laugh. “Now they’re the ones I worry about, whether they’re doing okay. It’s getting past that gruffness, when they drop their guard and realise you’re not there to let them down, like so many other people have.”
Pugzy, Kevan, Patchy, Cookie, Rex, Smiley, Shawn, Ashley, Waka, Sefton, Jason, Peachy, Skatey, PC … It’s not an exaggeration to say that they love her, these men and a few women whose lives took a wrong turn somewhere and left them on the street or in subsistence housing, often battling addiction and other demons. Two-thirds of people experiencing homelessness have mental disorders, with a significantly higher prevalence among men.
Jamie had wanted to make it special on the night it all ended, too, after her contract ran out with Auckland Council in late March, but the tables had been taken away by then. “I was a bit gutted because it’s all about community,” she says. “We might not think much of sitting together at a table, but a lot of these guys do. That’s what they crave, just to be part of something.”
She wasn’t the only person fighting back tears as they thanked her with cards and flowers, bars of chocolate and a folder of eloquent poems about life on the fringes, handwritten in a beautiful swirling script. “Kindness with food, love and a passion,” one of them wrote. “Thank you from we in need of a good feed. Much love.”
A charity organisation with no funding or church affiliation, TNCK relied purely on Jamie’s big heart and sense of social justice, supported by some generous donors and a small roster of volunteers. Lorri, a central-city local who’s confined to a wheelchair, supplied all the vegetarian meals each week.
The council didn’t charge a hireage fee for the centre, so good on them for that. But apparently some of the local residents and businesses had complained, although it’s a public space and was always left tidy. Kevin Marriott, the council’s head of community development, didn’t directly address questions about that. “The community programmes at the Ellen Melville Centre are continuously reviewed to meet the changing needs of Aucklanders,” he responded via email.
Two other meal services still operate from the centre, on Wednesday and Sunday nights. Directly opposite, The Metropolis towers over the square — a magnificent 40-storey skyscraper that wouldn’t look out of place on the Chicago city skyline. Late last year, one of the upper penthouse apartments went on the market for $7 million.
Jamie hasn’t given up hope of finding an alternative venue and perhaps some regular funding so it’s not such a constant, desperate scrabble. “The system is broken. It’s very, very, very broken,” she says.
“What makes it worth it are those little moments with people, making sure they feel acknowledged when they live in a world where they’re not. That’s what fills my cup.”