My body is aching but my heart is full. We helped many people today and that is humbling. Time for a rest and back to it again tomorrow.
Day 3
Today has been the hardest. We went in this morning and cleaned and organised the big room as we expected. Throughout the day we told people to come back at 2pm.
At 2pm we had the biggest queue that we had ever had with weary, tired people just wanting somewhere to rest their heads. We gave out a few beds, when a woman appeared and told us that the government has said this room cannot open today till 8pm. These people need to get on busses and leave. It absolutely broke our hearts to turn these people away. A smile did not cut it!
We did lots of apologising and had to send people away. We did our best to find people beds in other places but this wasn't enough.
We took five and then got back to it.
I helped to reorganise the mother and baby room and we have 120 beds in there for mums with under 3s. When I left there were only 3 empty beds.
After a 14 hour shift we are done for the day. To our bed to rest and then back to it again tomorrow.
Day 4
We went shopping in the morning for face paint and makeup which is used at a station in the centre to entertain the children and teenagers. However these were very hard to find so we bought sanitary products and bubbles instead.
Upon returning to the centre I ended up in the mother and baby room again where I might have gotten into a bit of trouble due to a decision that I made. I refused to separate a 15 year old boy from his mum and baby brother and gave them a bed in the room. I was told if anyone complained I'd have to deal with it. Noone did :) There was no way that due to the boys height, he was quite tall, that I would separate him from his mother. She was clearly exhausted and just needed to rest.
While in the room a young mother asked me to find a way to get her to a hostel that she had a room for one week in. I found a driver, Dan a teacher from London, for two young mums and their babies to go to a hostel 2 hours away and part of our donated funds paid for the fuel to get them there. They have gone to a lovely place with other mums and babies, they were very grateful.
Dan is a volunteer like me who wanted to make a difference so booked a flight and here he was taking two small separated families to safety and at least a week of peace.