Soup kitchens feeding the poor

As food inflation and chronic shortages of cooking gas and petrol make daily life a battle for millions in Sri Lanka

In Pictures
By Editor_1
Conditions are grim enough that more than five million Sri Lankans have reported being forced to skip meals, according to the World Food Program (WFP)
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COLOMBO – With no fuel and no money for food, H. G. Indrani and her family of nine trudged for an hour to a community kitchen in Colombo in hopes of finding a simple vegetarian meal.

Rampant food inflation and chronic shortages of cooking gas and petrol are making daily life a battle for millions in the midst of Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.

“There is no income,” said Indrani, one of the hundreds queueing in the midday sun at a makeshift kitchen run by a church. “There is no food most of the time. We have been suffering a lot.”

Two dozen volunteers boil rice, dice onions and scrape the flesh from coconuts as they cook over open fires due to the shortage of gas in the space on the flat roof of the church near Sri Lanka’s Parliament.

“The need is so great,” said Akila Alles, the chief operating officer of the Bethany Christian Life Centre, which set up kitchens at 12 of its churches and served food to about 1,500 people each day since June.

“Inflation is so high, people can’t afford to eat. Without gas, people can’t cook, and without transport, people can’t work.”

Conditions are grim enough that more than five million Sri Lankans have reported being forced to skip meals, according to the World Food Program (WFP).

Months of anti-government protests that came to a head this month after thousands stormed government buildings, bringing down former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, have crossed religious and ethnic lines in the diverse Indian Ocean nation.

Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks have been a regular sight at protests, and communities have worked together to satisfy the growing humanitarian need.

Donations have come from as far as China and Vietnam, with a Buddhist monk dropping off a large donation of rice at the church.

“Sometimes people who come here have nothing at all,” said a volunteer cook, K. D. Irani, as he stirred a cauldron of dhal, or lentils.

“I am 66, but I have never seen a crisis like this in my life. We are doing this for the love of the people.”

 

Moses Akash De Silva prepares food inside a community kitchen at a church in Colombo
Volunteers cut vegetables to prepare food inside a community kitchen
More than five million Sri Lankans have reported being forced to skip meals so as to get by, according to the World Food Program
People eating at a community kitchen
‘Inflation is so high people can’t afford to eat. Without gas, people can’t cook, and without transport, people can’t work,’ said Akila Alles, the chief operating officer of the Bethany Christian Life Centre
People stand in a queue at a community kitchen outside a church in Colombo
A boy waits to receive food at a community kitchen

 

-aljazeera.com

-Photos – Adnan Abidi/Reuters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editor_1
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