About 2 o’clock that Saturday afternoon, somebody moved across the floor at an old automobile showroom on the south side of town. She was holding up a long-sleeved, over-sized shirt. For a second she showed off how clean and new it looked to the rest of us. But then she needed our help.
“Does anybody know what this is?” she asked. “Is it a men’s shirt or what?”
“Well, what side are the buttons on?” someone else asked, knowing that men’s shirts button from right-to-left, vice versa for women’s tops. But that didn’t solve the mystery of what it was.
Then, a voice piped up from the corner: “Looks like a men’s night shirt,” he said. And because the assessment came from Ahmad Golan, we all agreed he must be right and the “nightshirt” was gently packed into cardboard box quickly filling with men’s clothing.
Saturday was the day that Ahmad’s (everybody knows him as Shah, who manages the Mac’s Milk Store in town) mission, to send everyday dry goods to those in need in Afghanistan, took an important step forward. Volunteers from across the township worked all day sorting, itemizing, folding and then packing such utilitarian items as hats, gloves, pants, shirts, jackets, socks and boots for the winter ahead.
Last winter, Shah let it be known that he wanted to gather used house wares, school supplies and clothing and somehow send the second-hand items to those in need in his former hometown, Kabul, by the following winter of 2009. He had been sending money there whenever he could spare it, but he told some of us that people “back home” desperately needed winter clothing as well as footwear and bedding to keep warm next winter. The response proved overwhelming. Before long he had filled the back of the store, his own home in town and several friends’ storage spaces. There were some cash donations as well.
That’s when Williamson’s, the local car dealer, stepped up and offered the vacant showroom as temporary storage. So, with several hundred square feet of floor space suddenly available, the trickle of donations over the spring and summer grew to a flood. And in addition to the clothing and linens he gathered, Shah also began receiving several unexpected (but equally valuable) contributions – hospital beds, wheel chairs and bicycles – all from local donors and organizations. As the donations piled up, some of us began knocking on politicians’ office doors, probing overseas travel routes of NGOs (non government organizations) and even approaching the Canadian military to help transport Shah’s mercy mission supplies to Afghanistan. Assistance was not immediately forthcoming. Our deadline to move out of the showroom was.
The job fell to Shah and his little band of volunteers. Among those most eager, willing and able to organize and help were local residents Audrey Bain and Gloria Parsons. Not only did they put the call out for volunteers, last Saturday, overnight they approached many of the local service clubs for financial assistance to help transport the goods overseas. Audrey and Gloria made representations to the clubs in person. The “Uxbridge/Kabul Friendship Fund” was born. The bank account is a long way from underwriting the rental of an ocean container and shipping it to Afghanistan, but you wouldn’t have known that last Saturday.
At the height of a gorgeous September afternoon, 15 or 20 dedicated volunteers – including other members of the Bain and Parsons family, Patti Brady, Lee Hughes, Julie Slater, Mary Dubé, Reid Irwin, Nancy Wood, Alan Mills, and several members of the Prowse family – waded into piles of green garbage bags and carefully began sorting hundreds of pounds of clothing. I know Reid Irwin and I tied shoe and boot laces for the better part of six hours and packed between 300 and 400 pairs into boxes. After a while we lost count. At one point, I looked over at one of the boxes and the volunteers were writing on the side “210 women’s tops.” And somebody said, “Well, 210-ish.”
About 5 p.m. a weary band of volunteer packers called it a day. In one workday – powered by muffins, coffee and a lot of backbreaking effort – they had packed more than half the contents of that showroom. Shah hadn’t stopped smiling all day.
“What wonderful people. All good Uxbridge neighbours who care,” he said.
Then, I suddenly realized that for him – a faithful Muslim – this was his final day of Ramadan. He had worked all day, as hard as any of us. But he hadn’t eaten or drunk a thing. He was still fasting. He had fed on the energy of goodwill from his new community and a hope that these donations will arrive in the hands of the old one.
