Food bank aids all families
December 21, 2011
By Sebastian Moraga
It feeds your tummy, your family and your soul.
The family of 17-year-old Jaykrishna Dave gets its food from the Mount Si Helping Hand Food Bank.
For religious reasons, the biweekly haul is mostly veggies, no meat.
For sentimental reasons, the biweekly haul is mostly fond memories, no regrets, in Jaykrishna’s mind.
As a member of Mount Si High School’s Key Club, Jaykrishna volunteered for almost a year at the food bank.
“If you are going to take something,” Jaykrishna said, “you have got to give something, too.”
A native of India, Jaykrishna arrived with his family to Snoqualmie in July 2008, before moving to North Bend in February 2009. Before long, the food bank filled a vital need in his family’s diet.
“There’s a Indian grocery store in Bellevue,” said Janardan Dave (pronounced Dah-VAY), Jaykrishna’s dad. “But it’s too long of a distance.”
Instead, the family stocks up on veggies and some dessert at the little warehouse tucked between a church and the library in downtown North Bend.
“It’s been very good, very good,” Janardan said. “Good variety, fresh variety.”
Janardan speaks in clipped sentences, perhaps fearful of making a mistake in the American English he said he still does not master.
“We speak British English,” he said of himself and his wife. “Ninety percent of what we hear, we can understand.”
Veronica Quiroz does not speak English.
A North Bend resident for the past seven years, one of the things the Mexico-born Quiroz appreciates the most about the food bank is that language is not a barrier.
“You put your name in and they find you in the computer,” she said in Spanish. “They just give you a little square, pink or yellow.”
Quiroz, mother of two, gets the yellow square, meant for a four-person family. After that she gets her food.
“The children like the fruit,” she said. “So I get them the fruit.”
Her oldest child is a 5-year-old girl. Her youngest is a 2-month-old boy. Once her boy arrived, the food bank stepped up, Quiroz, said.
“Diapers, Gerber, milk,” she said. “They found many ways to help. I don’t know what I would do if it closed.”
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