stuff.co.nz report
Tāmaki Makaurau’s Sikh community is cooking and delivering thousands of meals to flood-stricken Aucklanders, but they are not in crisis-response mode.
For Sikhs, sharing and charity are core principles of the faith. On any given day, hundreds of portions of hot, fresh food are served in the temples around the city, or delivered to those who need them at home.
Put simply, “it’s normal,” North Shore Sikh Society President Karmjit Singh said.
The North Shore temple alone has been pumping out 300 meals a day since Friday’s record-setting rainfall, which left thousands of homes waterlogged and many more without power or water.
In the rest of Auckland, other centres have been doing similar numbers, adding up to 3000 meals since Friday evening, spokesperson for the Central Sikh Society Daljit Singh said.
They’re at the temple first thing in the morning, and again in the evening to prepare ready meals into plastic containers, and into warmers for people who want a plate of food there at the site.
The boxes go into cars and vans, distributed out door-to-door for people who need a hot meal.
Volunteers barely have a commercial kitchen to work in, instead making do with large pots and gas burners balanced on pallets and boxes in the kitchen.
Typically, they make 100 or 150 meals a day. So to double up isn’t a big ask, Singh said.
“It’s normal practice. It’s one of our three principles, we share whatever we’ve got.
“This is a practice we’ve been doing for the last 500 years… Practically speaking, we don’t do anything extra.”
All ingredients for these meals come from community members donating directly to the kitchen.
There is no funding source or government aid, although the Ministry of Social Development does refer clients to the temple for meals occasionally.
As part of their charity, the Sikh community doesn’t ask questions when delivering or offering meals. Even when people ring asking for 30 or 50 meals at a time, Singh said.
“When somebody asks for help, it’s fine,” he said. “We normally do not ask questions until people ask for special things, like bedding or clothing.
Within a few hours, his travel recuperation was interrupted and he was at work, co-ordinating food deliveries amid the flooding.
Even before the floods, the temple was getting between 25 and 30 calls a week from the community for assistance, typically food parcels of dry food and essentials.
That kind of help, as well as hot meals for those who need them, will continue long after the flood clean-up has finished.
