First of all, I should have written this blog post much, much earlier! But better late then never, as the saying goes. The reason I didn’t do so earlier is twofold: One is ‘brain fog’ and the other is that the whole ‘neighbourhood pantry’ thing developed so slowly and steadily that I actually never really thought about reporting where and how the donations are used that I have received for it.
I promise to do better in future! From now on I will post every beginning of the month how much I have received in donations, how and for what it was spent and keep all the receipts. I really don’t have the time, energy and concentration to do this retrospective, sorry. What I can do is giving you a quick breakdown and attach to this post my shopping bill for this week.
Weekly shopping: Typically around 120-140 Euros, sometimes more, rarely less. This is all the usual food staples plus basic hygiene and cleaning materiel. I do this online and get it delivered as it is far too heavy for me to carry. A few items, if look at the list, are clearly for me, but I have deducted that already from the amount I wrote above.
This is how the house entrance looks beginning of each week …
Weekly fruit&vegetable box: 19 Euros, I don’t get a receipt for this, but will ask for a monthly one in future. My own fruit and vegetables, I buy separately.
Also, my own food stuff etc is in the kitchen, and food and other things for the pantry are in my storage/roundabout room.
1 – 2/month help for one family to buy gas to cook with, 18,75 Euros per bottle. It doesn’t make sense to give people food that they then can’t cook … and yes, I get a receipt, will keep that in future.
Additional shopping, that I do on foot and locally as some things are cheaper and/or only available in my local supermarket and not in the one I use for ‘online’ shopping. I also use it to stock up if I have run out of something important earlier then expected. Difficult to say how much it’s, I would guess between 50 and 100 Euros/month. Again, from today on I will keep the receipts.
There is the very occasional ’emergency’ request and equally the very occasional drop-in from somebody else, outside the families, but that is small stuff. But, once again, if that happens in future, I will make a note.
So, that is basically what I spend monthly to help four families (~16 people) to get through this challenging times. Bearing in mind fluctuations in need and prices around 700 Euros/month. Food prices have already risen here in Europe and are expected to rise further due to the war in Ukraine.
Thank you for reading this far, here the link to the PDF of this weeks shopping bill.
Please expect a more detailed blog post with receipts like this beginning of each months, this keeps me accountable and you know where the money goes to. If you have any comments, questions or would like more information about something, please put them in a comment. And if you come to Santiago, I am happily showing you around, just give me a bit of notice so that I am at home and not in the allotment 😉
I didn’t think I would post again so soon, but this is a great article that explains very well why food prices, and therefore also food insecurity, will increase further over the coming months, both here in Spain and worldwide. I have added some notes in [and in italics] to explain certain points and give my thoughts. Source to the article, in Spanish, at the end.
Distribution chains start rationing sunflower oil.
62% of the sunflower oil imported by Spain comes from Ukraine. With the Black Sea ports closed, uncertainty covers the markets and, despite the calls for calm from the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, who said the day before yesterday that “there would be no problems of shortages in the short term”, many consumers have rushed to the supermarket to stock up on sunflower oil. [Sunflower oil is often used by people on a tight budget to replace the much preferred olive oil as it is far cheaper than the later.]
The increase in demand and the supply difficulties of the distribution chains have led some of them to begin to rationalize their stocks. Makro, a chain that supplies a large part of the hotel and catering industry, has limited olive oil [A secondary effect, those who can afford olive oil are now also stocking up on it out of fear the shortage of sunflower oil will also cause, in the long term, a shortage of olive oil or at least an increase in its price.] to one unit per customer per day, as confirmed by the company. And Mercadona says it has limited it to five liters per customer, while the Eroski chain has already begun to hang posters in its stores indicating that it will only give a maximum of two boxes per customer per day of this product.
Key country for cereals
Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. Last year it increased its cereal production by 32% to 85.7 million tons. These data are reason enough to explain why the Russian attack on this country located on the Black Sea coast has broken the market. “The uncertainty of the last days is over, now the market is broken”, pointed out a few days ago the president of the Grain and Oilseeds Trade Association (Accoe), Marcos Martínez, who added: “We don’t know where the prices of these raw materials are going to reach”.
The cereal market is moving at the pace set by the war news and the movements that may or may not take place in its ports. One of the problems is that Spain has a corn deficit. In fact, it buys from Ukraine between 28 and 30 % of the corn it needs for animal feed. [Which means dairy and meat prices will also go up.]
As for wheat, Ukraine is the world’s fifth largest trader, a ranking led by the Russians. The blockade of the ports means increased dependence on South American grain production, a harvest that has not yet begun. [Which means bread prices, and those of other products that are elaborated with wheat, will also go up.]
Ukraine conflict adds fuel to the fire of the dairy crisis.
There is a place near the sea where, from time to time, large mountains of corn are formed that diminish in size as the trucks carry the raw material to the feed mills. That place is the outer port of Punta Langosteira, in Arteixo, one of the gateways of entry of Ukrainian grain in Spain. According to data handled by the Galician Association of Compound Food Manufacturers (Agafac), during the first two months of this year about 290,000 tons of corn grown in that country have entered Galicia through the dock in A Coruña and the port of Marín.
Because Ukraine produces 15% of the world’s corn, Spain, which has a corn deficit, buys around 30% of its total volume of imports of this cereal. And it arrives through the ports of Tarragona, Cartagena, Huelva, Marín or Arteixo. Something similar happens with wheat, a cereal of which this state accumulates 30 % of the world production, while Russia occupies the first place in the ranking. As with corn, part of it also enters through Galicia. So far this year, for example, have been unloaded at the ports of Punta Langosteira and Marin about 30,000 tons, but next week is expected to unload another ship loaded with about 60,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat. [And after that, unless other ships loaded with grains are still at sea, this source of food will dry up completely unless a major miracle happens …]
It has been a while since I updated this blog, so here a list of developments here in Santiago, the Camino, Europe and my own life 😉
Read on to discover what this photo means 😉
Santiago (and basically also the rest of Spain)
We are now firmly on our way out of our sixth wave (Omicron) and all numbers are going steadily down: cases, hospitalizations and deaths. This wave has really shown us that, whilst vaccination doesn’t prevent illness and transmission 100%, it protects to a huge degree from serial illness and death, especially when combined with face mask wearing and being careful when socializing.
Speaking of which, our vaccination rate here in Spain is extremely good and Galicia is, together with Asturias, leading that list. We have already started to vaccinate the 5-11 years old here and many of us, me included, have already received their booster shot.
Speaking of face masks, they still have to be worn here at all times indoors (except when actually eating and/or drinking) and outdoors when you can’t make sure that you can keep a minimum distance of at least 1,5m from people that are not in your same household aka strangers and especially in large groups.
Camino
The Camino is more and more opening up after the ‘winter break’ and pilgrim numbers are increasing steadily, comparable to 2019 but lower than we would expect normally for a Holy Year. You can follow the daily numbers here: https://oficinadelperegrino.com/ and the monthly and yearly numbers here https://catedral.df-server.info/est/index.html
How numbers will be developing this year, only God and Santiago know! We might either have a crazily busy year or a quiet-ish one like last year. It all depends how the pandemic develops, the war between Russia and Ukraine and if the Pope really comes to Santiago in August, too many factors to be sure about anything.
Albergues
Three things to bear in mind: capacity in some albergues is still reduced, blankets are mostly a thing of the past (too expensive to wash after each pilgrim) and more and more albergues require proof of vaccination before welcoming you. Some, but not all, communal meals have returned and some kitchens have opened again, but Camino life is still very different from BC (Before Covid) times.
Travel Thoughts
As things are ever changing, here the link to the official Spanish travel website: https://travelsafe.spain.info/en/ If you plan a Camino, or travel to Spain in general, please check it out regularly. As I wrote earlier, our Covid stats are all moving in the right direction and things looking up on that front (if no new variant comes along!) but we have another problem here in Europe, the war between Ukraine and Russia.
This war is ‘only’ 8days old at the time of writing, but costed already thousands of lives. Nobody knows how the situation will develop and if the war will spread further or not, so PLEASE keep an eye on your own countries travel advisory website, register your travel with them (if possible) and plan enough money in your budget for unforeseen expenses like an earlier flight home. We all here hope and pray that this war will be soon over, please join us in this prayer for peace.
Now to the personal stuff
Depression
I am in treatment, both with medication and seeing a psychiatrist (never thought I would need on of these one day!) and doing much better. Not good yet, but better. The panic attacks are very rare now, the anxiety is manageable, but I am still depressed and have low energy levels. On a positive note, I recently managed to pull myself together and spend a long weekend in the south of Spain. It really helped to re-charge my batteries!
Neighbourhood Pantry & Neighbours
Before I went on my short break, I gave the necessary supplies for my absence to M. of whom I think as the patriarch of the families for distribution as they are all related. And it seems to have worked well. I might need to do something similar from mid-April onwards (more about that below). If you want to read up on what the Neighbourhood Pantry is and how it works, here a link to an old-ish blog post that contains a link to an even older one – reverse history so to speak https://egeria.house/santiago-day-neighborhood-pantry-fundraiser/
And some good news! We have a little newborn in one of the family, her name translates to ‘traveler or wanderer’ btw 😉 And there was a little ‘coincidence’ for this family. Just days before I had received a donation of a gas heater which they could make good use of now with a newborn in the home. Sadly, they didn’t tell me earlier that they needed a heater, I would have found them one! But now all good and cozy for this little family.
Roundabout Room
The gas heater is a good example how my roundabout room works: A few days previous I got offered a sizeable material donation of clothes, shoes, glasses and yes, the gas heater. As I don’t drive I asked a friend, that does drive, if she could pick it up for me. And in one hour the goodies were in the house. As the heater was missing the tube and gas regulator, she brought me these, that she didn’t need anymore, the next day when she also brought me my fruit and vegetable box from: https://www.facebook.com/aHortadaAvoa Muchas Gracias, Cristina!
Allotment
And more good news, I found an allotment less then 5 minutes walk from my place where I will plant fruit and vegetables for and hopefully with my neighbours. All going well it will stop raining tomorrow and I get started weeding (see photo above ;-). I am already pre-growing plants like tomatoes and peppers in the house.
Moving
Yes, I have to move again, but thank God only in the same house, to the third floor. The reason being that I am only a subtenant in this flat. It was originally meant to be my ‘winter flat’ for 6 months in 2019/2020, but we all know what happened, so 2,5 years later I am still here. But the original tenants come back mid-April and need their flat back. Thankfully there is an empty flat (without a balcony, sigh) on the third floor that I can rent. And apparently the rent is even a bit cheaper, always welcome! That is why I wrote earlier that I might need to restructure the neighbourhood pantry system a bit, three flights of stairs are a lot with full food boxes every day!
Plans for this Year
All of the above, and helping pilgrims wherever and however I can 😉
So, I think that’s all thank you for reading until the end!
Like last year (yes, my little neighborhood pantry is now in operation since over a year), I would love to give my neighbors here in Santiago a little extra cheer for Christmas. Typical Christmas sweets like polverones, turron and the like plus some toys for their children and grandchildren additionally to the food and other basic household items I am already providing. Also, like last year, I would like be able to give them a small amount of cash (difficult topic, I know!) to buy gifts for each other.
Roundabout Room
Despite the Omicron situation and taking ALL the necessary precautions I have decided to open up the flat a bit more. I am now taking in in-kind donations of shoes, clothing, cutlery, crockery and small appliances. People can come to this room to pick up what they need and leave what they don’t need anymore but what could be serviceable to others. This is very much an emerging project in its infant steps, so please wish me luck! But so far it has gone exceedingly well!
Personal Update
As some of you know, I am in treatment for depression, anxiety and panic disorder. Apart of taking my meds and seeing my talk therapist starting January helping others really helps me. I am getting better by the day and feeling really positive about my future and my future work here in Santiago.
Donation Links
If you want to support this project, here are some handy links:
I wrote and scheduled a blog post on a very dark day. Then I got better and forgot to delete it. Please accept my apologies! I am well and doing each day better. I know I have a multitude of messages to answer to, I will get to them, but please know:
“I am well, I am not in any distress, I am getting better every day.”
Please forgive me for any distress I have caused you, it wasn’t my intention!
More in an upcoming blog post tomorrow or so.
I am well, please stop worrying! And thank you all for your concern and messages!
First and most importantly, this is not a ‘please some pity for poor Sybille post’, instead read it as a post on how to get the help you need. If pandemic brain fog and similar doesn’t allow you to read it to the end, here are some starting points to get help:
Speak to your GP/primary healthcare provider.
If you don’t even know who that is: google ‘mental health + the area / country you’re living in’
20+ years ago I was diagnosed with clinical / chronic depression. And I managed just fine. With a daily routine and, yes, the occasional really long walk. Then Covid hit …
The pandemic really did me in:
I never got sick.
I never got Covid.
I always was ever so careful not to run any risk at all to transmit it to others.
BUT
Whilst I did the right thing to keep everybody safe, I myself went down. I ended up in social isolation.
And I didn’t even realise how poorly I was, until I got into treatment. I am better now, better, but not fine. And tomorrow I will have another appointment with my GP, called Dr. Camino (no joke!, real name!) and together we will get there.
Most of my days I feel overwhelmed by such simple tasks as answering an email.
ALL of my days I appreciate my friends that are sticking to me and don’t let me go.
What keeps me going:
Helping others.
Growing plants.
Just breathing …
I didn’t write this blog post to get any pity, I wrote it to tell that one person that needs to hear this:
“You are not alone! There is help available! The only thing you need to do is say: “Help!”
Hugs from Santiago!
SY
PS That email or comment you sent to me will still take some time to be answered …
As promised on Facebook, I will share here on the blog the tips and tricks I have learned so far with my ‘balcony farming’ as a friend calls it. Please, meet my biodegradable, homemade, pretty much no-cost, seed or plant pots:
What you need:
Empty toilet or kitchen paper rolls
Scissors
Kitchen or newspaper (tissue or toilet paper works as well)
A waterproof container
Soil
Seeds
Step by Step Instruction
Flatten paper roll and cut horizontally in half, or, in the case of kitchen rolls, in threes.
Make cuts, one in the middle and one at each side half way up the roll.
Press back into shape and fold the cut bits overlapping each other, just as if you would close a cardboard box.
4. Place a tiny bit of kitchen paper or similar in the bottom to avoid soil leakage.
5. Put soil and seeds in it and place in any water proof container you have at hand.
6. Water well and then continue to keep soil moist but not soaked.
7. Place in a warm, sunny spot.
8. Watch seeds germinate.
9. When the plants are ready to be transplanted into bigger pots or in your garden/backyard/allotment, simply open up the folded corners at the bottom so that the roots can emerge more easily.
That’s all!
Not my idea, but as I forgot to bookmark the blog where I found it, I sadly can’t give due credit to the inventor(s). But the photos are mine and what is in these pots now are ‘dwarf winter beans’ that can be grown here in Galicia pretty much all year round.
A win-win for everybody and Mother Nature; we save money by recycling empty paper rolls and less plastic needed for these kind of growing/germinating pots that in the end would end up in the rubbish. The less plastic we use (especially use only once) the better for all of us!
In 1998 my life was crushed in an instant as my partner died before my eyes under horrific circumstances. It took me more then a year, and three suicide attempts, to find a way, any way, out of it. I found the Camino de Santiago, very little known at that time. By then I had lost everything. I was homeless and penniless. Shortly before arriving at Saint Jean Pied de Port, hitchhiking, to start what would result in the one thing that truly turned my life around, I entered a French bakery and asked: I am hungry, can you give me some stale bread from yesterday for free? The answer was chilling me to the bone:
“No, we can’t do that, we sell yesterday’s bread as animal feed.” That moment I learned that for some people, those without money will always be less than animals.
I didn’t give up, I hitchhiked to Saint Jean Pied de Port, took a look at the Pyrenees and hitchhiked to Roncesvalles. The driver that had picked me up let me out a few hundred meters before the colegiata and I was worried. I knew that the albergue was a donativo, but I didn’t have a credencial and not a single penny in my pocket. Something caught my eye, before my feet lay a 50 pesetas coin, exactly the amount of money I needed to ‘buy’ a credencial and become a pilgrim. I filled out the paperwork and ascended the stairs to the albergue – Only pilgrims allowed, no tourists past this point. I didn’t feel I was either. I didn’t feel I fit anywhere anymore.
The hospitaler@s announced the program of the evening: Mass with pilgrims blessing followed by a pilgrim’s meal in the nearby restaurant. I went to mass, I needed all the blessings I could possibly get. I went back to the albergue, hungry. I wrote in my journal, another pilgrim shared the table with me, we smiled at each other, we both knew we were both outcasts – pilgrims that didn’t fit in.
The hospitaler@s passed by and looked at us and asked ‘Not at the Pilgrim’s Meal?’
‘No.’, we said quietly.
Shortly after they came back again and put a plate of tortilla before us.
‘Enjoy the meal, pilgrims.’, they said.
And suddenly we were human beings again.
Miraculously I made it to Santiago, and, over the next four years put my life back together and found a new reason to live, a new raison d’etre, I got my life back together but I vowed that nobody that would knock at my door would ever leave empty handed … As long as I have food in the house, I will share it gladly with whoever knocks at the door.
Tired of all the Facebook memes making fun of the difficulties of folding a fitted sheet and the dangers involved in it (apparently you might even become a ghost failing at it!) here is my fool-proof method. And no, you don’t need anybody to help you with this task, you can do it alone. You are more than enough to subdue a fitted sheet and force it into submission, sorry, into a a neat and pleasant shape that fits perfectly in your wardrobe, drawer or wherever else you want to store it. You are welcome!
Getting from this to that …
Sorry, living alone I hadn’t anybody to take the photos of me doing this, so you can only see the steps the sheet went through, but not my hands 😉
And now my easy to follow steps:
Take sheet out of the dryer or from the clothes line/rack and give it a firm stare – telling it “I will get you in a neat shape!” Reassure yourself that You Can Do This 😉 Take a deep breath and JUST DO IT. And then follow the following steps …
Find a flat surface that is at least half as large than your fitted sheet, your bed is ideal, but any flat surface will do, in a pinch even the kitchen table and, with a bit of practise, your ironing board (finally a use for that one!).
Place fitted sheet upside down and short side up, meaning with the surface that you sleep on now touching the surface you are folding it on and the shorter side of the sheet on top.
Gently stretch the top of it until nicely horizontal by placing your hands inside the corners and stretching it. Don’t worry about the lower part here.
Turn the lower corners inside out and THEN tuck into the pockets of the upper corners. That’s the whole trick, the rest is easy-peasy!
Stretch, again, the horizontal top (now with your hands in the corners formed by both ends of the sheet) until it’s nicely straight.
Now gently, whilst keeping one hand in the corresponding corner, pull down each side.
Gently stretch lower end of half-folded sheet until it’s parallel to the top half and extended to its maximum.
Now you have trapeze shape. Keep your one hand in the top corner made up by both sheets ends end fold the lower half in just a notch narrower than the top half. Repeat on the other side.
From here you have two possibilities, the folded and the rolled one.
A) Folded: You should have by now a perfect rectangle that you can fold up anyway you like and that fits your storage space.
Getting from this to that …
B) Rolled: Fold your sheet in half and roll it up for space saving storage.
You see, folding a fitted sheet is really easy and if we ever meet in person, I am more than happy to give you a free one-to-one personal workshop on how to do this. Until then you are welcome to buy me a coffee, you know to whom it will go to anyway: https://egeria.house/santiago-day-neighborhood-pantry-fundraiser/ And any further questions, just leave them in a comment below 😉
Oh, and pat yourself on the back/shoulder, you have finally conquered the fitted sheet folding quest!
PS This blog post is the result of some hilarious exchanges on Facebook about this, expect more silly but hopefully useful blog posts like this in future …
When people hear for the first time of Egeria House, they often think of it as a big, established center with a huge sign at the door and paid staff, or something similar.
Truth is that Egeria House is more a way of life for me, not bound to a particular place and, no, there is no ‘staff’, only me at the moment.
Egeria herself was a Galician woman and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the 4th century. Not only that, she also wrote about her journey and the things she saw. Her account of the Easter celebration in Jerusalem is the oldest one that exists and has kept liturgists happy ever since.
When I lived in England, I was intrigued by the fact that many houses there, in addition to numbers, also had names. When I moved to Santiago, I wanted the place where I lived to have a name that was meaningful to me, so it became Egeria House.
As for starfishes, if you have ever met me in person, I will, most likely, have told you this tale already, if that is the case, feel free to skip to the next paragraph.
A man was walking at the beach early one morning, after a bad storm. He was saddened as he noticed the hundreds and hundreds of stranded starfishes that would certainly die when the sun came up and dried them out. As he walked further and further, he noticed another man coming towards him, but he was bending down, picking something up and throwing it in the sea. As he came closer, he realized that the other man was picking up starfishes and throwing them back. “You fool”, he said, “there are hundreds of them on this beach alone. You are not making any difference.” The other man bend down, picked up a starfish and said calmly: “But I can make a difference for this one.” And throw it back into the sea.
And that is what we all can do:
Helping one ‘starfish’ at a time, because a multitude of small acts of kindness WILL change the world – for the better, keeping the Camino spirit alive in our own communities.
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