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| Perspectives From a Teen Dish Monitor |
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During Amma’s North American tour, many people are called upon to do seva, otherwise known as 'selfless service'. As the tours are completely volunteer-run, the seva shifts (normally two hours) are a very important part of a successful tour and also an opportunity for us all to embody Amma’s teachings. One example of a seva shift is Dish Monitoring. The job of a Dish Monitor is to guide people in clearing their dishes after eating. Food goes into the compost, liquids get poured into a separate bucket, and non-food items are sorted into garbage or recycling. Finally, dishes themselves are sorted onto large trays in stacks of plates, bowls, and cups, to assist the volunteers (or sevites) who are loading them into the dishwasher for washing. In this short interview, we hear from a young person, age 13, about his experience in this seva. After seeing him dedicate a lot of his time to this role at one of the tour stops, his mom and GreenFriends volunteer, Ayana, decided to ask him more about his experience. YOU DID A LOT OF SEVA THIS YEAR, DIDN’T YOU? Yeah, I did. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE SEVA THIS TOUR? I don’t know, I liked them all. SO DIPLOMATIC. WHAT KINDS OF THINGS WERE YOU DOING? Well, I spent lots of time in the kids’ room, helping with crafts and games, and with the kids at the prasad dinner, and helping with dishes and compost, and cleanup. I can’t remember what else. TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE DISH MONITORING, WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT THAT? It was fun to take people’s plates for them. I like helping people, so I just took their plates and cleared them and put everything where it belonged. Initially my parents dragged me into it, and before I started I didn’t think it was going to be fun, but I ended up really liking it. I even went back to do that seva again a few more times on my own. WAIT, HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU DO THIS SEVA? I don’t know, maybe like 3 or 4 times. WHAT WAS ONE OF THE MOST CHALLENGING ASPECTS? Seeing people dump half their plate of food. Food waste really bothers me because it’s hard to see so much food not being eaten. Also, some people unknowingly put their food in the wrong bin, and even though I didn’t have to clean it, I still thought ‘oh no’ and I couldn’t correct it anymore because it was already done. WAS THERE ANYTHING THAT SURPRISED YOU IN THIS SEVA? Sometimes just the fact that there was so much food that people were dumping. Some people didn’t put garbage in the garbage or recycling in the recycling. It feels normal to me to put things in the right place because I do that at home, so it was weird to see that not everyone knows how to sort their garbage. Sometimes I could stop people in time to prevent them from putting it in the wrong spot, and sometimes they would be surprised but mostly people were really nice. It’s just watching people clear their dishes, but I think it’s an important seva, because when you catch people putting their waste in the wrong bin, you can tell them. And it matters because once it’s in the bag, the stuff in the bag doesn’t usually get sorted. |