Thanksgiving Cookie Run

Last Sunday night, my friend Ye-Jee organized her Annual Thanksgiving Cookie Run—finally, my first shot at the humanitarian bit of my Parisian adventure. An organization came up with the fantastic idea of spreading a bit of Thanksgiving love to the homeless community via cookies—it was something she took part in while she was in the States and decided to re-create it here in Paris. A bunch of us met at her apartment to bake the cookies and write cute little notes like “Jesus Loves You” or “Bon Courage” to put inside of the bags… since we spent most of our time joking and being silly, it took us 4 hours to make about 50 bags of cookies. Finally, around 8pm, we set out on the streets of Paris looking for homeless people to deliver the cookies to and decided to walk under the bridges along the Seine.

This is literally the underbelly of Paris, not the part of town people normally see/imagine. And I must admit, I was a bit scared. It was like something out of a horror movie where you’re screaming at the screen, “Don’t go down there, stupid! The monster is waiting for you down there!” But its real life. It takes a bit of maneuvering to get down there, and once you do, there is an entire community of homeless people who make their life under the bridges. There are hundreds of tents lined up, dozens of bonfires and people sitting around trying to stay alive and just make the most out of the hand that they were dealt. For the most part, everyone we met was really nice and extremely grateful. Many people asked, “But why? Why are you doing this?” and it broke my heart. These are the forgotten and it’s so sad to realize that there can come a point in your life when no one notices or cares about you anymore—where you are genuinely shocked at a simple, kind gesture.

There was one man that I’ll never forget. He had built himself a nice (if you can call it that) little home out of planks of wood and aluminum—outfitted with a tent, table, candle, a couple chairs and a radio. When we offered him the cookies, he invited us to peek inside to look around. So for about 15 minutes we sat inside his home and listened to his story. Turns out he is an immigrant from Morocco who moved to Paris about 20 years ago for work, after he got out of the war. He was plagued by a long-term injury and eventually lost his job as a taxi driver. At that point, his wife was the only one bringing home any income but they were still able to just get by. But 10 years ago she died and since he had the handicap, he was unable to get work (and being an immigrant, unable to collect disability) and lost his apartment—that’s when he moved onto the streets. He’s been living under the Seine ever since. He could have been my father, uncle, neighbor—he was such a nice, decent man who just had a string of bad luck (he told us he was never involved in alcohol or drugs) that landed him where he was—it could have happened to anyone. When we were leaving he said to us, “It’s so nice to see young people doing stuff like this. It makes me think that there’s some hope left in this world”.

It was an amazing night. Encounters like this make me so unbelievably grateful for what I have. I guess that’s the purpose of the Cookie Run taking place during Thanksgiving—not only are you doing a kindness for someone else on a significant day (something that seems so minuscule to one means so much to another), but its also giving us the opportunity to remember that no matter how bad our lives may seem at times, we have so much to be thankful for. I have wonderful friends and family and I know without question that there would always be someone I could turn to if I ever [God forbid] hit rock bottom. It seems hard to believe, but some people just don’t have that support system, they have no one to turn to but themselves. And what human being can survive on their own?

Psalms 30:12: ...that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.