Today it is foodcoop day. Which means we have to go a few streets further to the house where our ordered goods are delivered to, and carry them down to the basement. That is at 10 am.
Then the „Kellerkinder“ („basement children“), the sorting group, comes to sort the things in the boxes of the different groups. Our flatshare also has a box here, with our name signed on it. Theoretically we could get it oday evening, filled with tasty stuff from the organic market.
Practically, we didn’t order anything. Again we were too muddleheaded to put money on the banc account. So, only carrying today, not for us but for the others, as it has to be done anyhow. Well, these things happen.
Bu also carrying down these things once a week isn’t really too much work. Each week, two people need to go. Including the way to get there and back it’s not even an hour, and we alternate.
Then there is the other groups, like the „Kellerkinder“, and groups who are doing the orders and the finances, and somone who takes care about website and the faciliating foodcoop-software that we use.
Once amonth there is a meeting.
Today we are much too late also. We also need to print lists for the sorting group, that we have to print from the software. But we didn’t know which lists to print. These lists tell which food is for which group, and so without them the Kellerkinder can’t do their job.
When we finally arrive the Kellerkinder have brought down almost everything down to the basement themselves. We apologize and help to bring down the rest of the boxes with fruit, bread, vegetables, soymilk, breadspreads.
Then it turns out that there is still something wrong with the lists, a part is missing which would have facilitated he sorting a lot. But they say then they can do with those lists we brought, they just lauph and say „no problem, no problem“.
The work is done quickly, and we say goodbye to the nice colleagues. In the meantime we have a look at the nice backyard of the selforganised houseproject, who offers the basement room to us: On a tiny little space they created a dance bar with several selfbuilt wooden plateaus, for dancing and chilling out. Most impressive: the DJ stand hanging down from the wall on the first plateau, about 3 or 4 meters above the ground. The DJ must feel like god up there.
This freely expressed creativity and the solidarity amongst the people is what I love about selforganised projects, even if not everything always works out as it should. We know what we do it for!
And this is not only much cheaper prices for healthy food, and not only for preventing our money from trickling away in intransparent structures for management and maketing. We do it not only to support more the producers and less the big supermarket chains, but also we do it for the direct interaction and doing something together, we do it, in the end, for a more cooperative society.
Right now we still order a lot from organic wholesale, but we started to order from regional organic farmers, too. There is many things to work on in the foodcoop and to improve.
First thing is our own communication and internal organisation, I chuckle, when we get back home and our flatmate announces that we forgot to bring one list. So, here we go again, arrrggghhhh, I think. But then he has pity with us and does it ;-)
