Volunteer Medway

Our new columnist Zahra Barri investigates whether charity really can begin at home, or at least in Medway

Hello Medwaydians! I’m Zahra Barri, comedian, author and PhD student based in Rochester. Welcome to my Volunteer Medway column! They say that charity begins at home, but what if volunteering began in Medway?

Volunteer Medway was born out of my frustration at there being a plethora of online activism but very little information on how to actually act IRL. Now don’t get me wrong, social media does a fantastic job of creating awareness towards injustices, but when the average Instagram user is scrolling through such injustices on the johnny, a certain amount of gravitas is lost in cyber transit.

Zahra Barri at Open House Rochester

Furthermore, these completely newsworthy humanitarian issues can often be found (in the case of my algorithm) sandwiched between an entire Welsh family doing a meticulously choreographed dance to Rappers Delight on TikTok. The well-intended call to action tends to get lost somewhere between my ‘unique’ millennial digital blueprint, which oscillates somewhere around nineties nostalgia, dogs being kissed by their owners and skincare routines, all whilst trying to find the loo roll.

Even when I’m not doom scrolling on the loo and actually actively trying to save the world by showing support towards humanitarian (and donkey sanctuaries) causes, it never feels, well, quite like I am doing anything at all. Don’t get me wrong, I like how I feel like an absolute Princess Di every time I take the three seconds out of my day to sign change.org petitions. I also commend myself for considering it my absolute duty to post that I, too, ‘will never watch Masterchef again’ even though I never watched it in the first place (food shows just make me hungry). Additionally, I regularly like memes of Hollywood actresses’ Oscar speeches, saying empowering things like, ‘I just got my head down and worked’ before strutting back to sit beside their father, the patriarchal head of their acting dynasty family.

However, just using my finger to act? Whilst it did explain the saying that my mother shouted at me throughout my childhood (‘Come on, get your finger out!’), it felt rather futile. I began to wonder what would happen if I used more than my finger. I pondered the increased efficacy of using my whole entire body. For it wasn’t just the whole using my digit on the digital (thank you, Creative Writing MA), but I became quite overwhelmed by the inertia, the frenzy, the panic, the sheer grand scale, the universality of completely worthy causes that we needed to have all our fingers on the pulse on at all times. Social media has made global issues seem local, so whilst they raise awareness, it makes us feel somewhat powerless because, in reality, we simply cannot physically get there.

But then I began to think about how I got through my GCSEs. I remembered the BBC Bitesize courses that broke down modules into manageable and accessible chunks, and I began to apply this theory to charity and humanitarianism. The key, I began to see, was focusing on the smaller issues at first. Don’t worry about how to solve an algebraic equation that has brackets and square roots, simply focus on the value of ‘x’. In this case, it was about merely placing value on where your ‘x’ marks the spot. The causes closer to home are smaller and, both figuratively and literally, more approachable. They were not across countries and continents that could only be accessed through the digital realm. Instead, causes on your doorstep can be accessed via the physical nomadic realm (by this, I mean walking/public transport). The only downside I could see was that you couldn’t do any of it on the loo.

Furthermore, it struck me that if we all look after our communities within a local radius, i.e. our villages, our towns and our cities (or, in this case, the cluster of Medway towns), perhaps it could have a ripple effect on the whole world that might even be more powerful than our online finger? It was at that point that I remembered the well-known idiom: Charity begins at home. And that’s when it was confirmed to me. So, I began to concentrate on the causes, catastrophes and crises that were far closer to me than Gregg Wallace’s P60. Because let’s face it: I might be Arab, but I’m not exactly Amal Clooney. Even she only got voted the second most powerful Arab woman in the world the year she married George Clooney, and not the year she was appointed to a number of United Nations commissions, including as an advisor to Kofi Anan.

So here I am actually doing something with my actual body (not just my doom scroll finger) and volunteering in Medway. I do realise the irony of sharing it online with you guys (but this is Substack, not IG or TikTok, so you best not be on the bog). I would make an educated guess that you Substack types are reading this internet tab whilst lounging on a chaise longue, flitting between The Guardian and your Ocado delivery.

So where did I go?
Open House Rochester. It’s at the Quaker Meeting House, just off Rochester High Street.

What do they do?
Feed, clothe and help vulnerable people who have no permanent or precarious living circumstances every Saturday afternoon. Often, these vulnerable people are ‘between sofas’, with no job and very little accessibility to healthcare care for various reasons.

Sandwiches being prepared at Open House Rochester.

What goes on?
Between the hours of 11:45 and 3:45, a rota of six ever-changing volunteers cook a hot meal to feed over 50 homeless/semi-homeless/vulnerable Medwaydians. They also make sandwiches (cheese and ham) for guests to take for later, set up tea, coffee and hot chocolate stations and lay out donated clothes, tins of soup and the most eclectic array of biscuits I ever did see. Not just your average Digestives and Hobnobs, we’re talking Bourbons, Party Rings, Jammy Dodgers. Legend has it that one week (a trusted source/guest confirmed to me), there were even packets of Wagon Wheels. In short, if you get anything from this piece, it’s that Open House Rochester have got Biscuit Game.

How long has it been going?
It’s been running 17 years, which sounds like it started in the 90,s but a quick calculation while chatting to John Spencer (one of the OG trustees) tells us that it started in 2008, causing us to both take a minute of silence to reflect on how old we are. John tells me that Open House was started originally by an enigmatic woman called Amanda (a Quaker) now well into her eighties because nothing similar in Medway existed. Amanda was joined by Thelma, Corrinne, Deirdre and John, all of the Quaker faith. John is like no other religious person I’ve ever met, as when I press him for more on the Quaker faith, he tells me, “Let’s not overdo the Quaker stuff.” I find him very humble, gracious and endearing. I suddenly feel quite overwhelmed. All this is more heartwarming than watching back-to-back Richard Curtis films by an open fire with five puppies. It is exactly true what they say: There really is no selfless good deed. I was getting All The Feels while chatting to John. This was in between buttering sarnies, laying out chairs and tables and marvelling over the skills of Peter and Barbara, a married couple cooking team, as they concocted a delicious Medway Shepherd’s Pie. Apparently, this is a regular Shepherd’s Pie but with crumbly new potatoes instead of mash! Perhaps I’ve found the new presenters of Masterchef right here.

Peter and Barbara in the kitchen at Open House Rochester

John ushers me away from the hot buttery carbs (I thanked him later) and told me that for the first five years, Open House were begging for donations and funding from anywhere they could think of. He reflects that back then, they didn’t do the level of food they do now (no Wagon Wheels, no Medway Shepherd’s Pie). “A simpler time?” I ask. “Yes,” John says. “Up until fairly recently there was no main meal, just coffees and teas and sandwiches, but lots of chat!” He smiles. They also used to serve food on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve and that weird time between Christmas and New Year when no one quite knows what to do with themselves.

Accounting for the changes, John explains that there are fortunately now many other Medway initiatives that provide similar services, such as One Big Family, who even do minibus services, Medway Shelter and Caring Hands. John admits that Open House is now one of the smallest providers as it simply doesn’t have as much manpower as many other local shelters. Often, if they receive particularly traumatised, vulnerable people, Open House sends them to these bigger places. What is rather positive and, again rather Richard Curtis-like levels of heartwarming is that many, many places such as Watts Charity, Rochester Cathedral, St Peter’s Church and King’s School give to Open House exceedingly generously. Most recently, a contact with someone within the King’s School who runs the Scouts means many provisions, such as sleeping bags, are also being donated. Furthermore, Medway Council are to be commended. John divulges that the council quite shrewdly prefer to give money to such initiatives rather than start up initiatives themselves. In return, they offer up the venue for council meetings (I told you there is never any selfless good deed). Most recently, John explains his giddiness that Kent Nursing Association donated £1000. Yippee. His giddiness is infectious.

It’s two o’clock, and guests are beginning to flood in now. There are 50 or 60 of them, mostly men. John explains that the average demographic of guests is men between the ages of 30 and 60. There’s very few women, and John suspects it is because “women are more resourceful.” We ponder over this thought for several minutes, and I wonder what Steven Bartlett would have to say about this statistic on the Diary of a CEO podcast. There are also very few families, but when women and families do come in, they are often, John tells me, particularly traumatised. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says.

Volunteers at Open House Rochester.

On that note, I ask him what the call to action is for anyone reading this. “Money, donations?” I ask. To be perfectly clear, John raises his eyebrows and says, “Zahra, the thing we need most is more volunteers. Without them, this place would not exist.”

I’m again baffled. It’s not a quick use of your finger on your online banking that they need (although don’t get me wrong, please do that too if you can), but what they need is people, real people, in the flesh, not online, but On It.

If you are interested in volunteering at Open House Rochester, contact John and the team via ohprochester AT gmail DOT com

If you want to hear more about Zahra’s volunteering, branching further afield in Kent, check out her upcoming Volunteer Kent column, which is available in and from the May issue of the excellent ‘cene magazine. Meanwhile, Zahra will be back here with more Volunteer Medway columns soon.

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Zahra Barri

is a Saudi Arabian raised, Egyptian/Irish writer, stand-up comedian and PhD researcher who has featured on Channel 4's Only Jokes a Muslim Can Tell, BBC Radio, BBC Asian Network and BBC Period Dramas. She has also appeared in Harpers Bazaar Arabia, The New Arab, Dubai's Mojeh Magazine and DIVA Magazine. Her writing won Runner Up for the Comedy Women in Print Unpublished prize 2020. Her debut novel Daughters of the Nile won the Unbound Firsts Writers of Colour competition, out now and is described as ‘A bold multi-generational debut, exploring themes of queerness, revolution and Islamic sisterhood.’ Her work is supported by The Society of Authors and the Arts Council. She now lives in Rochester, Kent, where she is a comedy and literary columnist for 'cene magazine.

Her debut novel, Daughters of the Nile, is available to buy here.

You can also subscribe to her own Substack, Daughter of the Nile.