People often feel dreadful when first visiting Martha’s Pantry, a food bank and resource center for people with HIV/AIDS near downtown Vancouver.
That’s very typical, according to manager Vicki Smith.
“There’s a cycle of poverty around AIDS,” she said. People have gotten sick. They’ve lost jobs and health insurance and perhaps homes and relationships. They’re despairing of the present and terrified of the future. Their medications can cost thousands of dollars each month. “When they walk through that door, they have nothing,” Smith said.
Or so they think. But Martha’s Pantry provides a new perspective. It’s the only nongovernmental agency in Southwest Washington aimed at serving people with HIV/AIDS. And it’s more than just a food pantry — it’s a drop-in and community center for people with a special set of life challenges.
“We have a myriad of services and a lot of benefactors who make it possible,” said Smith. “Our goal isn’t just to distribute food. Our goal is to help bring dignity.”
Dignity was the name of the game when Eric Johnson, 40, first walked through the door.
“I was fairly depressed and sad about being diagnosed HIV-postiive,” he said.
Johnson grew up the deep South. He loved going to church and worshipping God. But when he came out as gay, the Southern Baptist church turned its back on him. “It was very traumatic,” he said. Eventually he moved west, believing people are more relaxed and accepting here. He said he was right — but he wasn’t counting on AIDS, which he contracted not in some secret, seamy situation but from someone he loved, he said.
So when Johnson was diagnosed and referred to Martha’s Pantry, he was at his lowest point. “I felt disgusting. Unclean. Unresponsive,” he said.
What saved him, he said, wasn’t just the food and supplies he picked up here. It was the work he put in as a volunteer — filling bags and stocking shelves, meeting people and sharing stories. That’s very typical, Smith said.
“When you volunteer at a place like this, the true gift is for the person who’s giving,” she said.
The pantry is named for Martha in the Bible: hardworking, practical, hospitable, loving — and maybe just a little cranky.
Stigma remains
The precursor to Martha’s Pantry was the trunk of a volunteer’s car — a mobile, hand-to-mouth food pantry that was the vehicle of survival for many who were afflicted, in the early 1980s, by a new and widely misunderstood disease that was sometimes called GRID, or Gay Related Immune Disease.
“People were scared to death of it and dying soon after they were diagnosed,” said Smith. “They said, ‘We’ve got to do something to help these people.’”
Within a few years, everyone knew what AIDS is — the way it spreads, its disregard for sexual orientation or station in life — and Martha’s Pantry became a mission of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Gentle Shepherd, a “welcoming” congregation that’s open to everyone.
Church services are held on Sunday afternoons and Bible discussions on Wednesday nights; beyond that, Martha’s Pantry is completely secular. It occupies rented storefront space on Broadway near downtown Vancouver and keeps a low profile. The stigma of AIDS may have been reduced, but it’s far from gone.
“Some people still have an attitude that our clients are less than human,” said Smith.
Pleasure and business
To provide some shelter from that hostility, Martha’s Pantry added its drop-in center a couple of years ago — after the county lost funding for the Southwest Washington Consortium on HIV/AIDS, and a clamor arose for a place its clients could call home. It’s open Tuesday mornings from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Thursday evenings from 4 to 7 p.m.
When The Columbian visited a couple of Thursdays ago, the food pantry was seeing some business, but the main event was the group of folks yakking cheerfully around a table in the room next door — the main office, meeting and worship space.
“It’s more than just handing out food to people,” said volunteer Gary Vance. “It’s giving hugs and smiles and being somebody people can connect with.”
“We all have a story,” said Baxter Jones. “Everybody needs to tell their story.” The story Jones likes to tell is showing up as a new client with a house full of furniture he didn’t need; minutes later came a woman fleeing an abusive relationship and desperate to furnish a new apartment for herself and her child. Pantry volunteers made the connection, the pickup and delivery.
As the economy has drooped, business at Martha’s Pantry has risen sharply. In 2004 the outfit provided services just over 500 times; in 2008, it was 729 times. The pantry also provides Christmas baskets and school supplies.
Ninety-seven percent of the pantry’s income — donations from individuals, community groups, businesses, churches, food banks and a $30,000 government grant — goes directly to client goods and services, Smith said. The other three percent goes for office and mail supplies and other overhead. Nobody gets paid.
Clients usually come to Martha’s Pantry via referral by a caseworker, but nobody is ever turned away, Smith said.
Clean and ordinary
Scan the shelves at Martha’s Pantry and you see more than fresh produce, cereal boxes and soup cans.
Toward the back, in a corner, is the stack of cleaning supplies — the antibacterial hand lotion, the floor formula powered with ammonia, the bubbling counter scrubber. There’s also bleach, laundry and dish soap, shampoo and toothpaste.
“When you are living with a compromised immune system, clean is really important. The things I get here have helped me live a better life,” said Johnson, who has moved from extreme isolation to living with some roommates and serving on the boards of several local nonprofit agencies and charities.
“I do all right.,” he said. “I live well. I vote. I go to church. I like to revel in my ordinariness.”
Scott Hewitt: 360-735-4525 or scott.hewitt@columbian.com.
