Mary* has been sitting on the doorstep of 120, Old Bakery Street, Valletta since 4.45pm. A large shopping trolley bag is by her gnarled feet. Her face is worn with worry, but she has a patient look about her. She’s first in line today at the food bank, a good 45 minutes before opening time, so she’s pleased with that.

Once a month Mary, who is in her late 60s, takes the bus from Tarxien, where she shares a hovel with eight other members of her family, and trundles into Valletta to collect a food pack from Foodbank Lifeline Foundation – enough to feed her family for a week.

She’ll have a very heavy load to carry back home, up the steep hill of Old Bakery Street all the way to the terminus, and her aching legs are causing her particular concern today as she has stopped taking medication because she cannot afford it.

Mary smiles disconsolately as she shows her empty purse. “I don’t have a single cent,” she points out. “I am overdue on the rent and next week I have to pay the electricity bill. I don’t know how I am going to manage.

I have to choose between feeding the family, or buying medicine for my legs. I have stopped buying the pills for now. My blood pressure is high with all the worry and I sometimes feel depressed,” she confesses.

More people join on the pavement outside the food bank. They are regulars and greet each other as if this were just another social outing. There’s a mix of nationalities, but the Maltese are in the minority today. Saturday is their preferred day to visit the food bank.

Today, 15 individual ‘clients’ will receive a food pack to last them a week. The packs will feed a total of 61 people. On average, the food bank at St Andrew’s Scots Church feeds no less than 30 families each week – sometimes more than double that especially in the winter months – handing out between €3,000 and €4,000 worth of food.

And yet, if social media comments are anything to go by, there seems to be a general consensus that Malta does not need a food bank or, if anything, it’s only there “because of the foreigners”.

It is quite normal for a queue to form outside the food bank up to an hour before opening time, but once the doors open, they all file in quietly and sit in the waiting area, taking their orderly turn as they go in one by one to receive their food pack behind a second closed door for some privacy and a shred of dignity.

Food bank manager Ross Yarnold, a former construction worker from Nottingham, who retired to Malta in January this year and started volunteering just a few months ago, pulls cans of beans off the shelves of the small grocery area and starts filling up Mary’s trolley. He adds tins of corned beef, long-life milk, coffee, jelly, packets of rice and pasta and other essentials. There’s an exceptional treat on offer today: fresh fruit, leftovers from a harvest festival held the previous weekend. Normally, the food bank does not stock any fresh or perishable goods.

This afternoon, he’s joined by Anne McKenna, who has been volunteering at the food bank for over three years and is a member of the newly set up foundation board. She checks each client’s paperwork and sits down briefly with them for a quick catch-up on their current situation.

Clients are referred to the food bank by several agencies, such as Appogg, Leap, Caritas, Sedqa, the Millennium Chapel, or Jesuit Refugee Service. They may also be referred by Mount Carmel Hospital, Mater Dei, the oncology unit, parish churches, or even schools.

Typically given assistance by the food bank for six weeks, this is just enough to give them time to get back on their feet, or for social benefits to kick in. However, some require longer term help in which case they are then referred to the Malta Community Chest Fund.

Mary, for example, already receives food vouchers from the MCCF, but they are not enough to cover all the essentials for her large family, so the food bank supplements the vouchers with a food pack once a month.

“I’ve been coming here for around three months now,” continues Mary once her pack has been prepared. “This has helped me a lot. I feel happy when I come here. My grandchildren, who live with me, will be eagerly awaiting my return to see what I got in the pack. They always ask me if I got any biscuits or sweets. They love that. It’s a treat for them.

“The MCCF vouchers help me to buy some meat, sometimes, or stuff like shower gel and laundry powder, but it’s never enough. We’re nine at home, all living in one old house.

“My husband was a watchman with the government, so he’s got his pension, but he’s also got health problems. My daughter is a single mother with two children. She’s been given a flat by the government, but it’s being refurbished and we don’t know when it will be completed. Then she’ll need the means to furnish it,” says Mary.

The food bank is truly a lifeline for her and her family, she adds. “It is necessary, yes. Poverty has increased in Malta and this has been very helpful to us. They give us a lot of basic necessities like tea, coffee, sugar.

I don’t know what we would do without it,” she points out.

And with that, she balances a large heavy bag on top of the trolley, picks up a third bag and slowly starts to make her way home as more people file into the waiting area.

As they patiently wait their turn, everyone’s attention is now drawn to the beautiful baby girl sleeping contentedly in her pushchair.

Her parents sit quietly and proudly smile as everyone coos over their little daughter. She’s called Aisa and she’s just five months old.

Poverty has increased in Malta and this has been very helpful to us. They give us a lot of basic necessities like tea, coffee, sugar. I don’t know what we would do without it”

Her parents, Reza and Sanaz, are originally from Iran although Reza holds a British passport. They moved to Malta from London two years ago. Reza explains he has two university degrees and several years’ experience designing and managing his own restaurants. He is a professional chef as well as a deft hand at making Persian-style furniture, which he used to furnish his restaurants in London.

Until recently, he ran an ice cream shop in Victoria, Gozo, before his business partner made off with all the money, leaving him high and dry. Reza tried opening another eatery, changing its offer several times from a café to a smoothie shop to a kebab joint to attract customers, but business was slow and he eventually lost all his money.

He is now looking for a job – any job – to keep his family going. This is their first visit to the food bank. He and his wife, together with baby Aisa, came on foot from Msida to Valletta and will be making their way back home on foot again, carrying a food pack weighing over 20kg.

And yet, Reza and Sanaz are all smiles. “In my culture, when someone asks us for our help, we help out,” explains Reza. “I didn’t know about the food bank. The social worker told me about it. This is a big help for me and my family and for all those who have no money to eat and to live. This is a very nice thing and it makes me very happy. I know that very soon I will be back on my feet again, and then I would have learned to help other people more.

“My father was a general in the Iranian army, but he was killed 39 years ago. My grandfather owns a chain of famous restaurants in Tehran. From the start, my mother taught me that if you want something, you have to work for it.

I never asked her for money. I have a big family in Tehran, but I never ask for money. I have always worked.

“In Iran, we have a saying: when you are hungry, take meat from your body but don’t go to beg from the butcher. I believe in God. He watches everything, He knows, He helps. One day, all my problems will be finished.

I am still happy here in Malta.”

His courage and unfailing optimism in the face of his current situation is touching. And Reza and Sanaz’s sense of hope is shared by the rest of this evening’s ‘clients’ at the food bank.

But still, do they ever cry? “No,” Anne replies as she whizzes about adding an extra pack of chocolate pudding for one person who has four children at home. “But once or twice, I’ve come very close. These are desperate cases.”

Every food pack is custom prepared on the spot for each client. While it always contains the same number of staples, different diets, such as halal, are taken into consideration. People who do not have a steady address are given food that does not require access to complicated kitchen equipment but can be prepared with just some hot water.

The penultimate ‘client’ of the evening is Naima*, originally from Morocco, who speaks perfect Maltese. She is divorced and is

raising her four children on her own. Her youngest daughter, aged seven, accompanies her, and while the food pack is being prepared, she shows off her impressive acrobatic tricks and karate moves.

Naima explains how she is on the waiting list for a managerial job in a government department, but so far, she has not heard anything. This is meant to be her last visit to the food bank as she has already been through her allocated six-week assistance. But there does not seem to be any change in her financial situation and she will need to seek further help.

She takes out her reading glasses, minus the right arm, and smiles shyly. “I cannot afford to buy new ones yet,” she points out. She has strong words for ruthless landlords whom she blames for the majority of the social problems being faced by those on the breadline.

“They just raise the rents without any warning, and if you cannot pay, then you end up on the street and they simply do not care. In my country, there are laws governing how much rents can go up and how often rents can change. Here there are no laws.”

After the food bank closes for the evening, the contrast between the world outside in Valletta and the world I had just encountered, albeit briefly, within those four walls, is striking.

Just around the corner, a string of bustling restaurants were busily taking orders from happy tourists, Valletta’s bars were packed with people enjoying a post-work drink, all unaware that only a few doors away a group of people had to queue up to receive food handouts because they couldn’t provide basic necessities for their family. But apparently, it’s “the best time” for Malta.

“Maltese people as a whole really struggle to believe there are poor people in Malta. Poverty is really hidden,” points out Rev. Kim Hurst, who established the food bank three years ago.

When she took over as minister of St Andrew’s Scots Church in Valletta in the summer of 2014, Rev. Kim had already experienced running a food bank through the church in Cumbria. However, when she enquired about a similar system on the island, she was told “there is no need for a food bank in Malta; there are no poor people, the economy is good, the benefits system works and there is no unemployment.

“Then one day, the church treasurer told me he had seen someone going through the rubbish bins in Valletta and taking out fast-food cartons, looking for leftovers.

He spoke to this person, who confessed he was really struggling,” explains Rev. Kim. And that is how the idea for the food bank started.

When it first opened in June 2015, the food bank was feeding five to 10 families per week. It was intended to provide crisis care rather than long-term assistance. Within a year, as more social workers came to know about its existence and started referring more cases, Rev. Kim and her team were assisting between 20 and 30 families per week.

Today, those figures have doubled and in total the food bank has helped tens of thousands of people since it first opened its doors.

People come from all backgrounds and from a wide range of nationalities. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority are Maltese. Others include Russians, French, British, Syrians, Nigerians, Serbs, Turks, Macedonians, as well as people from Pakistan, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ghana, Iraq, Libya, to name but a few.

Occasionally, people walk off the streets asking for help. In that case, the food bank gives them enough food to last them until the next time it is open, but in the meantime, they are to seek formal help via a social worker to improve their situation.

Occasionally, they also get referrals from the human trafficking department, with cases of people who are brought to Malta with the promise of work, but end up having their passport taken away and left with nothing. There has also been an increase in the number of elderly widowed people seeking help from the food bank as their pensions and benefits are not enough to meet increasing expenses.

Quite a few of the clients are single-parent families, or those who are going through a divorce, who seek not just practical help, but also a compassionate ear to listen to their troubles.

“It makes a difference to them to have someone to talk to, especially if they can speak to another woman,” remarks Rev. Kim. “Most Maltese don’t think of me as a priest. They may ask me to pray with them, or for them, but it’s not the same as going to talk to a priest about your problems.”

Those who spoke up all declared how happy they were to be receiving help from the food bank, but not everyone feels the same way. “Some feel embarrassed, uncomfortable,” says Rev. Kim. “Others feel entitled to it. Some feel extremely grateful, especially the children. I have never been hugged by as many children in my life as I have at the food bank. They come up to me to say thank you. Some people just want to talk and share how frustrated they are with what is happening. It is good for them to be able to do so.”

Echoing Naima’s complaints about rising rents, Rev. Kim points out that she saw a spike in the number of cases referred to the food bank during the summer of 2017 because of a sudden increase in property rental prices.

“The majority of our clients were benefits related, but now we have more working poor – people who have a job, but their salary is not enough to cover expenses. We know of cases where there are three or even four generations of the same  family living together under one roof because the rent situation is so difficult,” explains Rev. Kim.

“Simply providing food does not solve the problem,” she continues. “They need help to find cheaper accommodation, to find work, to integrate better into society if, for example, they are just out of rehab.”

But why, in this day and age, should Malta even need to have a food bank in the first place? Rev. Kim sighs. “It is the case in any growing economy,” she says. “The rich get richer and the poor get ignored or pushed to the sidelines. Some of the people who are most generous to us are living one step away from a food bank themselves.

“Many people live month to month, with no savings. We have cases where bank accounts have been frozen, so people cannot access their savings.

That is where we step in to provide food. If you are a young widow or widower whose bank account has been frozen, the last thing you need to worry about is whether you can put food on the table for your children.”

Rev. Kim highlights the stigma attached to using a food bank. “People assume that if someone needs a food bank, it is their fault; that they’ve done something wrong.

“From the end of October, the number of people using the food bank increases because seasonal work will end, and suddenly, more people are out of a job. September is another tough month for families because of the additional expenses associated with the new academic year, which take up the little money they have, leaving less for food.

“In the UK, food banks have been running for a very long time and there is no stigma attached to using them as much as people feel there is in Malta. Here, you don’t see people sleeping rough on the streets as you do in other major European cities. Poverty in Malta is hidden. This makes it harder to get donations to run the food bank,” says Rev. Kim.

Indeed, sometimes the food bank has struggled to keep those grocery shelves full, and Rev. Kim argues a shift in mentality is needed to keep such an organisation going in Malta. She points out that she would rather see 10,000 people give one euro than one single big donor giving €10,000.

“That way, it gets into everyone’s mentality to buy an extra item. That makes a real difference. We have a group of ladies who meet once a month for coffee, and when they do, each one puts €5 in a pot and they use that money to buy something for the food bank. It’s the little gestures that go a long way. If everyone who is doing well could just give a little bit, it would make a big difference,” she adds.

The food bank has recently been re-launched as a foundation with a new website [www.foodbanklifeline.com] and is currently in the process of being registered as a non-governmental organisation.

“We have outgrown the church premises and the facilities we currently have. Now, we have volunteers from all different spectrums; not just members of our church. It is no longer the church’s food bank; it has become the food bank for Malta.

“As a foundation, we become independent of the church and people won’t think it is just the Scottish church feeding people,” explains Rev. Kim.

Her plan is to have a central warehouse, with different distribution centres across the island to make it easier for people to access food. However, it will all be organised centrally to minimise the possibility of people abusing the system.

“The problem of having a network of different food banks is one of data sharing. We need to ensure we are not feeding the same people,” she points out.

Meanwhile, the food bank is gearing up for its annual Christmas campaign, which last year helped to stock the shelves for several months after.

“This time last year, we were in a really vulnerable position, but the reverse advent calendar campaign was a great boost for us and it helped to run the food bank for the whole of January and February. We received 3,000 bags of pasta and we are still handing out pasta and rice from that campaign.

“There is no shame in a food bank,” repeats Rev. Kim. “Just share!”

*Names have been changed to protect the persons’ identities.

www.foodbanklifeline.com

This article first appeared in Pink magazine.