New Zealanders are fuming at an Australian man and his German girlfriend, who have revealed on Instagram that they’ve been backpacking around NZ without spending any money. How? By lining up with local homeless people at soup kitchens, of course.
Enoch Orious and partner Anna Karg posted details of their scheme on their Instagram, @freefrommoney, telling a supposed-to-be-heartwarming with apparently zero self-reflection about how they met a homeless bloke while lining up at the Sisters of Compassion Soup Kitchen in Wellington and gave him $50. While still partaking of the free grub on offer, obviously.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Be46jYflWfd/?utm_source=ig_embed
Their charity-scamming has been universally panned by commenters on Insta, and has even attracted the ire of a Wellington city councillor, who told Newstalk ZB:
I don’t think it’s appropriate to be using soup kitchens or social services just because you want to be able to travel around on the cheap.
He made a distinction between what Orious and Karg are doing, and the arrangements some soup kitchens have with tourists who offer help in exchange for food – which, just so we’re absolutely clear, is not what the couple were doing at all.
While Sisters of Compassion Soup Kitchen manager Karen Holland said that she did not have a problem serving the backpackers, saying, “We offer hospitality to whoever comes, we ask no questions, and we treat everybody with a great deal of respect,” she also said that she understood where Wellingtonians‘ anger was coming from.
I think that they feel that it is a sign of disrespect when people that can afford to buy food come and take advantage – but we at the soup kitchen can’t allow ourselves to feel that way.
Karen Holland is a saint, but I am not, and as such I can say without reservation that going to a soup kitchen when you’ve merely decided that you don’t want to spent the significant amount of money that you have is a serious dog act, regardless of how much New Age twaddle you couch it in. Pay for your food, ya jerks.
