This year my church’s progressive dinner was scheduled during the 24-hour famine my youth group organized to combat world hunger. The nerve! So while nine youth and five adults were starving, the rest of the congregation was indulging in a five-course meal. And we had to sleep on a hard floor that night, and our youth band had to play in the service the next morning, when all of its members were hungry and light-headed. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to complain. For one thing, our congregation helped us to surpass our $2,000 fundraising goal by more than $400. For another, I just don’t deserve to whine. I live in North America, where all youth are rich, spoiled and lazy. That, according to the World Vision Famine website (www.famine.ca), is the judgment pronounced on us by youth of other continents. Ouch. Sadly, though, I agree. We have no idea what hardship is.
To while away the hours of starvation, we learned how to live in an emerging economy country. We filled buckets with water and carried it down three flights of stairs. (We were going to carry it a kilometre from the lake to the church, but it rained so we stayed inside. See? We’re wimps.) Then it was time to see about our food for the day. Equipped with flat stones, dishtowels and grains of corn, we set about. An hour later, six of us working constantly had produced about a cup of cornmeal mixed with rock dust, as well as several holey towels. Other empathetic exercises had varying levels of success. During our downtime we talked about the hard facts of world hunger. And I mean hard. These numbers aren’t the easiest things in the world to hear.
Hunger does not have to exist. We have the available land. We have the excess food. We have the technology to grow and transport huge quantities of it. We have the money. Yes, we do. In North America, we spend $100 billion US on fast food every year. We spend $25 billion US on pet food every year. And yet, we spend only $18 billion US on foreign aid.
We don’t like to think about those statistics. After all, what are we supposed to do? Stop feeding our pets? Hardly. We do, however, have to recognize that solutions are possible. There is, on this earth, enough food for every person to have at least 4.3 lbs of it each day. That amount would easily make most of us fat. Why, then, are 800 million people still suffering from malnutrition?
There aren’t any easy answers here. We know that the balance between the rich and the poor has to be evened. We know that smaller farms with hands-on practices can produce four or five times more than industrial farms, but that more and more small farms are being bought out or depleted. We know these things, but we don’t know how to solve them. Overwhelmed with numbers and guilt trips and images of starving children, it becomes all too easy to just block everything out. I’m guilty of it myself. Even after giving up food for a day and doing my best to experience the reality of my less fortunate brothers and sisters, I still feel inadequate. I’d love to just pretend I’ve done my share and forget about it, but I know I can’t. In the end, I guess there’s one question I have to ask myself: Can I stomach world hunger?
I still think it’s funny that my youth group fasted through the progressive dinner. I love the irony of it, but it’s also a chilling parallel pointing to a very real situation in the world. Participating in the famine made me realize several very important things: Firstly, I am incredibly lucky to live where I do. Here, I always have the choice of finding something to eat. Secondly, I am extremely grateful for my healthy food and clean water. I am not in any danger of dying from malnutrition. Lastly, I don’t think ‘farmer’ should be on my list of career goals. I’m really terrible at grinding corn.
