Hunger

I'm always disturbed when I hear children in a grocery store in any upper or middle class American neighborhood exclaim, "I'm starving!" as a ploy to get their parent to grab a box of whatever snack is in arms reach to satiate and silence the child. It disturbs me more when that's exactly how the parent responds.

Let me tell you the story of Eva, a woman now in her 60's, who grew up as one of eight children in a fishing village in a Southeast Asian country. Her family was so poor they could not afford fuel for a fire to cook rice. They would put rice and water in a covered bucket in the sun during the day, then set it in a corner overnight to let it ferment until it was soft enough to eat. The fish they caught were usually sold to get money to buy clothing which was handed down as the children grew. Coconuts and bananas were available for the picking when they were in season. Sometimes they would barter for more expensive staples, like eggs. Five eggs could be scrambled and portioned to share among the ten family members.

Eva knew what starving feels like. The memory affected her so deeply that when she married and had her own children in the United States, she would wake them up at 2:00 AM to feed them steak and pork chops and rice--cooked in an electric rice maker. She believed that children inherently woke up with terrible hunger pangs in the middle of the night, because that was her experience. Her hunger was never sated because she lived in abject poverty. It never occurred to her that her own middle of the night hunger was a result of malnutrition.

Although statistics vary and accuracy is difficult, it is believed that one out of every five children in the United States lives below the poverty level. That's about twenty percent. That is abysmal.
This article from the Washington Post lays out a problem with food costs. If you don't have a car or can't afford gas, you can't get to at a big box discount retailer or grocery mega mart. Groceries at a corner store usually cost at least twice as much as those larger chains. The Washington Post article cites a Safeway on Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda, where the wheat bread costs $1.19, and white bread is on sale for $1. A gallon of milk costs $3.49 -- $2.99 if you buy two gallons. At the Safeway there are multiple brands of bread and milk (and everything else) to choose from, at least one of which is usually on sale. Conversely, at a local corner store the white bread is $3, the wheat bread is almost $4, and the gallon of milk is $5. Produce, if it is available, is prohibitively expensive and typically not fresh.

One thing that has struck me about the children I've met who live in poverty is that they rarely complain about being hungry. They have learned that there isn't food to be had, and that bringing it up to an adult can result in a reaction ranging from anger to sadness.

Prolonged hungriness can root itself deeply in the memory of a child, creating a permanent place of emptiness that he or she will carry through life.

There is a story I once heard about sleeping with bread. Some of the children who were orphaned in Europe during the bombing raids of World War II could not sleep in the orphanages and refugee camps where they were taken in. Someone tried giving them bread to hold at bedtime. The children realized that although they had lost their families, their homes, their communities, and all that was familiar to them, they had at least eaten that day, and would eat again the next day. Only then they were able to sleep.

Hunger is difficult to explain to a child, and the memory of it can be impossible to lose.

Economic times are hard right now, but if you have access to the internet to read this blog post, you are most likely not starving. Wherever you live, please believe me when I say there is a child not far from you who is truly hungry. Please consider making a donation to Feeding America, or to picking up some extra staples the next time you head out to your mega mart grocery store or big box warehouse discount store to donate to your local food bank.

And if you are one of millions of Americans trying to figure out how to feed your family in these challenging economic times, there is help: food banks, National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and summer meals for kids, Supplimental Nutrition Asistance Programs (SNAP), WIC, and other forms of assistance.

If you've got a few moments to spare, click on over to freerice.com where you can play some multiple choice games on subjects like art, geography, English vocabulary and grammar. For every right answer you get, a portion of rice will be donated to the UN World Food Program.