World Hunger and Poverty Blog

Guest post by Ted Kelsey, author of OLGA

I haven’t been back for a year. Yes, a year. I volunteered distributing food, and it was exactly a year ago at Thanksgiving when I handed out my last turkey.

I stopped for reasons outside of my control. My wife started working on the weekends. I needed to stay home and watch my daughter. I stopped for reasons that, if examined honestly, are more like blessings. Too much work. Too much family. Some of the very items for which I will bend my head over my tofu-rky this season.

Within a few weeks, my routine had changed. I didn’t think about waking up early on Saturdays to repack the day-old bread. I didn’t have to structure my laundry washing around when I would be finished carrying grocery bags. I didn’t have to relate so often to people who came to take. I didn’t have to wonder whether I was giving gracefully.

This cold Thanksgiving morning, I remember how easy it was to stop. Because I didn’t need to go.

But on other mornings, going to the train… on other evenings, walking along the riverfront… I see more familiar faces than before. I nod to young ones at the school bus-stop and older ones behind a cart at the pharmacy. Neighbors I didn’t know before I gave them food.

When I converted from studied atheism to Christianity at the relatively ripe age of thirty-five, I am sure that there was some shrugging from my family, as much as anyone bothers to puzzle over anybody else’s faith. I puzzled myself. Couldn’t I chose an ethos more respectfully liberal and less treacherously sanctimonious? Something more fashionable in scientific studies. Like Buddhism, for example?

I’m afraid that I was just too dense. I was so dense that I had to be told every week that the bread I eat is a person’s flesh in order to understand what it is. I had to imagine the face of sacrifice. I saw my coworkers. I saw my family and fellow church-goers. I had to imagine some of those faces from the pantry that had become familiar.

The irony is that religion doesn’t solve the problem of hunger. It never has. It doesn’t even necessarily make us do more. So what will?

Bookish Ted. At night I read a battered paperback copy of Candide I found on a shelf somewhere (after-all some books are so ubiquitous they can be found for free more often than bread) and I encounter in its pages a lame slave in Surinam who is missing one hand and one food. “It’s the price,” he tells the book’s hero, “the price that Christians in Europe pay for heaps of sugar at every meal.”

I am so typically, totally, and inescapably earth-bound, so near to despair over our powerlessness in the face of suffering. I tell myself that Buddhism changes how we breathe. Yoga changes how we move and breathe. And other faiths, other thoughts, other practices… other feats of imagination… can change how we give and take and how we eat and drink. And as I sit down to write my stories, I also repeat that phrase to myself… feats of imagination… and tell myself imagination helps us see, and transform what we see. Imagination makes us thankful for bread. It can help us taste the sacrifices invisible to our other senses.

—-

Books by Ted Kelsey

OLGA ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Guest post by Nicholas Brookland, author of No Rest for the Weary

If a certain individual has exhausted all possible means of obtaining food (this could also apply to medical equipment, shoes, tools etc) and is in desperate need of food, without which they will die, is it okay to steal the food to survive?

Or is it only frowned upon ethically and morally if the food were stolen from an equally hungry person?

Is it okay to steal food from a hungry man for a more needy woman or child? Sure, the problems that lead to such a situation need to be addressed first but for the people who are actually in the situation of ‘eat or die’ – solving the bigger issues isn’t an option and certainly not a priority.

Under what circumstances do people think stealing is ‘okay’? Is the Robin Hood scenario to be viewed with disdain when so much bureaucratic gridlock and form filling can literally delay food relief parcels by months, weeks and ever-crucial days.

—-

Books by Nicholas Brookland

No Rest for the Weary ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Guest post by Carol Jackson, author of Julie & Kishore

I clutch my mum tighter but she does not hold me back. The noise of a fire crackling close by is scary and the smell of smoke fills my nostrils. Cowering, I bury my nose into her hair. I can still hear loud bangs in the distance but they are quite far away now. Still my mum doesn’t move and I feel something liquidity and sticky on her. I am so thirsty but I try to sleep and wait for mum to wake up.
I hear human voices and quickly open my eyes, “Here is a female and a baby. I think the little one is still alive, look it’s moving.”
I feel soft hands upon me and hear a kind voice murmuring, “It’s okay little one, let’s just have a look at you. Jan, I think you should take this one…another murdered orangutan, another orphan come on let’s get him to the clinic.”
I feel hands on me, pulling me, trying to lift me off my mum. Wait! Don’t take me away from my mum. I try to wriggle free, I try to hold onto her, but the hands that are holding me are stronger, “I am so sorry little one, we have to take you with us, it is not safe for you here.”

***************************

It was my first day on the job. I was under no illusion that what I was going to face would be horrific but nothing could prepare me for the devastation I was to face. The smell of burning wood was strong, little hot spots of fire were still alight and a mist of smoke surrounded us. Stretching ahead as far I could see was bare burnt out land. This area up until very recently was acres and acres of tropical forest, home to hundreds, perhaps thousands of animals and insects. Now it is all gone. The animals that had not burnt to death were shot to ensure the area was clear for oil palm tree plantations. Palm oil is taken from the fruit of the tree and used in many household products.
I was part of a rescue team, to find animals that were still alive, get them to safety and assist with the on-going care that they would need.
I am Jan, the person who took that little baby away from its dead mother. We had not been walking far that morning and I was trying to take in just what was going on around me when one of my team saw them, the dead mother and the little body clinging onto her. His soulful, innocent eyes – the look of fear and sadness on his tiny face, to pull him from her was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. He clung desperately to his mum, how could he leave her? How could he understand?
When I first became aware of the palm oil issue, I made it my own mission to check every ingredient on every package that I bought to make sure it did not contain palm oil. But then I learnt that palm oil could be labelled as other things, so I did my research and checked for that as well. Although I was vigilant and told everyone I knew of the palm oil plight, in my heart of hearts I knew that whatever I was doing was not enough, I had to do more. I was grateful to be given the opportunity to come here and be involved. Although palm oil production is a billion dollar industry and a major export for countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, the people are suffering along with the animals. Those living on rural farms are being forced from their land to make way for oil palm tree plantations and children are forced to work in terrible conditions.
As I wrenched that little baby orangutan from his dead mother and felt his trembling body in my arms, I wiped my own tears on my sleeve. I felt his long trusting arms wrap tightly around my neck.

—-

Books by Carol Jackson

Julie & Kishore ~ View on Bookshelves | Amazon link unavailable.

Julie & Kishore ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon

Guest post by Kay Bilsby, author of Soul Dreamer

I love eating and shopping, they are two of my favourite things. I like nothing better than enjoying a well cooked meal in a good restaurant − or searching for that perfect pair of shoes to go with outfit currently residing in the bag I am carrying. To me these are the simple pleasures that my lifestyle allows.

Do I spare a though for the poor and hungry of the world while I am sating my need to consume? Of course not! The world of abject poverty and extreme hunger, is a world outside the one I live in – a world, if I’m being honest I know nothing about.

That said, I’m no more immune than the next person, to the suffering of others as depicted in the media. Show me images of dying children, overlaid by a sad song, and in that moment I care. Then the image is gone replaced by a favourite TV program, taking with it the unpalatable truth that somehow I have contributed to their plight and I do nothing.

Am I a product of the society I live in, giving only when caught up in the moment? Telethons and events that capture the attention of people like me, give us an outlet a way to congratulating ourselves that we have done our bit. Don’t get me wrong telethons work. They do an amazing job of highlighting the plight of those in need and then doing something about it. Win, win right? But when they are over, and the moment is passed, we leave that other world behind.

I understand the need for charitable organisations, each and every one of them plays a vital role. My day job is working for a large charity that exists to fight the biggest killer of people like me − Heart disease. Every day I meet people who have survived heart disease, or lost loved ones to it. It’s real tangible, something that they understand, because it’s happening to them. My point is, the choice is always subjective we support the things that mean something to us, and the closer to home the more likely we are to give.

It occurs to me, writing this confession that there is a bigger picture here. We aren’t living on a fantasy world where everything is in perfect balance and no one is denied the basic necessities of life. We are living on a small but beautiful planet, on loan to this generation to look after for the next.

Perhaps, consumers like me, who don’t have to worry where our next meal is coming from, whose lifestyle contributes to the suffering of others, should be afraid. Ultimately we are all linked, as we deplete our resources, the things that are happening in that other world, will eventually affect us all. When it does, who will we turn to for help? I have no answers, perhaps it doesn’t matter why or how we choose to help, so long as we do.

Writing this has probably done me more harm than good, but it has made me examine my own shortcomings. It is the confession of someone who has been hungry, but never known hunger. Been short of cash, but never known real poverty. Who is searching her soul to find out where she should go from here.

—-

Books by Kay Bilsby

Soul Dreamer ~ View on Bookshelves | Amazon link unavailable.

Soul Bound ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon