The Hunger Next Door - Essay Example

The Hunger Next Door "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for life". This popular saying (and the fish icon) employed by many international food aid programs, mirrors the compassion Jesus showed to the people who came to Him in the deserts of Judea, when he prayed over five loaves of bread and two fish, and fed thousands with the multiplied result. Not only did he feed their physical hunger, but also their spiritual hunger, empowering them with words of healing and life (Scofield Bible III, NIV Mark 8: 1-9). Today, despite the fact that many "Christian" countries have more than five loaves and two fish, they turn a blind eye to the physical and emotional needs of the hungry multitudes in poorer countries. As George Michael vividly shows in his 1990 song "Praying for Time", "These are the days of the hungry man", with 25 000 thousand daily dying of hunger and 852 million living without adequate food (WFP 2006) - more than the combined populations of the USA, Canada, the EU. While we sit at our tables and splurge on chicken by "Mac" and "Kentucky"; pork ribs and rind; garden and crunchy slaw salads; baked, mashed and fried potatoes, and more, thousands of people in Calcutta are eating lentil stew for their unique daily meal. While our children drink twenty ounces of soda and juice everyday, countless children in Bangladesh would give - and sometimes do give - an arm and a leg for a mouthful of clean water. While we have the luxury of dieting, vegetarianism, anorexia and bulimia, hundreds of people in Darfour only have aid rations spooned out under refugee tents or dropped from whirring helicopters. While we can pick, choose and refuse from the confusion of cow's milk, goat's milk, soy milk and rice milk, undernourished mothers in Ethiopia weep in despair over drooping desiccated breasts that have not even an ounce of human milk for their famished babies. It is impossible to wrap one's mind around the 518 billion dollars of US military expenditure in 2005 (Wikipedia 2006): money that could provide food aid to the entire population of hungry, malnourished and undernourished peoples for five hundred years! When we sit and eat our "dollar meals", we don't stop to think that around the world, 1.2 billion people have to survive on only the cost of that meal per day (BOL 2006). Our mindless lavish spending - 400 dollars for an iPod to listen to hours of music, or for a PSP2 to play hours of games - we are oblivious to the fact that the cost of those now-simple pleasures could provide much needed food, employment and medication to four families for a month. Instead, as George Michael bemoans, "The rich declare themselves poor/ and most of us are not sure/ if we have too much, but we'll take our chances/ 'cause God stopped keeping score." Except in the rare music video or news telecast, we no longer are confronted with pictures of pot-bellied children in the shanty towns of Jakarta or Bogot with sore-ravished oversize heads and squall on their mouths who squat by slum drains drinking fly- and disease-infested water just meters downstream from where dead animals lay, women wash dirty clothes, and men dump pails of urine and feces. We cannot imagine the trauma of the 800 million undernourished people eking out an existence in India, China, Africa, Asia, Latin America (WFP 2006), buffeted on all sides: poverty on the right, natural disasters on the left, AIDS, dysentery, typhoid from the front, and ethnic, civil and religious wars from behind. We sometimes purge our consciences with token telethons and all-star songs. Yet for the most part we sit in our comfortable bubbles, isolated and insulated from the suffering multitudes outside our windows and inside our television sets. As George Michael points out, "These are the days of the empty hand/ Oh you hold on to what you can/ And charity is a coat you wear twice a year". Every day we pass hungry people with outstretched palm on the sidewalk as we zing by in our rose-tinted Benzes and Escalades. 'Superstars' have padded charity organizations that contribute to humanitarian efforts, but mostly to "middle-class" problems like breast cancer and Alzheimer's. Very few try to lend a cash-filled hand to poverty, sickness and hunger. While many are quick to march for the rights of gays, few march for hunger; while many are quick to cry out against war, few will cry out against hunger. While presidents are willing to send millions of US dollars and a hundred-thousand man army to rid the world of the scourge of a dictator, not one will do the same to rid the world of the scourge of hunger. While governments around the world stock up on Tamiflu and spend millions in preventative advertising against a disease that has so far only limited effects on human life, not one is making radical moves towards curbing the spread of hunger. And it will spread. Already hunger is crawling insidiously from the slums and shanty towns into our cities and back yards. It is inching across international borders with the millions of displaced peoples. It is snaking its way across our once-lush agricultural lands as we carelessly destroy the ozone in perpetuating our lavish wasteful lifestyles, and deplete our natural resources as well as those of our poorer neighbors. Indeed, while we think that hunger and poverty are "over there" and "next door", if we continue to ignore the effects of and our responsibility in eradicating war, AIDS, poverty and social and political instability, we will soon "find that what was over there is over here", as George Michael warns. Helping others is helping ourselves. Investing in the eradication of world hunger and its causes not only benefits the poorer countries of today, but will help to sustain our current wealth and resources and prevent poverty and hunger tomorrow. Let's learn to love our neighbors as ourselves (Lev. 18:19), for when called to account, we will be among those who hear the words: "For I was hungry and you gave me food" (Matt 25: 35a) (FFTP 2006). Works Cited "About the World Food Program". World Food Program. 2006. United Nations World Food Program. 10 May 2006. Food for the Poor. 2006. Food for the Poor. 10 May 2006. . "International Hunger Facts. Bread for the World. 2006. Bread for the World. May 10, 2006. . "List of Countries by Military Expenditure". Wikipedia. 10 May 2006. . Michael, George. Praying for Time. Sony BMG, 1990. The Scofield Study Bible III, New International Version. Oxford, Oxford UP: 2004. Read More