During the last few months, I finished two historical novels that profiled ordinary people in the French Resistance and Americans who, in desperation and without work, traveled to Russia during the Great Depression in search of better prospects promised by advertisements in The New York Times. Different times, people, and places, but I couldn’t help but be moved and burdened with the abject hunger that serves as perhaps the most significant protagonist of all. There were too many passages in both novels that chronicled the ques of hungry people waiting for hours for whatever they could buy that day. A quarter pound of butter, an onion or potato, a wedge of cheese. There was no shopping for what you needed or wanted; there was only waiting and hoping that the day’s ration would be something to fill their empty bellies. There were too many descriptions of the persistent wasting-away, of the lethargy and hopelessness that comes from weeks of subsisting on broth, of the living who were daily dying. Both novels left me with a literal pit in my stomach and images that I will not soon forget.
I recalled similar passages in other works I had read. Hunger is always a major character in Holocaust works. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he writes:
Bread, soup – these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.
To be reduced to a body, a starved stomach. To trade your dignity for a piece of bread, your soul for soup. I cannot imagine the injuries that hunger inflicts on on body and soul, for I have never been so hungry that my next meal was my whole life.
We want to feed the souls of those who hunger, and we acknowledge, as Pranab Mukherjee argues, that there is no humiliation more abusive than hunger. We understand, however, that we must first feed their stomachs. Mahatma Gandhi writes:
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
The truest missionaries bring God to the hungry in the form of bread or cassava root or corn. They truly see those who wear hunger draped over their shoulders, a dreary moth-ridden cassock to hide their skeletal forms. They work lovingly from the stomach to the soul. And they never underestimate or forget the miraculous ways God works through bread.
But so many are ravaged by seasons of hunger. During my trip to Nigeria, I saw children who could have benefited from some meat on their bones. Literally. Distended bellies, upper arms and legs you could close your hand around, and clothing that hung much too loosely from their frail frames. For three weeks, I was habitually hungry because I didn’t like Nigerian food and chose to eat little. But the Nigerians were habitually hungry because they didn’t have enough food to eat. I had access to food; they didn’t. I would return to America and order a cheeseburger and fries on my first night back; they would share want with their brothers and sisters most nights.
And yet, it was this very hunger that drove them to the maize fields outside their villages, to the river for clean water, to the market to barter for whatever they can get. This hunger drives parents to spend precious naira on uniforms that will admit their children to private schools where they will spend their days in open air classrooms equipped with crude wooden tables and a single chair for every two students, with teachers who painstakingly write all they know and wish to impart on cracked chalkboards that serve as the only textbooks their students will ever know. No electricity for lights or computers–just the pressing hope that these children will find a better life with three meals a day, modern conveniences, and access to quality health care that will save their children’s teeth and eyes and lives. In the face of unimaginable unemployment, governmental corruption, and the brutal terrorism of Boko Haram, this hunger drives their dreams and fuels their hope. This is a hunger that both haunts and blesses them.
Where is this hunger in our country? In Africa, it enveloped me and left indelible scars on my soul and psyche. And though I occasionally see it in my own schools and community, I have never see anything of the magnitude I saw in Africa. Here, we staff soup kitchens and missions, food pantries and backpack programs, open our churches, schools, and community centers for free meals. We feed people. I have no doubts that most of these folk are hungry, but as we feed their stomachs, I can’t help but wonder if they hunger for more.
Do they hunger for the dignity and financial security that comes from work, any type of work? Do they hunger for the privilege to be educated? Do they hunger for their children’s futures? Does their hunger both haunt and bless them as it does for others in third world countries?
Whereas most will not turn away a free meal, many may turn away from other opportunities, including educational opportunities. I recall being at a regional meeting during which a college official addressed the high school administrators in attendance by saying Just send us some kids–any kids–and we’ll get them through our technical programs. And so my high school did. The young men we sent ultimately stopped attending classes, did not get through, and almost did not graduate high school. They were handed a tremendous free opportunity by those who intended to get them through using whatever means they had to use. But when they stopped attending classes, even the well-intentioned college officials had no choice but to fail them. In the end, these young men were not hungry enough to eat what was given to them. I suppose they were holding out for a better meal served on china–not plastic.
Did my students hunger to learn, to prepare themselves for a life beyond school? As I ended my career, I found that the most hungry were often students whose parents and guardians hungered for them. These adults were those who invested time and energy into their children’s educations, who sacrificed greatly for their children’s futures, and who harnessed and used their own hunger for the benefit of their children’s bodies and souls. The hunger that had haunted their own past lives blessed their children’s future lives.
Clearly, if it were within my power, I would feed all those who are truly starving. Then I would provide the necessary training, education, infrastructure, and economic means for all able-bodied individuals who wish to work and feed themselves and their own families. And finally, I would feed their souls. This would take care of much of the world’s hunger.
And for my own country?Again, I would feed those who are truly hungry. But then, if it were in my power, I would create a genuine hunger for the dignity of work, for true education, and for service to others. I would work so that more could experience the potential blessing of hunger and not just the curse.
Novelist George Eliot writes:
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.
Many of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world have not given up longing and wishing. They hunger for food, for better lives, for the beautiful and good. The fact that they hunger is both tragic and inspiring.
As I look around my community and country, I want all children’s bellies to be full. But I think we could do with some real hungering for the beautiful and good, as well as a keener appetite for educational opportunities, employment training, and generally improving one’s lot in life. This is the hunger that blesses, and we could really use some hunger of this sort.
Footnote: Thousands of Americans migrated to Russia in 1931. Destitute and desperate for employment, housing, and benefits promised by Russian advertisements in The New York Times, they left their homeland for a Worker’s Paradise. Once there, most were stripped of their passports and eventually accused of counter-revolutionary acts in Stalin’s totalitarian state. They worked and starved; they lived in fear and want. Many were sent to prison or were executed. Antonio Garrido gives his account of this migration in his historical fiction novel, The Last Paradise. Through this novel, I learned of the terrible hunger that Americans suffered–hunger for food, for heat, for protection from the Russian secret police and Stalin’s regime, and finally for a safe return to America.
