Title : I'm Starving
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I'm Starving
Take the population of the entire United States, then double it and even add an extra 100 million people to the equation. Got that? Every man, woman and child in the U.S. times two and then some. That's the most recent figure (815 million) from a United Nations study as to the number of people in the world who are hungry or starving each day...each day! It's a phrase one hears almost casually, that we're starving; and generally we utter those words when feeling a bit hungry (or peckish, as my wife would say) but far from actually starving; for indeed few of us have ever experienced --or thankfully will likely ever experience-- true starvation even if we acknowledge that it is happening in the world. Certainly after a disaster, the monsoons or the hurricanes that hit the Caribbean and the Florida Keys which reeked havoc with water and food. But even there, boats and some supplies are coming are coming in and the threat of facing death by starvation is remote. Back up just over a hundred years and famine struck hard due to drought; author Mike Davis in his book Late Victorian Holocausts (winner of the World History Association Book Award) estimated India, China and Brazil alone lost 30 to 60 million people due to starvation during that period.When we think of hunger, especially world hunger, the pictures and appeals seem so constant that they almost become dulling, even as they remain a cause so vital and a reality so massive that solving the crisis seems to be futile. What could we possibly do to help such a monumental problem, one affecting so many that we might just as well ignore the problem and heave our leftovers into the disposal. Look, a buffet just up the road. And despite good intentions and the trucks of water that arrive and the cargo planes of food that are dropped, what happens when rebel soldiers or corrupt militaries take the food or prevent it from being distributed? It's happening now, again, in Somalia, in the Congo, in many other parts of the world. Pastoralists (a word one doesn't hear much but one which represents the lifestyle of a rather large segment of the world) and subsistence farmers are at the mercy of the winds and seas and rains...and also the rulers and fighters off in some distant land. Here's how Ben Ehrenreich put it on his report in The London Review of Books: Pastoralism accounts for around 70 per cent of Somaliland’s economy and employs about the same proportion of its population of around 4.5 million. Goats and sheep are the primary form of capital, and fundamental to the culture: not just a source of milk and meat, but of autonomy, pride and the freedom to live as one chooses. Animals can be sold for cash or exchanged for rice, flour, medicine, water, transport, clothes. A sheep or goat fetches around £75, a camel more than £500. The Berbera blackhead is a prized breed throughout the Arabian peninsula and millions of sheep are shipped each year across the Gulf of Aden. A family with ten camels and a few hundred goats possesses real wealth, and access to the global economy, even if they are living in a dirt-floor hut roofed with branches and a quilt of stitched rags. But all this has changed...It isn’t clear if the current crisis will result in a catastrophe of comparable scale (as that of the famine that struck India, China and Brazil), but given the pace of climate change it would be odd if it didn’t. In Africa and the Middle East, it is already creating a vast surplus population that is no longer able to survive in the economy as it stands. Those who have sufficient resources to make the journey are migrating north to Europe and west to North America. Those without keep moving until there is nowhere left to go.
It is indeed difficult to imagine being truly hungry; even a long drive in a remote area in a car gives us little discomfort for soon --perhaps in an hour or so-- a gas station or a local cafe will appear, or we can reach back and grab that bag of snacks being kept cool in our cooler. But true hunger, the type where your stomach begins to hurt and your tongue begins to stick to the roof of your mouth, those stories become just that, stories; they're not meant to be lifestyles or to last for years or to leave you with the image of your child or grandmother passing away like a bony animal on the side of the road. It is something most of us simply cannot envision, and certainly not something we would think of as being done on purpose to others. So imagine reading Alex de Waal's piece in the same magazine titled "the return of famine as a weapon of war." Here's how he begins his article: In its primary use, the verb ‘to starve’ is transitive: it’s something people do to one another, like torture or murder. Mass starvation as a consequence of the weather has very nearly disappeared: today’s famines are all caused by political decisions, yet journalists still use the phrase ‘man-made famine’ as if such events were unusual...Over the last half-century, famines have become rarer and less lethal. Last year I came close to thinking that they might have come to an end. But this year, it’s possible that four or five famines will occur simultaneously. ‘We stand at a critical point in history,’ the head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the former Tory MP Stephen O’Brien, told the Security Council in March, in one of his last statements before stepping down: ‘Already at the beginning of the year we are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations.’ It’s a ‘critical’ point, I’d argue, not because it is the worst crisis in our lifetime, but because a long decline – lasting seven decades – in mass death from starvation has come to an end; in fact it has been reversed. Last year, he noted, the famine in Ethiopia was averted only due to the UN feeding 18 million people starving. So we're back to that number, a number that has now jumped nearly 50 fold...815 million. How can that be? But even more disturbing was the article's tone of the purposeful use of famine to either control or to eliminate populations. Think about it...if you were the strongest and healthiest resister to what you felt was happening to your land or country, but you were hungry --no, not hungry but starving-- what good would you be as a fighter...weakened both physically and mentally, you'd likely soon capitulate or be willingly captured. It happened at Masada and during a variety of wars (most notably, the sinking of cargo ships bringing supplies in WWII) and was a well-known tactic of Caesar, General Sherman, and other military leaders throughout history who isolated cities or burned crops behind them or poisoned wells; today's adaptation might find politicians ordering or continuing sanctions or sending in distant air strikes in the hopes that such methods will prove effective. Whatever the strategy (a word overused, according to a piece in Esquire) the attempts usually exempt the wealthy leaders and decimate the peasants and the local (generally unconcerned) population. The 815 million people will likely not be you or I, or the Congressional "leaders" or celebrity sports figures (on a side note, it was interesting to read about the annual stipends granted to the thousands of members of the royal family of Saudi Arabia as reported in the London Review of Books: The Al Saud are a royal family like no other: there are thousands of them, descending from the 22 wives Ibn Saud had while technically observing the Sharia requirement of four wives – max – at any one time...The trouble, presently, is that his descendants all expect their emoluments. The scale of this burden can be gauged from a classified cable sent by Wyche Fowler, then US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to his government in November 1996, exposed by WikiLeaks, in which he reports that members of the Al Saud family receive stipends ranging from $270,000 a month for more senior princes to $8000 ‘for the lowliest member of the most remote branch of the family’. The system is calibrated by generation, with surviving sons and daughters of Ibn Saud receiving between $200,000 and $270,000, grandchildren around $27,000, great-grandchildren around $13,000 and great-great-grandchildren the minimum $8000 per month. According to the US embassy’s calculations, in 1996 the budget for around sixty surviving sons and daughters, 420 grandchildren, 2900 great-grandchildren and ‘probably only about 2000 great-great-grandchildren at this point’ amounted to more than $2 billion, with the stipends providing ‘a substantial incentive for royals to procreate’ since – in addition to bonuses received on marriage for palace construction – a royal stipend begins at birth.) Those truly starving or watching their children go to bed hungry night after night will be those hidden in the shadows, figures the news and society keeps carefully concealed as if the problem doesn't exist, and apparently neither do those hungry faces.
One can look in almost any direction and find people and causes needing help. I recently attended a fundraiser for Second Chance for Homeless Pets, a local group now in its 18th year; its owner/founder/operator is one of the most dedicated and selfless individuals who runs her bare-bones operation with panache, taking in and treating animals from everywhere, not only locally but from outside jurisdictions including reservations and even the recent hurricanes in both Houston and Florida. Speaking to the group attending the fundraiser she brought up that exact subject, that this wasn't a time to choose one group or another because so many groups need help and all are struggling just to make it through this period of time. Those that can afford to stretch their giving a bit might want to think about that she said as she thanked everyone for attending, for now is a time when so many people and animals and other genuinely important causes need help. And it is at such a function that you can witness the giving, the donations of goods and services (I had donated some of the art pieces that sat in my basement benefiting nobody only now they would bring in some needed funds and grace the walls of someone in the process). Plane tickets, admission to events, expensive beauty supplies, meals...the amount of donors and donations was inspiring, even as I sat with another friend whose own fundraiser was happening in just two weeks (she runs an animal group that benefits people hospitalized or needing additional recovery time). There are so many groups, she told me, but smaller groups like hers and this one can't really match with the larger organizations (I had mentioned that following her fundraiser was the one for our local Planned Parenthood which already had over 500 people planning to attend...the one I was at, my first, had about 90).
So what to do? As the mail and fund drives fill your inbox and mailbox, how do you sort through it all. One small change might be something along the lines of Nike's catch-phrase of "just do it." It's a group called Do Something, and yes they're targeting hunger as just one of their causes. Simple, effective, and a means of putting the ball back in your court. Let's face it, we all throw food away either down the disposal or by being too full to eat anymore...the family gathering, the buffet, the wedding. Sometimes even the everyday meal. And think of how fortunate we are. In Yemen, recent fighting has not only disrupted food supplies but also water supplies and now 5000 people become sick with cholera each day, according to the World Health Organization. We can read about such numbers, or watch the devastated homes from Irma and Maria; but we also need to recognize just how fortunate we are, for we can shake our heads and still walk away, unscathed and unaffected. We can still feel hungry and ask when dinner will be ready or whether we should go out. We can still turn on the tap and drink the water and later even flush the toilet. We can even write a check. Sometimes numbers and pictures and flyers overwhelm us; but behind many struggling organizations are even more struggling people and animals often too weak or too devastated to ask for help directly. Sometimes we just need to be aware of that, that we are fortunate to just be on the "other" side and able to make some decisions...we need to realize that that alone is a blessing.
Addendum: When I last wrote about Sam Kean's book on our breath and air, I forgot to mention a few tidbits that were thrown in at the end (he even recommends reading the variety of things which he was unable include in the book and had to relegate to his end notes). Here's was just one...remember that beautiful but horrifying image of the hydrogen bomb test carried out in the Bikini atoll? Here's a glimpse if you forgot:
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| Operation Crossroads "Baker" -- Photo: Nat'l Nuclear Security Adm. |
In that image, the explosion from 90 feet underwater vaporized 3 million cubic feet of ocean water into steam and sent up a 2-million gallon fountain of water that was 2000 feet wide and 6000 feet tall (the original planned site for the test was the Galapagos Islands). And that was that, right? Or that's what I thought. As Kean points out, the testing continued...66 more bombs were tested over a 12-year period, the equivalent of "1.6 Hiroshimas per day over twelve years." But the natural disaster of Krakatoa blowing its top back in 1883 created pressure waves that: ...continued to circle the Earth for five days. The noise wasn't audible any longer, of course, but cities as distant as Toronto and London kept recording fluctuations in their barometers every thirty-four hours (thirty-four hours being the time it takes for sound to circle the globe). And there was more...talk about overwhelming!
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