Gleaning a Little Extra Food for Those in Need

I grew up hearing about hungry children in places like Bangladesh and Ethiopia. There were ads on television asking for funds to help feed these faraway children with swollen bellies and sunken eyes - children who seemed so weak they wouldn't move to brush away the flies that landed on them. Popular musicians were writing songs about their suffering, and school kids were donating their lunch money to pay for food, clean water and medical care.

Hunger was a phenomenon that belonged elsewhere. Not in Canada, nor in the United States, where everyone had a nice house and a Daddy who worked hard to put a roof over their heads and food on the table. We all had new schools, and shiny bikes with banana seats, and new clothes and shoes that our Moms bought even before we outgrew the ones we already owned. We went to bed with full bellies every night, because no one in North America ever went hungry.

Obviously, reality was a little different for other kids. Probably some of them were my neighbours. Maybe some went to school hungry in the morning, or climbed into bed with that gnawing feeling in their bellies, that comes just as much from worrying about where the next meal will come from as it does from the physical hunger itself.

There is hunger in North America, even today. Perhaps more now than when I was a child.

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Photo: © Spedona (Wikimedia Commons)