Five Minutes of Hunger

Hunger is the desecrated mother of malnutrition, famine, and starvation. Most times these terms mean nothing to us, they are so foreign, and they float in the airwaves and don't touch us. They are so far from our reality that they have become just a frail echo pathetically distorted by the distance and by the frantic speed of our lives.

But what is hunger really? Is it a picture of malnourished children from a country lost on the globe? Is it the waiting of a vulture to descend on the starving children shadowed by death? or is it our own selfish indifference towards this human disgrace?

On June 19, 2009, the number of malnourished people in the world hit 1 billion. We are 6.7 billion humans in the planet, that means that 1 of every 6 humans is swiftly walking towards death now.

However, about 83% of the people living on the planet do not have a clue of what hunger is. And that is because we are shielded by our social conditions and the fortune of living afar from hunger. This is good. It is very good. Perhaps from the security of our circumstances we could peek five minutes into hunger, and this might change our views of it, and perchance we are moved to save one life. Just one life. No more than one life. If only 1/5 of us rescue one person each from the claws of hunger, we can surely defeat it.

It all starts with malnutrition. Malnutrition is just an alien term to identify a condition caused by improper diet or nutrition. Famine is silently and painfully slowly making the rounds for an opportunity. Famine, the widespread scarcity of food that applies to any faunal species, is another extraterrestrial word to explain a phenomenon usually accompanied by regional epidemic and increased mortality. Then starvation settles in. This is the King of human suffering, and it is not a word; it is a blind punishment, is the state of exhaustion of the body caused by lack of food. This stage is when we stare death straight in the eyes for the last time. There is no more wait; it is the point of no return.

On average, an adult dies every 3.6 seconds, and a child under five dies every 5 seconds as a direct or indirect effect of poor nutrition. Your pet probably eats more in one day than most of these people in a week.

While you were watching my 5-minute desperate call to the human senses with this intruding and disturbing cry out from the hard bottom of my deep heart; 83 adults and 60 children died of malnutrition. That makes 143 human beings dead in five minutes. How many geniuses did we lose? How many leaders will we not have? How many scientists will not be able to lend us a hand in the future? How many good people died today that could have helped with this problem? We will never know, nevertheless, we can save many more from this gloomy destiny.

Yes, I also feel bad and cry about this problem, but I don't stop there; I am trying to do something about it, so I am appealing to you to help me. Not me, them. There are plenty of organizations combating the hunger problem, but they need your critical help. Before you make a decision, take a look at one of your kids, look at any child, imagine them with a healthy smile, then reach deep into your sensible heart and make a small donation to the hunger charity of your choice. I know that a hungry child will appreciate it!

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpg116rGawM

Thank you.