I talked to her for two hours, and then I asked her a question she couldn’t answer. It had to do with the operating budget, and she looked at me, frowned, and said, “You know, I don’t have that answer. Hold on.” She pulled out her cell phone and called a board member and started asking the person my question and probing for more details herself. Finally, she said to the person at the other end, “I don’t know, I didn’t get his name.” She put the phone on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, we’ll have to get back to you. Can you leave your name and phone number, and we’ll call you?”
I told her my name, and she told the board member. He brought over all the accounting books so that we could review some numbers.
Kathleen was focused on making the food bank work. We talked about how services such as this one are so vital to a community, yet often community leaders are not comfortable supporting them publicly or admitting that they even exist. It’s kind of like having the NFL’s leading punter on your football team but playing it down: because if he’s getting a lot of time on the field, you have to admit that something is wrong with your offense. Our city should be proud of a soup kitchen that serves a large number of people who are food insecure, but its existence raises the questions: Are our civic leaders doing enough to create jobs and get those who are homeless and need meals back on their feet? Are the rest of us doing what we can to help our community thrive?
That day changed and broadened my thinking yet again. If my goal was to fight global hunger, and I was serious about the word global, how could I neglect the hunger and food insecurity in my own town among my own neighbors? At this point in my life, my mother had passed away, and I sort of felt the whoosh of her spirit in the air. She had always been a big supporter of the Omaha community, particularly anything to do with children. A high percentage of food-insecure people in America are children. There were kids running around Good Sam that day. I realized I had to embrace global food security.
I committed that our foundation would help them build a new facility, but on the condition that all the members of the city council work a volunteer shift at Good Sam so that they, too, got a more complete picture of food insecurity in their town. When Kathleen worried that they wouldn’t do it, I told her to remind them that they were not going to want to face the publicity that a $1 million donation was being held up because the city council members wouldn’t roll up their sleeves for one shift.
HUNGER IN THE US IS OFTEN HIDDEN
It’s not that I didn’t realize hunger was an issue in America, but I did not appreciate how widespread and yet hidden it was. I had spent some time in Appalachia, particularly in the poorest areas of West Virginia where people struggled with hunger daily. There I took some photographs of a man named Everett, who had a deep impact on me. We were driving by his home, and he came out on his porch to retrieve the mail. He was so thin. The image stuck in my mind. I went back later in the day, found him, and struck up a conversation. Then I took some photographs of him. Everett was a veteran and on his front porch flew a flag that he proudly saluted, but he was barely surviving. He had Parkinson’s disease. After our visit, I sent him some of the pictures I’d taken. He told a representative of a local agency who had been with me and who delivered the photographs, “Tell that photographer to come back and take pictures of me in my uniform.” I wanted to do that, but a few months later, we could not find him. I later learned that Everett had died.
As I was leaving, this veteran, Everett, squeezed my hand. He put his other hand to my heart and said, “God has blessed you.” Photo: Howard G. Buffett
I was affected by this encounter. For a long time, it was hard for me to think about hunger in America without thinking of Everett. However, the local poverty of the region was so dramatic that I did not make the connection to hunger in the United States more broadly until years later, after my experience at Good Sam. It astounds me that one in six Americans is food insecure. I have learned that every county in the country, from the wealthiest suburbs to productive agricultural regions, is home to people who cannot count on eating three meals a day. Millions of families are a layoff, a personal crisis, or a serious illness away from financial trouble so severe that they could end up without enough to eat.
In the United States, food tends to be the most elastic of the monthly expenses for families. Rent, utilities, transportation costs, and insurance bills are not negotiable month to month, so for folks struggling to make ends meet, those get paid first. That’s one reason you can end up with families living in relatively nice homes or apartments, driving cars, holding down jobs, and yet with little left for food. So when Dad is laid off or Mom gets her hours cut back, families dial down their food budget and buy less costly (and typically less nutritious) food when cash is short. Or they seek other ways of supplementing their pantries through food stamps or visiting a soup kitchen or a local food bank. Food insecurity is also on the rise among older people who may have thought they were in good shape but then must decide between buying expensive medicine, a car repair, or food.
Once the Good Sam experience focused my attention, I looked for other insights into hunger in my community. I spent a Saturday going on some delivery runs with the Decatur Meals on Wheels team. We went to three different homes. I was struck first by what these three clients had in common. Their homes were neat and well kept. From the sidewalk, it was clear that the home owners had pride. You would not drive down these streets and think, “Poor people live here.”
And yet there were unique aspects to their stories and lives that I’d never thought about before. In one home, a husband and wife had moved to the area from a southern state to be near their son, yet once they arrived, he paid little attention to them. The husband never arose from bed during our visit because he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. The wife was polite and hospitable, but she had a deep sadness about her. She and her husband had worked all their lives, but now their finances were strained. She had broken her ankle sometime back and had a lot of trouble getting around. She couldn’t drive or carry much. The meal delivery was vital to them.
At the next house, the meal client was a rail-thin man chain-smoking on his porch in front of a space heater. He and his nephew and the nephew’s friend were watching a football game on a small television. The client was gracious and grateful for the food. The two young guys with him looked to be in their twenties, edgy and glassy eyed, making sarcastic, smart remarks at almost everything the client said to us. The meal client was a veteran and had had some jobs in food service, and seemed to be a good guy who deserved more respect. When we left, I wondered how much of his own meal he would get to eat.
At the last stop, we met a retired school cafeteria manager. Her house was neat as a pin, lovingly decorated. She was ninety, cheerful, sharp, and funny, with bright, merry blue eyes. She reminded me of one of my favorite people from my childhood: my warm, kind Aunt Katie. This lady’s challenge was shopping and standing to prepare a meal. She used a walker, and grocery shopping and standing at the stove to cook were physically beyond her capabilities. You don’t have to be poor to be unable to afford to pay someone to shop or cook for you; Meals on Wheels was a huge help that kept her independent and in her own home. She did confide that the nutritional rules meant she was missing one thing: the simple pleasure of some fried chicken. I dropped off a bucket of KFC the next day. She looked so delighted that it made my day. Whether you’re in Decatur or Armenia or Darfur, everyone likes to be treated as an individual and paid a little personal attention.
The foundation helped the Good Samaritan Inn construct a new building with a modern kitchen and storage capabilities, and it is an impressive operation. They have a committed and enthusiastic new director, Brenda Gorrell Pyat. Local supermarkets donate a large share of the food, so she is managing to serve three hundred people a day, on average, for about $8,000 a month.
When I last visited in 2012, Brenda said that the demand for services had been rising steadily. For roughly
one-third of the guests, this meal is the only one they get all day. I visited with a few of the patrons, including a ninety-seven-year-old man named Bob who had driven himself there for lunch. “How are you?” I asked, shaking his hand. He quipped, “Still above ground!” and gave me a thumbs-up. Bob was a World War II vet. He wore threadbare clothing and had worked for many years at the old A. E. Staley corn processing plant in town. Life was not easy for him, and this hot meal made a difference.
Sitting at a table by himself was a man whom the Good Samaritan team calls “the poet.” His name is Victor. Victor travels around with a backpack holding sheets of paper on which he writes poetry and songs. We talked for quite a while, and his story is yet another angle on hunger. He is a veteran also, and he was trained as an electrician. In fact, in the 1970s he was the first African-American electrician hired by the city of Decatur, to work on traffic lights. He told a story about how, when he used to show up to fix a broken traffic light, there would often be police directing traffic and a crowd around. When he would step forward to start to go to work, the police would often yell at him to get back. He rolled his eyes and explained, “They had no idea why a black guy would be coming at them with his tools.” Victor said that he lived for a time in California and repaired Xerox machines and made $50,000 a year. But his marriage broke up, and he started using drugs and alcohol. Recently, he was homeless for some months, as he has been several times in his life. “Drinking and using drugs,” he said. “That’ll do it.”
He showed me his poetry, and it was impressive. He was so proud of a poem he had written called “Decatur: Down But Not Out!” He was proud of his city. There was a lot of talent in this man.
Also at Good Sam that day were a number of thin, jittery clients who were likely meth users, based on the appearance of their damaged teeth. Since I began working my shifts with the sheriff’s department, I’ve had more and more exposure to the toll that drugs take on people. I don’t drink alcohol or use drugs, and I have always had trouble relating to those with addictions. Especially when they have children with them, I battle frustration and discomfort. I feel so bad about the difficult lives I imagine the children to be living, and I know this problem can affect people of all socioeconomic classes and situations. A cousin of mine died of a drug overdose. But I remind myself that staying alive long enough to conquer an addiction depends on having access to food. The children of addicts need to eat, regardless of the mistakes their parents have made.
I first got involved with the sheriff’s department because I have a deep respect for American law enforcement. I have been to so many places in the world where the rule of law is not in place. There is a different standard of treatment for the rich as opposed to the poor. In those parts of the world, poor people often cannot trust the police to do the right thing and cannot count on them for help. I wanted to understand the training and the mindset that go into creating a professional law enforcement organization.
I now have a much better appreciation for how challenging “keeping the peace” can be, even in an organized, just, and free country. But it’s also given me some new insights on how and why families are struggling, and how so many children bear a terrible burden when their parents stumble. About sixteen million children in the United States often do not know where their next meal is coming from, and a box from a food bank may be more important to them than many of us can possibly imagine.
PART 2
* * *
Bravery, Courage, and Hope
Possibly because I’m a photographer, it is always the individual faces of people that I see when I think about different facets of hunger and food security.
In this section are stories of some individuals I’ve met who make the themes and fundamental issues of food insecurity today real—some through their dedication, some through their suffering, all by their humanity. First, I’ll talk about several individuals who have experienced the physical and psychological toll hunger exacts. Next are stories about some deeply committed heroes putting their unique talents and passions to work.
Battling hunger today is a complicated enterprise that not only involves producing and distributing food but also can mean fighting ignorance, corruption, violence, and apathy. It is always difficult, and it can be dangerous.
Story 9
Loved but Lost
Photo: Howard G. Buffett
I never got her name. Her simple little string necklace and tiny bracelet made it clear that someone loved her and was trying to make her feel special even with the meager resources available in this impossibly poor village in northern Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world. The little girl’s mother had died the year before. The mood in the small, reed-walled home where she lived with her grandmother was so somber that I could not bring myself to ask too many questions.
But I did take her photograph.
It’s hard to determine her age. She looked about four, but she could have been several years older. Severe malnutrition from birth stunts a child’s growth. Her features were well defined, and the look of suffering and discomfort on her face haunts me.
I’m told that there are two classic profiles of people in the grip of starvation. This little girl had the swollen belly that we associate with protein deficiency, and it is a common sight in the most chronically hunger-plagued regions of the developing world. It can seem odd that individuals with such sticklike arms and legs have these large bellies, but it is the result of fluid that is leaking out of their bloodstream and into their tissues, resulting in edema. Blood vessels require both dietary protein and salt to maintain a healthy structure. When deprived of these essential nutrients, the vessels can’t contain the fluid, and it often gathers in the abdomen. (It also can build up in the feet or legs, especially when an individual is too weak to move very much.) Ordinarily, a healthy body clears the fluid buildup. But in these children, it remains there because the body does not have the energy to pump it back out. Because this little girl also lacked other nutrients in her diet, she had hardly any muscles on her arms and legs, and had not grown normally. None of her bodily functions performed properly, including her immune system—the body’s defense against disease.
There is another body type we associate with severe hunger, and that is one I have seen more commonly in camps where displaced persons are living as a result of famine or conflict. This body type is best described as emaciation. Photographs of concentration camp survivors after World War II show these effects: you feel as though you can count the person’s bones, and the skin can seem too big for the body. This is more common among people whose vasculature is stronger than that of children with the swollen bellies.
Both types of malnutrition are referred to as severe acute malnutrition (SAM).1
The good news is that today medical and aid personnel can reverse the damage of SAM in a child like the little girl in Niger. Modern procedures involve a simple intervention with a specially formulated food that contains the nutrients the body requires to recover and rebuild tissue. Refeeding, as it’s called, used to be done with specially formulated milk that had to be prepared and administered in a clinic for a period of five to six weeks. But in 1996, French researchers developed a new type of nourishment called RTUF, or ready-to-use therapeutic food. It consists of peanut paste, milk powder, sugar, oil, and added vitamins and minerals, and can be squeezed out of a foil packet for consumption. RTUFs (the best known is “Plumpy’Nut”) are reaching more and more children because administering them does not require trips to a clinic. Dramatic improvement typically occurs in just six to eight weeks. The nutritionists at WFP tell me that today the cost of saving a child from SAM is about $45.
The bad news is that this type of therapeutic feeding was not available to the people of this village in Niger. The little girl I photographed died a few days later.
It’s difficult to grasp the enormity of a world with almost a billion food-insecure people. It is not at all difficult for me—and now I hope it will not be
for you—to remember this face of hunger: the suffering of the little girl in Niger and the tragedy that she died from a condition we can prevent. Estimates vary, but perhaps 20 million children may be suffering from SAM in the world today, with at least one million children under age five dying from SAM every year.2
It is difficult to read about starving children. It is much worse to see this suffering in person. We can only imagine what it must be like to experience it. If we cave in to our own discomfort and look away, the pain of this little girl from Niger will continue for millions more.
Story 10
Empty Calories
The freshly picked, bright yellow ears of corn almost glowed against the dark, corrugated metal roof. Maria, an eleven-year-old Guatemalan girl, reached up high to drape them over the rafters. The family hung its corn in this manner to keep rodents from eating it and to keep air moving around it to prevent mold. By the window below, her grandmother looked out into the sun, wearing a bright green embroidered blouse made from a traditional fabric. The girl looked healthy and pretty and there was a serene expression on her face. She was focused on her task. There was no hint of a problem here. The eventual photograph I took shows a scene so calm that I feel a painful contradiction when I look at it. But I do look at it because it reminds me of a face of hunger that lives in the shadows around the world—even in our country.
In Totonicapán, Guatemala, where I met Maria, one of every sixteen children dies of malnutrition before reaching the age of five.1 So was Maria’s apparent health an aberration or the result of her family’s being better off than others were? No. Like almost all the children in the village, she had a diet consisting primarily of corn and beans. Throughout a trip I took to Guatemala in 2007 I would see many children with plump cheeks and even stocky bodies, yet I learned that they were not healthy. I would see ten-year-olds I originally thought were six-year-olds. They were not emaciated—often not even thin—but they had not had access to the right micronutrients and so were not developing in a healthy, normal way. While corn and beans are satisfying to eat, that diet does not include key micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron, and iodine.
40 Chances Page 9