Do your thoughts ever get sidetracked in the middle of the day with where you will go out to dinner tonight? Will it be gourmet, a chain restaurant, or even better, will you cook one of your childhood favorites? Regardless of the decision, your choices are endless…and we Westerners love that! We love variety and eating till we think we’ll pop. Food is not just a requirement in our lives; it has become a social institution, a way we stay connected to old friends and an outlet to make new ones. Food has become a luxurious indulgence to many.
That is not the case in Malawi, Africa. Meals offer no variety and are very repetitive, that is if they even get to eat the amount of food that they should. While we were there last month, we lived with a local family. Rose, the lady of the house, cooked all of our meals so, of course, we paid them for that. We were fed a feast in the eyes of any Malawian. We had potatoes or rice, green beans or tomatoes, and sometimes even a little piece of chicken. We were amazed because nobody who lives in Malawi eats meals like that. They eat seima, a thick consistency of maize flour and water, for every meal.
The people of Malawi depend on good weather. If there is a not much rain in a year’s time, starvation rates sky rocket. And 2005 was one of the worst years in their history of food shortages. The population has more than tripled in the past few years, and eighty-five percent of Malawians remain subsistence farmers, struggling to make it with primitive means and extremely exposed to huge food shortages in years when the rains come too early, too late or barely at all. The years the rains come, they eat in plenty and the years it does not, they barely eat at all.
Maize is the staple of the Malawian diet. Over eighty percent of the people depend on this crop in order to survive. Even though the rainfall is not stable from one year to the next, less than one percent of the land is irrigated within the country; thus making survival on the agriculture that much more difficult. Hunger is everywhere. Daily children would run up to me and ask for food or money. I would give an apple if it was in my purse, but that is only one mouth. I cannot save the starving nation. One out seven people in the developing world suffers from hunger. The amazing thing is that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone over four pounds of food every day, but we are not doing it. People are dying every day because they are starving when they don’t have to.
Would you help stop others from dying an unnecessary death? Will you help feed the mouths of helpless children? The organization, Stop Hunger Now, is doing just that in Malawi and countries all over the world. Stop Hunger Now is an international hunger relief organization that coordinates the distribution of food and other life-saving aid around the world. You can partner with S.H.N. and by doing so, no longer stand for this injustice. You can obviously donate, or even partner with them in more creative ways. Host a food packaging event or buy a t-shirt that by purchasing feeds 25 people. My favorite is goodsearch.com or goodshp.com. Goodsearch.com is a search engine that donates half of its advertising revenues to the charity of your choice. Or goodshop.com is an online shopping that donates up to thirty-seven percent of each purchase to your favorite cause. They have over 600 great stores including Target, Macy’s, Barnes and Noble, etc. Shopping online never sounded so good!
So check out the difference Stop Hunger Now is making at: http://www.stophungernow.org.

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