Concerning hunger season, water babies and other random facts

About two weeks ago, the winds arrived, cool and steady, stirring up huge piles of dust and blowing through the trees and houses in an ominous manner. Then the rain started falling and falling and falling and it forgot to stop, washing away all the dust off the trees, roads, and buildings and turning my little part of Rwanda green again. Rainy season arrived at last, God bless it.

Rainy season means several things. To me, it means no more dust covering my clothes and possessions whenever I travel, no more dust in my throat and cooler weather. To the farmers, this is around the time they start planting and replenishing their food for the rest of the year. Rwanda has two growing seasons, one time around the beginning of the year and one time right now. By the way, we’re also now in hunger and thief season. I bet you haven’t heard of that season before but basically it means that the people have run out of food from the last season’s harvest and are basically eating very little until the next harvest. Some of them get so hungry that they resort to breaking into other people’s houses and stealing their food. That’s the thief season part.

Actually, I feel very guilty about the whole hunger season. I’ve never had to deal with that before. At least, I don’t live in the Sudan or some other desperate country where it’s basically hunger decade. Nevertheless, we still have a season dedicated to it. Since I’m the assistant to the nutritionist at the clinic, I get the honor of seeing all the kids in the sector come in to be weighed. I can always tell which are the malnourished ones by their mood. They’re screaming bloody murder or are very lethargic and lifeless. I think the lifeless ones scare me the most. The well-fed babies, with their little bundles of fat, gurgle and say “da-da” and never mind when I measure their arms or height. We also get the water babies. These babies can fool some people at first sight because they look fat. Unfortunately, the reason they look fat is because their bodies are swollen with water; they’re severely malnourished with kwashiorkor. They’re not getting enough food, especially protein foods. Actually, most of the malnourished babies and toddlers I see are either the kwashiorkor babies or the medium malnourished babies. The marasmus children, the skin and bones children, go to the hospital to drink some miracle porridge and recover. I wonder what happens when they go back home. Actually, I wonder how much these families eat exactly. And what does it feel like to always be hungry. An old woman came in the other day with her kwashiorkor baby but we had to turn her away from the food distribution program because her baby’s arms were too thick to qualify for the program. She kept telling me the baby was an orphan; her mother was a fellow villager who died recently. The baby lived off of sweet potatoes because, well, there really wasn’t much else to feed her. I felt really bad for this old woman. She was like one hundred years old and caring for this water baby and I’m feeling helpless because I can’t do anything to help her. I guess I could be a typical muzungo and throw money at her but that won’t really solve anything long-term and, plus, I would have the rest of my sector knocking at my door asking for money. So, I did what I always did. I gave her the nutrition spill and told her to come back next month to get her baby re-weighed. Man, you can bet I felt good after that, a real hero, telling her to feed her baby vegetables and beans when the woman’s problem is not misinformation but just poverty. The kinyarwanda word for poverty is ubukene. I think I have it stuck in my head now forever. I used to think I was poor. That was before I came here. Now, I think I must have been a millionaire back in the States eating meat two times a day, having piped hot water and as much electricity as I can ever use, a paid university degree and a paid car. Even now, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I am rich. I have the good life. Not only do my villagers think that, I think that. If I can spend $4 dollars in one day to call my friends on the cell phone, if I can have an egg every day and a gas tank to cook my food. If I can have electricity in my own home and travel to the city on the weekend, how can I not be rich?

Actually, I’m beginning to realize how relative being rich and poor can be. In the States, as a waitress and college student, I definitely did not make enough money to be in the middle class. I did not consider myself rich by any means. But how can you explain to an African that a poor person in the States might have a rented apartment, a car, fed kids that go to school and a job? In our mind, we can argue, “Well, the family lives in the ghetto in subsidized housing, the car was new when the “I love Lucy” show was playing, the kids live off of soft drinks and chips and the father has a job at McDonalds.” But to an African, our arguments sound hollow and spoiled and basically don’t make any sense. This family may live in the ghetto but they have a place to sleep that protects them from the elements. Their children can go to free school on free school buses and eventually have the chance to go to university and improve their lot in life. The father may have a job at McDonalds but at least he has a job and he has a car that can take him places easily like to work or to the hospital when necessary.

What does all this mean? Am I trying to make you feel guilty? Well, yes. If I’m going to feel guilty, then I may as well not suffer alone. But I think the lesson here is more than emotional. It is instructive in life to sometimes look at the outside world, to see how other human beings are getting along and to put oneself in context. It is misfortunate and very nearsighted to put oneself in a box and live there oblivious of others for the rest of one’s life. Because if you do so, you miss out. You really do. For us Americans, we miss the opportunity to realize how blessed and full our lives really are.