I eat World Food Programe Rice

I have a confession to make, I am an American and I eat World Food Program rice. WFP is a development program aimed at alieveating hunger and malnutrition in the developing world by providing primary school students with at least on nourishing meal a day. It also has the added benefit of drawing students to schools in the most desperate areas just so they will get food. At first I didn't even realize I was eating the WFP rice until I saw a sack with the label clear as day being delivered to my compound and hauled into the kitchen. But it's not just at home, I eat WFP rice at school too. Now that Ramadan is over, teacher's lunches have made a comback during break time at school. We all gather around food bowls and eat rice with usually just a ceremonial piece of fish and a coating of oil. This type of dish is termed "empty rice" beacause it lacks any tasty sauce or substantial amounts of fish. Since the rice is empty teachers enjoy sprinkling bits of Jimbo on it, which I am pretty sure is just MSG in cube form and also the go to cooking additive for all dishes - if food is not "nice" its because the cook did not use enough Jimbo in the first place. When I first got called into the staff room to eat lunch with the teachers I felt bad about eating the noticably fluffier and fortified UN issued rice as I am not in fact a Gambian primary student. But one cannot turn down food here and I couldn't exactly tell a room full of teachers that by consuming the rice we were undermining the mission of the WFP - so I threw caution to the wind and ate the rice like everyone else.

When it comes down to it, it makes no difference whether I am eating their rice as long as the majority makes it to the right population. And as far as alievating hunger - I don't think the world really has an ongoing world hunger problem. Sure there are droughts and famines and food us found in different levels but the notion that the entirity of Africa is filled with starving children is inaccurate. I think the problem is better defined as a "world nutrition problem due to lack of education" but that's not nearly as catchy as "world hunger". And really does Joe Suburbia have time to sit around and listen to the gory details of why there are undernourished children in Africa? No, he justwants to send his check off in the mail with the assurance he is part of the solution. The fact that altering his consumption habits and urging his government to put pressure on corrupt governments to reform would actually help ten times more then his check - but that is messy and he only has to think about "world hunger" for the 2 minutes it takes him to write the check and pop it in the mail. But I am never going to tell anyone to stop donating money to important causes that help our neighbors around the world - please do contribute whatever you feel led to give - just be open to the possibility of affecting change through other avenues as well.

So while I am not convinced "world hunger" is the right label, programs like the WFP are still needed, their objectives just need to be tweaked a bit. Here in Gambia, 99% of population are substience farmers. That means day in and day out, year after year, peoples lives are devoted to planting and harvesting food just to support the family. Naturally this leaves little time for a nation to do much else in terms of development. It also means that work is never done, planting season leads to harvesting season - coos, groundnuts, peppers, gardens, tree nursery, repeat. A good side effect is that because everyone is a farmer, no one seems to ever be without food. And if a family is hard up, everyone shares. Food here is communal and everyone enjoys eating togather as much as possible. Not suprisingly in a country drawn around a river, fish dominates the meals here - so much so that I am going to be seriously concerned about my mecurey levels when I return to America. Aside from fish, I eat pumpkin almost everyday and eggplant and potatoes on good days and lots of fruit. It is currently watermelon season so I am enjoying. You have to enjoy the fruit while it is in season so I am eating massive amounts of watermelon and probably won't want to even see another one till the season rolls around again next year. But mangos should be back in a couple months and that makes everyone happy.