Looking into the Face of Hunger

by Admin · June 14, 2015

The United Nations recently observed �World Hunger Day�. Inevitably, the images that come to mind are of scrawny children with distended stomachs, suffering from the kind of famine that follows droughts, earthquakes, floods…and wars.

Volunteer Eleanor ploughs through a mountain of washing up at the Denis Hurley Centre in Durban. (Photo: Kobus Faber)

And certainly, this �face of hunger� is real and recurs regularly in some parts of the world.

But the real face of hunger�the hunger that affects 800 million people worldwide � is not so extreme, but is no less painful. It is the hunger of not having eaten for a few days, of not knowing where the next meal will come from, of sharing with a family of six the food provided for one school student, of trying to fill yourself with whatever comes to hand, even if it lacks nutrition or taste.

This face of hunger can be encountered without having to travel to the Third World, and even without having to drive into the CBD. You were almost certainly next to a hungry person the last time you stopped at the robots. Perhaps you noticed him or her, perhaps you did not.

According to an Oxfam report last year, one in four people in South Africa face hunger, even though this is a food-secure nation which produces enough calories to feed everyone.

�Most people in South Africa have to buy food. But too many cannot afford it or don�t have access to it,� the report said.

Many people were shocked to hear about the hunger which is on our doorsteps � after all we are a middle-income country. We host World Cups and global conferences and celebrity pop stars. And we produce a lot of food.

Indeed we do. But even if South Africa is �food-secure�, that does not mean that all the families and individuals who live in South Africa can be secure about where their next meal is coming from. Many great initiatives have been taken to tackle this � feeding schemes in schools (run by government, NGOs and churches), subsidised food for workers, systems for redistributing unwanted food from supermarkets and restaurants ( by organisations like the Muslim �Gift of the Giver� or the Catholic �Soul Food�). Incidentally, France has just had to pass legislation to force supermarkets to give unwanted food to the needy.

It is generous donations from organisations, parishes and individuals that mean people can feed the hungry, week in and week out.

That is the face of hunger that we encounter every day at the Denis Hurley Centre in Durban. Being located at Warwick Junction in the heart of the Durban CBD, we do not have to look far to find people who are hungry: the homeless, the poor, refugees, the unemployed. Each day that we open up our kitchen, we provide lunch to 300-400 people.

At our free clinic we encounter far too many children who are under-developed or malnourished, and far too many mothers who have sacrificed their meagre food so their children can at least eat something.

But this is all very unfashionable. I have been feeding people in Durban, in rural Uganda, and even in London and New York, for many years. And I cannot count the number of times that people have repeated to me that wonderful old saw: �Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for life.�

I don�t disagree with the sentiment, and organisations like the Denis Hurley Centre are also involved with teaching skills. But you can�t teach a person to fish � or to sew, or to do plumbing, or to use a computer, or to get off whoonga � while they are still hungry.

Long ago this was understood in schools which is why South Africa has such well-developed student feeding programmes. But adults are hungry too. Hunger prevents people from learning or looking for a job. And hunger can, sadly, drive people to theft or to scavenging or to begging if they feel that that is their only option.

An �unfashionable� feeding scheme like ours helps people by filling their stomachs. But it also helps in other ways. Having attracted people with a hot meal we are then able to counsel them, refer them to other services, help them address their health issues, give them access to a shower and clean clothes.

All of these are necessary steps in raising a person�s self-esteem. If we treat each person as a human being with value, they can begin to see themselves in the same way. What matters is not whether you give people food but how you give them food.

So we invite our guests to sit down, we serve them food on a plate with cutlery, we treat them with care and respect.

I do not think it is coincidental that, from this approach, the homeless people themselves have now elected a committee of area representatives and are manning an office at the Denis Hurley Centre so that homeless people can provide advice and support to their peers.

There is an important side-effect as well. Most of the work of feeding schemes�and ours is no exception�is carried out by volunteers. That means that people who do have enough to eat give up their time and energy to help those who do not. Through this we begin to break down the barriers that divide us in this country.

First of all, among the volunteers themselves. We are proud that soon we will also be providing a place where Christians and Muslims will come together to serve the hungry side by side.

And then over time we bring down the barriers between those feeding and those eating via that most basic of human skills: conversation. And that is when we discover that each one of us is both poor and rich, both needy and able to help those in need, that we all hunger for something and we can all offer something to those who are hungry.

Try it, the next time you are at the robots!