Hunger Makes Me Mad

I noticed many years ago, when wandering through London with a few friends, that I was getting more and more grumpy. First I did not know why, but then realized that I was just getting very hungry and just needed food.

The situation was easily remedied, we had some lunch and I was my usual happy self again.

Notice the same now with my son, he also can get very grumpy when hungry (or tired for that matter).

But today something reached my mailbox that makes me angry on a totally different level. I did my due diligence on the story to make sure it’s not an urban legend and I found it to be true by all the sources I looked at. But you do your own investigation.

So, here is the brutal shocker…

Pulitzer Prize 1994

This picture was taken by Kevin Carter 1994 during the Sudan famine. It won him the Pulitzer Prize. It depicts a starving child during the Sudan famine, crawling to the United Nations food camp located a kilometer away. The vulture is waiting patiently – as vultures do –  for the child to die so that it can have a meal. No mercy here – it’s what nature does, right?

This picture shocked the whole world.  It is not known what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken. As the story goes, three months later he committed suicide due to depression.

When we did not want to finish our food as children we often heard our parents lament that there are children in the world dieing of hunger but it never really sank in – after that picture it finally has!

But now back to the anger I feel about this hunger – it’s because the cost of a few days of the Iraq war, invested in a little bit more constructive ways, could probably handle problems like this on the whole planet easily.

Imagine, there is still a debate if the US should withdraw from Iraq!