Show and Tell Hunger Banquet

Last night we attended our church's Hunger Banquet.  Every year, our church youth group puts on a Hunger Banquet and invites the community to raise awareness of hunger around the world.  They divide the room up into First World (America, Europe, Japan, etc.), Second World (countries like Mexico), and Third World (such as most African nations).   When you arrive, you purchase a ticket and reach into a bowl to get the piece of paper which tells to which world you have been assigned.  The slips of paper are in proportion to the population of those who live in these world divisions, so there are many more Third World pieces of paper.  Our entire family got Third World this year.  In Third World, all of the women and girls have to wear head coverings.  We sat on the floor in a very crowded mass of people.





Each family in the Third World was given a baby doll to represent all of the starving babies around the world.  Every minute 12 children die from hunger and hunger-related diseases around the world.  To our dismay, our baby doll was taken by a boy dressed up as death about 30 minutes later, after the "baby" had starved to death!





The girls were excited about our "new baby".  However, when I explained how the people sitting at tables with china were not where we were going to be eating and showed them the mats on the floor where we were headed, they became hesitant about this whole event!  While we were waiting for First World and Second World to be served food, we were growled at questioned by the guards/soliders about possible trouble we might be causing, and some men in our section were dragged off to jail.  Our oldest son was the head guard, so we got treated a bit better than others.





When it was time for the Third World to eat, we lined up with our bowl and cup (empty yogurt containers) to get our rations.  Our children were sent to the back of the line, since children eat last in the Third World.  We chose to join them.  When we did get food, it was a serving of one small spoonful of nasty, partially cooked rice and 1 ounce of water and a 1 ounce piece of bread.








My youngest son ate the rice, but both my daughters picked at it and did not eat much.  Occasionally, someone would stop by our area and try to sell us food from the black market, but we did not buy anything.  We figured most in the Third World could not afford to buy it.  Sometimes food would be thrown into our Third World group by "relief workers", and people would scramble for it.  If you could get the food and hide it before  the guards got it, you had a bit more to eat.  We were fortunate to get two snack size bags of chips and a candy bar.  However, the guards stole our candy bar.  We managed to hide the chips and eat them secretly.  The whole time there was a slide show running with pictures of starving children and hunger statistics.  I must say, that made us feel guilty even eating in the Third World seating.  My son, who was the guard, took pictures of the First World and Second World.





Second World had more comfortable seating and were served tasty rice and beans.  They also had as much water as they wanted, plus seconds on beans and rice.





First World had chairs and ate off of china.  They had a catered pork meal with all the trimmings.


At the end, we all stood in a circle and talked about our experience and what we could do to help with world hunger.  The people in the First World talked about how embarrassed they were to be eating so well while looking over at the rest of us.  However, in the beginning while people were sitting down, I actually saw a woman leave our Third World group and sneak over to the First World and took a seat as if she belonged there!  My children said they could eat what was put in front of them without complaint.  That would be a nice change.  We will be following up on this by studying how we can help children in Haiti and taking some food to our local food bank.  My Mother asked that she get no Christmas gift this year but for us to just donate money for starving children. The kids are already talking about going next year and hoping we get to Second World. 


To see more Show and Tells, go to Mary at Canadagirl.


Blessings, Dawn