“I’m starving!” wail my kids when I’m taking too long with dinner. Funny, it also happens whenever we pass McDonald’s. Uncanny how our driving routes so often align with their peak periods of famishment.
Like my own parents did with me, I echo the familiar parental refrain: “You don’t know what starving is.” For indeed, they have no idea. Very few Canadians do.
Even in my work with World Vision, “starving” is a word you don’t hear too often. “Malnourished,” for certain, or even “acutely malnourished,” and both are extremely serious. Children can be stunted for a lifetime — both physically and mentally — if they don’t receive the right foods at the right time.
I read a press release from my colleague indicating the very real possibility that 5 million people are facing starvation in Somalia. The headline used another phrase you don’t hear used correctly all that often: “potential famine.”
World Vision is warning that a looming famine threatens the survival of many, particularly children, as 5 million face starvation in Somalia. There’s no time to mull this over, considering whether or not to respond. The stark fact is that hundreds of thousands of children need immediate help if they are to survive the weeks and months ahead.
Why is the situation so dire? Surely a child can go with less food for a short period of time. Not in this case. For in a place like Somalia, where violence and instability have rocked communities for years, malnutrition was already all too familiar. I’m talking more than 320,000 young children who are already acutely malnourished, and nearly 60,000 severely malnourished. Their bodies simply aren’t strong enough to withstand a further tightening of the screws.