#42 – November 1st 2007

Feelin’ the burn…

It is Eddy’s turn to prepare supper. Ready by 11pm. Posho made from millet flour and fried brown beans. The taste barely registers on my tongue, so accustomed I’ve become. Fourteen plastic bowls, red and blue, two scoops of posho, one of beans. Lawrence eats with his fingers, I get a fork. Not satisfied but full, in bed by half past midnight. Tonight I won’t wake up at four to revise my books, rather not risk the hunger pangs. 6am comes early enough, Akram and Grace take tea, the rest of us leave with only the grit of toothpaste passing our lips. I struggle for alertness in Math, and lose all hope by Social Studies, the quick nap a welcome relief from my grumbling stomach. By 1pm I can’t get to the front of the lunch line fast enough. Posho and friend brown beans. Imagine if it were chicken? Ha, kidding. I immediately regret my loss of self-control. If I had refused the beans I could have avoided this pain. The pain of the ulcers, the accumulation of acid in my stomach catalyzed by fried foods, gassy foods. Milk would help. I can’t afford milk. Nobody can.

I’ll have to wake up to revise tonight; there’s no concentrating with this sharp gnawing behind my belly-button. I leave school at five to find my band-mates sharing around sweet tea and a few dry buns. Eddy doesn’t take lunch at school, I leave him my share. Band practice tries me. I’ve been told by the leaders to take time off from the trumpet; my lips are changing colour from the instrument, to the outside world the trait of a drug addict. Every second I am not blowing into that mouth-piece I am reminded of my hunger. From an ache to a burn to a deeper indescribable sensation. I imagine my stomach lining eating itself and I don’t know how I’ll make it till 11. But I make it because I always do and this is how it goes every minute of every day of every year for the fifteen I’ve been alive.

And this is how it goes. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Posho and beans for lunch at school, posho and beans for dinner at midnight. Near starvation every other hour of the day. From birth a lack of protein, extreme vitamin deficiencies. Since early childhood no access to milk or clean drinking water. The extreme poverty of Ugandan children’s diets stunts their growth, inhibiting their bone development, their flesh stretched thin across narrow limbs. A 16-year-old appearing more fragile and small than an eight or nine-year-old in the West. It has been my experience with the African Hearts boys that they go through this situation courageously, uncomplainingly, only airing their discomfort when the pain of the ulcers they’ve developed becomes unbearable. It is beyond my comprehension what it would be like to eat the same meal everyday, I simply can’t imagine it. I have gotten used to mixing and matching a core group of ten foods, including rice, matoke, cassava, chapatti, chicken thigh, cubed beef, Nile perch, tomato, avocado, and an array of tropical fruit. I slowly adapted to the lack of variety, my cravings for pasta, pizza, bagels, dressings and sauces, salads, and baked goods slowly subsiding. But take away eight of those ten options and I would be quite miserable, not easily biting my tongue to refrain from complaint as the boys do.

Even more frustrating is the total cost of feeding fifteen boys for one week is significantly less than what a Canadian individual would spend on one restaurant meal. I was aware that it would be considerably cheaper to feed these boys compared to attempting to keep Canadian teenagers satisfied, but until recently I wasn’t completely sure to what extent. Roscoe, treasurer for African Hearts, informed me the organization spends 100,000Ush per month on food. Equivalent to $15 a week. For fifteen boys.

The equivalent of $60 per month buys 1 sac of millet flour ($24) per month to make posho, $0.60 is used for charcoal and $1.20 for baked beans every day, and 1kg sugar and 1 litre milk ($2) for porridge on Saturdays. On Saturday evenings the organization doesn’t provide the boys with supper because they are expected to use the money they made from the functions performed that day. Unfortunately each boy only makes 1,000Ush ($0.60) per function, leaving them with little else after they’ve purchased dinner. To march with a heavy brass instrument strapped across your back for several hours in 27 degree heat only to receive enough money for dinner hardly seems fair. No water, no milk, no soda, no juice. No fruit or vegetables. No meat. Thankfully, for the past month “Grandmother Hilda,” who has been visiting Uganda from Victoria, has been supplying the boys with rice, green pepper, onion, cabbage, pineapple, and bananas. It has cost her less than $15 a week to ensure they get a slightly varied diet with nutritional value. An added bonus are her weekly mental, physical, and sexual health talks, stemming from her experiences as a public health nurse in Canada. Unfortunately when she leaves in two weeks its back to posho and beans.

Even if the boys were to miraculously gain the ability to change their diets there remains the issue of ulcers. A very high percentage of the boys have developed the h.pylori bacteria in their stomachs, the causes of which range from lack of proper nutrition and going long periods of time without eating. The bacteria digs holes in the stomach wall, which then fill with stomach acid, causing a horrible burning sensation. Last week one of the boys’ ulcers were causing him so much agony things could no longer be ignored or brushed aside. Thankfully one of the twins from UVic was able to consult with a pharmacist and purchase a cocktail of drugs to eradicate the problem. After following a strict week-long regimen, Eddy should be back to normal. We would immediately get every boy on this program, had we not discovered the drugs cost $40. As you now know, that is almost as much as they spend on food for a whole month.

As with most things here, we’ll continue to take it one step at a time, one boy at a time; hopefully a solution will present itself.

~Nicole