First World Problems
Last Sunday while at work, I was listening to Al Jazeera English and heard the reports of the crisis in the Horn of Africa and in particular, countries like Somalia. The famine is incredible. The number of people who are due to starve to death is staggering. Even as an American, with the enviable ability to tune this sort of news out of my mind and stress only on my ‘first world problems’, there was just no way I could ignore the irony.
And the irony is this: Here I was at work, around over a hundred thousand pounds of loaves of bread, and listening to this story of an entire nation.. hell, the land of my ancestry, starving. At work we hold food in our hands like its nothing. We treat it as product. Our goal is to get the numbers right and make sure we select the exact number of loaves for each store order. What I held, what I gathered in that warehouse, was gold to the people whose terrible situation I was learning about through my radio.
I pack a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a knife to work every day and use the bread at the plant to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every workday, which is totally in line with plant rules, by the way. As a bite into that sandwich, I can’t help but think about how this would taste in the mouth of a Somali, or anyone starving for that matter.
They say in this part of the world that whenever you’re down and upset that you should be thankful because someone, somewhere has it much worse than you do. Thankful? Perhaps yes but is that supposed to make you feel better? Are we so pretentious as a society that we use the thought of the homeless and hungry to make us ‘feel better’ about ourselves? Somehow while eating that sandwich, yes I felt thankful; but I didn’t feel better. I can’t feel better about a world that lets me grab and push, lift and move loaves of bread like it ain’t shit while listening to a report of starving Somali children. No, the thought in my mind was real, real simple:
Somehow this shit just don’t seem fair.
And the irony is this: Here I was at work, around over a hundred thousand pounds of loaves of bread, and listening to this story of an entire nation.. hell, the land of my ancestry, starving. At work we hold food in our hands like its nothing. We treat it as product. Our goal is to get the numbers right and make sure we select the exact number of loaves for each store order. What I held, what I gathered in that warehouse, was gold to the people whose terrible situation I was learning about through my radio.
I pack a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a knife to work every day and use the bread at the plant to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every workday, which is totally in line with plant rules, by the way. As a bite into that sandwich, I can’t help but think about how this would taste in the mouth of a Somali, or anyone starving for that matter.
They say in this part of the world that whenever you’re down and upset that you should be thankful because someone, somewhere has it much worse than you do. Thankful? Perhaps yes but is that supposed to make you feel better? Are we so pretentious as a society that we use the thought of the homeless and hungry to make us ‘feel better’ about ourselves? Somehow while eating that sandwich, yes I felt thankful; but I didn’t feel better. I can’t feel better about a world that lets me grab and push, lift and move loaves of bread like it ain’t shit while listening to a report of starving Somali children. No, the thought in my mind was real, real simple:
Somehow this shit just don’t seem fair.
Here in America, especially California, we are just so RUINED! We are so well taken care of. There's jobs, money, and government assistance. Not to mention homeless shelters, food banks, etc. We would NEVER be forced out into the cold, forced to hunt & cook our own food... so many of us don't even know how to do those things. Whereas, in some parts of the world, they would be so lucky to even have the 'roadkill' that we cringe at.
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