Hungry Kids

I doubt there is a missionary or even NGO worker out there who has ever adjusted to the situation of people going hungry around them, while there is food on their own table.
That’s kind of what I’m dealing with now. Or have been dealing with, I guess.
The rain came and everything, so people were able to put their crops in the ground, but now it’s just back to being hot, hot, hot and dry. And the same empty food stores are there as before the rain.
I was up at Lodina’s today, hanging out, and she was telling me about how everyone is hungry because there is no jiaji—that is, vegetables. So she’s telling me everyone is hungry. And Mundari comes and says the same thing.
I hate knowing people are hungry.
But.
Then you see the balu (beer). Mary’s brother came back from Kh. yesterday—the first time he’s been back in 20 years. So they threw an all-night party. You could smell the balu, two compounds down, where we live. (OK, you can always smell balu in these villages, but it was even more potent than normal.) The goods were a’flowing.
The night before, Lodina and her husband slaughtered a goat and had similar brew for all the people who worked in their garden. (Groups of people join together and spend a day in each individual’s garden; the individual treats everyone to beer. They go to the next garden the next day and it continues on like that, until everyone’s field has been planted.)
So you see how they have all this beer, but they say they have no food. But they make the balu from the same thing they could make regular food from. On her compound, Lodina has a really long bamboo pole with a plastic bottle on top. That means she’s selling balu. And so you ask her about it. And they all know we think balu is bad. But what can you say when she says, I sell the balu for money, so I can buy food in Torit.
It’s a Catch 22. I hate to see them waste good food on balu and not feel the repercussion for it, but I hate even more knowing that Icholpi or Thomaso or Odwari (Francis) or Franco or Paula or Ellen—the kids—would even be a little bit hungry while I’m sitting here, fat as a cow.
I guess there really is no answer.