Meet my sweet friend, Gift.
Gift was born to a mother with HIV and was found severely underweight, sick and malnourished. As an infant, his young mother took him to the resident witch doctor whose treatment included cutting Gift's fontanel (the soft spot on top of a baby's head) and rubbing a mixture of cow dung and herbs into the open wound. The resulting infection left Gift blind in one eye.
Gift lives in a rural township in South Africa where, among other community issues, there is no trash collection. Imagine your neighborhood and town with no formal way of picking up all the trash on your streets each week? The neighbors have small yards and gardens that are tidy and cared for, but the children must run to school on roads and paths littered with broken glass and mounds of refuse and rubbish. This depresses me as much as anything, sometimes.
Our team was in Gift's neighborhood, working at a community center that provides daily meals and emotional care for school-aged children. We were taking a late lunch break, eating a bucket of (can you believe it?) KFC fried chicken.
As I finished munching on my wing, I was hunting in vain for a trash can to dispose of my bones.
"Throw them down." our gracious host instructed us.
I didn't understand and tried to explain that "It's OK. I have this bag, here, and we can all just put our bones in...."
"Throw them down on the ground, Kim" she insisted, kindly.
I still was so concerned about littering that it was like a slap when our host explained "...these bones will not go to waste."
It's moments like these that shape your mind-set about nutrition and food. I will forever be the exact wrong person to talk to if you are interested in "getting skinny by summer". I will not be your cheerleader when you go on your 3 week starvation de-tox diet. I've seen too much and I will never be the same.
Americans have a real and weighty problem of plenty and abundance. Having so many abundant blessings available to us each day can also be a heavy burden that requires our full attention. It is a challenge to navigate these precious waters of freedom and choice, both for ourselves and with our children. We need heightened awareness, trusted champions, and reminders to live a life of thankfulness and restraint in our wonderful country.
All About Athlete hopes we can help with that!
Yet, communities with deep poverty have a real problem of scarcity and dearth (old fashioned word for "not enough to go around"). There's not enough food, not enough medical care, not enough education, not enough trash collection for goodness sake!
We hope we can help with this, too.
What is our response?
Want to come to Africa with me and see?
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