Remembering a Hungry Childhood

Droughts are 1)cyclical in 2)Kenya. Before， they came every 10 years， but now they seem to be hitting us more often and for longer periods of time.

I was born in 1951 in 3)Machakos. From what my mother tells me， that year there was a serious drought. My sister was born in 1961， and I clearly remember the terrible weather and the 4)prevailing hunger throughout the region. I can’t tell you how many times I went to bed without eating. “I slept like that，” is how we described it， which means we went to bed with nothing to eat. I can’t count the number of days when “I slept like that，” or describe the feeling of going to sleep hungry knowing I’d wake up and there would still be no food for breakfast.

Hunger is an 5)unforgivable disease because it is the easiest one to cure. It is 6)devastating to wake up in the morning and look east， west， south and north and see that there is nothing green that you can chew. During a drought everything goes yellow and dry. I would walk the roads and search the ground to see if someone had spat out a bit of chewed-up 7)sugar cane. I am not ashamed to say that I would re-chew what I would find.

Hunger is 8)dehumanizing. It gets to a level where you do not know how you will survive and you will do anything for a simple kernel of corn.

The thing about drought is that it does not just affect farmers and their crops; it affects everyone. If you think about it， during harvest time farmers hire local 9)farmhands to help with their crops. But when there are no crops to harvest， not only does the farmer lose his or her income， so do the laborers the farmer would have hired. There is a 10)ripple effect that affects the whole community. Few have food and even fewer have money to buy food.

My parents did everything they could to feed us. My father would leave early in the morning carrying a little basket to beg for food or ask for food 11)on credit. Each night he would return home around 10p.m. My mother， after a fruitless day attempting to find food， would try to encourage us by telling me to keep the water in our pot boiling so that when my father arrived we could quickly cook any food he brought in the already prepared water.

I would keep the fire burning and the water boiling. As the hours passed I would watch the water level slowly go down， along with the hopes that we would eat that night. More often than not， my father would arrive frustrated and empty-handed. And I would sleep like that.

It is a 12)traumatizing situation as a young child to be without food. You see the fear in the faces of your mother and father， despairing that they cannot feed their children. You feel afraid， too， because your parents can’t provide for you. Your stomach is so empty that even when you are thirsty and you take water it makes you dizzy. You get so 13)nauseated your body wants to 14)vomit， but you haven’t eaten. I think about this now as East Africa faces another drought. I think about all the children who are suffering as I did. We see terrible images of hunger， but I fear that we have not yet seen the worst.

We are experiencing really serious stress. At the moment， the 15)magnitude of the hunger facing Kenya is not well known. It 16)is incumbent on all of us to band together and fight this very curable disease. No child on earth should ever have to sleep like that.

饑餓童年

在肯尼亞，旱災是周期性的。以往，每隔十年就會有一次旱災，而現在旱災似乎來得更加頻繁，持續的時間也更長。

1951年，我在馬查科斯出生。從我母親口中得知，那一年發生了嚴重的旱災。我妹妹出生于1961年，我清晰地記得當時天氣惡劣，饑荒在整個地區內肆虐。我無法告訴你我有多少次沒有吃東西便去睡覺。“我就那樣去睡覺，”我們這樣來形容上床睡覺前根本沒有東西吃的狀況。我已數不清“我就那樣去睡覺”的天數，也無法形容那種餓著入睡、知道醒來時仍然沒有食物可當早餐是怎么樣的感覺。

饑餓是一種不可原諒的疾病，因為它是最容易治愈的一種疾病。早上醒來，朝東、西、南、北各處張望，但是找不到任何可以咀嚼的綠色食物的感覺是毀滅性的。

旱災期間，所有東西都變得又黃又干。我會沿路行走，搜尋地面上有沒有別人吐出的甘蔗渣。如果能找得到的話，我會拾起來嚼，絲毫不覺得難為情。

饑餓使人喪失人性。它可以達到那樣一種境地——你不知道能怎么生存下去，你也不知道你會為一顆玉米粒而做出什么事情來。

旱災不僅僅影響農場主及其農作物，它影響著每一個人。只要你想想看，收割期，農場主雇傭當地農場工人幫助收割農作物。但是，如果沒有農作物可收割，不單是農場主會失去收入，他們可能雇傭的勞動力也會失去收入。這是一種會影響到整個群體的連鎖反應。沒有多少人有食物，而有錢購買食物的人更少。……