"Poked out eye" (A teacher's view on childhood hunger)

Snoutport

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Sat Jun-04-11 11:47 PM
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"Poked out eye" (A teacher's view on childhood hunger)

Edited on Sun Jun-05-11 12:05 AM by Snoutport

Many of us have been poor at one time or other. Lean college days when you survive on Top Ramen and peanut butter, or a time where expenses have gone crazy and you have to cut back on all the extras. My mother spent several years in a convent orphanage in Denver during the depression and she was hungry many of those years. I think because of this she always made sure the the pantry was full. She always had a huge garden that absorbed much of her free time. She canned what she could. She made her own pickles and jelly. (mmmmmmmm....I hated picking strawberries but damn that jelly was good!)

I think my mother's experience taught me to be very conscious of people who are going hungry. But the is a special hell for children who are living in abject poverty. As a teacher we sometimes come across a child whose family cannot afford enough food and we all know the signs: trembling hands, sharp cheekbones, dark hollows under their haunted eyes. I would bet you every teacher on DU will back me up when I say this: the faces and voices of the children you have taught blend together eventually. Sometimes you can only remember 6 or 7 of the kids from a school year. But you never, ever forget those eyes--so old and wizened. They burn themselves into your memory and from then on you work hard to make sure you have food and extras for kids like that. Anything to keep from seeing eyes like that again.

My very first classroom was in a very poor area of California. I was working as a substitute and had NO background in teaching. The school district was so desperate that all you needed was a bachelor's degree to be a sub. I did a good job and ended up as the favored sub for most of the behavior and special ed classes. I draw and clown and would distract the kids so much that they didn't realize they were getting their work done and WEREN'T getting into trouble. That January the Sub Director called me and said, "We have a special ed class that needs a teacher and we'd like you to take it."

I was dead broke and had subbed in the class and I thought I could handle it. I jumped in and it was a total blast. The kids were great, my EA was very talented and was so happy to have a good teacher that she spoiled me with cupcakes and treats. She was my first teacher in my long trek to becoming a proper teacher myself. One thing she said to me is one of the backbones of my theory of teaching. For every birthday she supplied a party for the kid. She told me many of these kids were so poor that if they didn't get a cake at school they probably wouldn't get a cake at all. She taught me that there were kids who weren't treated special at home so part of a teacher's job was to make sure every kid had at least one special day (and one BIG party to celebrate all the summer birthdays so even those kids got a special day--June baby here so I totally understood that one!)

The year before I started teaching I had taken my hard earned savings and spent ten months backpacking through Europe and Asia. I had collected money and stamps and had some fun items I had brought back from exotic places. I had made it as far South as Abu Simbel, as far East as Moscow and as far west as Spain. So I made up a geography program where I would tell a story about a place, show the students the money, pictures, some books from the library and then they would fill out a worksheet and get a stamp in their "passport". Every day the same thing would happen. After we had read about the country, Willy, one of my students, would raise his hand with his eyes just beaming with intensity and his body wiggling with excitement. He was a skinny blonde kid with a sunburned nose and hair bleached almost white from the sun. Really likeable with a big smile. I called on him and he whispered:

"What do they eat there?"

Egypt, Russia, Turkey. "What do they eat there?" Greece, Britain, Sweden..."What do they eat there?" Belgium, Finland, Italy. Always that same waving hand. "What do they eat there?" And once that question was answered, he wanted details. "What does weinerschnitzel taste like?" "What is it made of?" "How many did you eat?" And the whole time staring at me with these bright blue eyes that were just fixated like a laser. And those eyes looked WAY too old to be in a 4th graders face. I saw my EA was always giving him peanut butter sandwiches from a jar she kept behind her desk. So I started looking in the bagged lunches he brought from home. One day it was tortilla. Just a tortilla. One day it was an orange. One day it was half a bag of marshmallows.

Oh my God. This kid was starving. And you could see it in his eyes.

Every time I went grocery shopping I would think of him. It took me years to stop feeling guilty about eating a steak or some fancy dinner. I still think of him when I see marshmallows. We kept him fed at school but the next year I was heading to get a masters degree and a license in special ed. I know my EA kept him fed the next year but then he was off to middle school and hopefully better times for him and his family. (and, yes, in all these cases I did home visits and made all the necessary calls and reports)

After going back to school I started teaching in the poorest part of the city. Those haunted eyes were everywhere. One boy would have a stuffed lunch bag the first week of the month. Mostly Hostess Pies, Hostess Cupcakes, Sno-balls...five or six packages a day. I finally asked him about it and he told me his mom went shopping with their foodstamps. They lasted for a week and then they would run out. He was skin and bones to start with and every month his skin seemed a little more translucent, his arms a little smaller. The EA in this room was a nice grandma who brought in peanut butter and bread the first day of school. She already knew the kids and knew they were going to be hungry after a long summer.

My mom went to Vietnam that year and brought back gifts for all of my kids. I stopped at an Asian market and bought a bunch of weird looking Asian packaged foods. I told them I had something extra creepy to eat and whoever wanted some could raise their hand but I wouldn't tell them what it was until after everyone had tried a bite. So they all raise their hand and they all start gnawing on their piece of dried squid. I told them what it was and the reactions were a mix of screaming with horror and some shoulder shrugs as they finished up their squid.

After class that day one of my students stayed back and lingered at my desk. I looked up at Janella. A thin black girl who I keep expecting to see on America's Next Top Model was standing in front of me. I knew the look the second I saw it and my stomach dropped to the floor. I knew she was about to tell me something terrible.

"That squid sure was good. If there is any left I'd eat it." That squid was NOT good but here this kid was looking at me with the same look Tiny Tim probably had when he saw that cooked goose. It makes you sick when you see it because no kid should ever have that look. And I gave her the bag of squid and she carefully tucked it into her backpack. She told me thank you and said she was going to share it with her little sister.

I grabbed her backpack and ran to the back of the room. I threw in the peanut butter and the bread, the crackers, some canned stuff that was going to be our cooking class. My lunch when in (I hadn't got a chance to eat, as usual) and my granola bars and even my gum.

She looked like it was Christmas. It would break your heart to see it.

She told me after the weekend that she and her sister had eaten and eaten and eaten and she lo-o-o-oved that squid. Ends up her dad was gone, her mom was in jail and her 25 year old uncle was raising her and her sister and working two jobs to try and keep the family together. When her birthday came up she said her cousin was coming over for a party. I asked her what they were eating and she said the were going to have a mayonaisse sandwich. No cake, no ice cream but she was SO excited her cousin would be there for her party. On her birthday I dug out my parking meter money (new teacher, big student loans=pretty danged poor) and my mad money (a tightly folded $20 bill hidden behind my drivers license) and I bought her a really big cake so there would be plenty left over for her birthday party. I got extra chips and sodas and after school I dropped it off at her Uncle's tiny duplex. The three girls were there alone. Her Uncle wouldn't be home till after work--after midnight. I handed her the bags of food and headed home. I cried a good part of that drive. Little kids should not be so excited to see foods. Not in the richest country in the world.

But of all the poverty I have seen--in Cuba and Thailand and on some very small islands of South East Asia it is Egypt that leaves me with the emotional scar that has never seemed to completely heal. I was travelling through a tiny village and came up to an intersection. It was a small car with just a tour guide who had agreed to take me to see some out-of-the way archaeological sites. As we're about to pull away a little boy of 6 or 7 and his little sister ran up to the car. They were bone thin and the girl looked desperate. The boy turned towards me I could only see one side of his face. But the look was there. The cheekbones so gaunt. And then he turned the rest of the way and I saw his whole face. His right eye was missing. Just a dark bloody hole with flies buzzing around. Gore you would expect in a Wes Craven film. And I gasped and reached for my money and the tour guide grabbed my wrist with a fierce grip to stop me. He squeezed hard enough to send jolts of pain up my arm. He shouted, "NO!"

And he stomped on the gas and we pulled past the kid's house. It was next to a canal with a dead rotting water buffalo swollen and bloated in the water. Swarms of flies buzzed around. 20 feet away there were more kids splashing and playing in the water.

My tour guide turned and said he was sorry and I realized he was very upset.

"Poked out eye." He said in his broken English. "His parents poked out his eye so he would make more money begging from tourists. You cannot pay them or it will happen to the other children too."

His words filled me with horror and him with terrible sadness. We rode back into Luxor in silence. Great temples and statues from Egypt's golden era slid by my window with no comments from me or my guide. Neither of us cared to speak.

There is great poverty in this world and though no one person can end that, we can all do something to help. There are children in your neighborhood going hungry tonight. Start a food drive at your work or a business you think would host a drive. Plant a couple of extra zucchini plants and tomatoes and take the extras to your town's homeless teen shelter. (that's what I'm doing this summer--I'm hoping to deliver a box of produce a week). Make a donation to a food bank or a charity--there are many of them out there.

I invite you to step up and write your senators. Write the President. Ask them to figure out ways to help the hungry. Most of all, I ask you to share a can or two of food with someone who doesn't have any.

Have a great weekend. Do something great with it.