I did not eat today...Jacqueline Asiimwe - 13 Oct 2013

How do you get people who ordinarily do not go hungry, who skip meals by choice not chance, to understand what it feels like to be chronically hungry?

That is the question I have been grappling with over the last few weeks.

I am part of the Black Monday Movement in Uganda, which is a citizen movement against theft of public resources meant to provide social services. Every month since we started the movement in November of 2012, we have endeavored to highlight the various ways that corruption affects us all – from poorly maintained roads, to run down schools, to ill equipped hospitals. It is relatively easy to show people how theft of public resources in the health sector means that mothers die while giving birth. But how do you show people how greed fuels hunger? How can people be made to feel and experience the desperation, the hopelessness, and the dehumanization of hunger, in a real and tangible way?

One of the things we have tried is the ‘No Lunch Until Our Children Have Lunch’ campaign. Every day around Uganda, many children go hungry at school. They go hungry because schools are not funded adequately enough to provide meals. Children go hungry because their parents are poor. Hungry children cannot learn and when they do not learn, they cannot pass their exams well enough to then get jobs. When people can’t get jobs, they go hungry – and the cycle goes on and on.

Some Black Monday activists have committed to not eating lunch, as a personal reminder about the plight of millions of children across Uganda, but also as a way to keep the connection between corruption and hunger high on the agenda of decision makers and politicians.

We must fight to address not just hunger, but also the greed that fuels this hunger – greed which is fed by corruption. 

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