As the title implies, I am hungry for your hope. Just kidding..Not me but actually the unfortunate children and poor people around the world. Ok, now I sound like a holy person. I joined the 30-hour famine organized by Sin Chew Jit Poh and World Vision at Bukit Jalil Stadium. Yeah, I was hungry for 30 hours since 12pm on Saturday till today 6pm just to feel the hunger, feelings and life lived by the poor people around the world.
There are so many people gathered and the age range was so big, the youngest being 4 years old, if I am not mistaken and the oldest 78 years old. There are so many teenagers from all around the West Peninsular Malaysia and I felt so old, I thought my age was youngest but there were even younger but I believe they went there to meet their favourite celebrities while I went there to try and PLAY!!
To keep us busy and our mind from straying to the growling stomach or the food we could have if we were not there torturing our tummy, there were a few interesting programmes lined up for us, 5600 campers. We had games done in groups such as making a temporary shelters from newspaper and water bottle in hand, thinking what a child needs and wants, thinking about the food we would want to eat at that time when we were most hungry but letting us see the gory food the poor eats-that made me lose my appetite- and also each of us had a wet thick thread threaded from one shoulder to another and then tied to the your neighbours' making a circle just to make you feel how the poor had Guinea worms in their body wiggling free out of their body. That was a disgusting feeling having worms pulled out from your swollen ankle. YUCK!!
Other than the games we also had some talks given by a phD Dr. in which I slept off due to tiredness even though that was just the 4th hour. Well, I was well-warned by my friends not to be so energetic in the beginning of the camp but still I have used all the energy in the first 2 hours. Then, at night we had some local singers to sing for us to cheer us up. We had Daniel Lee, Fish Leong, Nicholas Teo, Sarimah Ibrahim etc. They were all superb but I was just not in the mood as most of the songs they sang were aliens to me. My friends misunderstood that I was down.
Not only that, we even had some video clips of the past years 30-hour famine. They told us that it was normal for us to be shouting and jumping around during the first few hours, when we were neared 10th hour, we would be frustrated, 20th hour, we would not care a thing and 2 hours before the camp came to an end we would be in a state of confusion. Well, I was of course afraid that I wouldn't be able to pull myself through the whole things, worrying that I would have gastric attack etc.
When we retired for the night, everyone was too tired to mouth a word or even to wash their face. Once our head touched the pillow, we were all dead. Seriously, I didn't know that without food for just 10 hours could make us so weak, even climbing just a few steps of stairs drained my energy and I started to pant. I thought I could do it. Luckily, we weren't without anything at all..we still had plain water. That night I thought I could sleep soundly but who knows being a light sleeper especially on the cold hard floor and cold night, my sleep was disturbed by the snoring next to Yuan Hui. That woke me up a few times in the night and I ended up tired this morning. I just can't figure out why I always have snorers with me wherever I sleep other than my own room in NT?
After going through 24 hours with all the sad video clips and performances by the handicapped, I find that what I have gone through cannot be compared with the unfortunates and poor all around the globe. I mean, yeah we went through 30-hour famine, so what..we got to sit down and relax and we even had air-condition and if we felt tired, we could secretly doze off at the back. But what about the poor children? They don't even get to eat a proper meal, they might not even have tasted a drumstick in their whole life and not even clean water. They don't even get to complain about the weather, the food, the water, the road they travel on. They don't even complain about being weak as they have to carry water on their head or just have a sweet potato before starting to walk for 2 hours to school.
Well, all in all, what we have gone through is just like 1/100 of their lives or maybe lesser. So, no more complaining, just appreciating and give. The last event was the switching off the torchlight. As the emcee swept his hand across the hall we had to switch off the torchlights. What he said next shocked us. As we switched off the light, there were more than 2000 or so children died at that very second. Either that or they were dying. I have always thought about death. I have always thought that every second, there will be deaths at every corner of the world. But then, we have always had birth at every second to even them out.
I made a note in my mind that in the future, if I have the chance, I would adopt a poor child from the Africa or the Timor just to lend them a hand. Another way is that I would take a trip to stay with them and really feel their hunger and also donate so that I would feel their pain.
Seriously, at first all I had in mind was to play and try what famine was and now I have and I can say that famine is no fun at all.
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