Children Are Starving in Africa - May 8 2024

 

Children Are Starving in Africa

May 8 2024

I’ve learned to eat slowly.

But growing up

around the table

3 teenage boys

would hoover, gulp, scarf.

While our mother grazed

and our father ate responsibly,

as you’d expect of a well-regulated man

who did nothing to excess.

The dog, of course, lurked between our legs;

more vulture than wolf

she’d go begging for hand-outs

lunging at scraps.

Since then, I’ve grown up.

Learned that no one is hovering

to snatch food from my mouth.

The lesson of temperance

has been well-digested by now;

the mission

to civilize the child

can be declared a success.

So I chew slowly.

Between bites

replace the knife and fork.

And for the sake of politeness

don’t finish everything.

Instead of competing

with 2 hungry teens.

Instead of eating for children

starving overseas.

Instead of cleaning my plate,

because in our family

waste was a sin.

It’s true

that in the fullness of time

all men become their father.

The eating responsibly.

The frugality.

The small mannerisms

and identical laugh.

Even looking in the mirror

the resemblance is obvious.

The well regulated man

who leaves a little on his plate.

And starving children in Africa,

who are still just as hungry

as my mother warned.

It sounds racist today (after all, there are children going hungry everywhere, even here!), and has the patronizing odour of “the white man as saviour” complex, but that’s what mothers said back in the day: clean your plate, because children are starving in Africa. Guilt and shame are always good motivators, even if they don’t make sense.

We do grow up to become our fathers, and I do see him in the mirror as I age. This resemblance allows me to look both back and ahead. Looking back, I have more sympathy with and understanding of him as a whole person and not simply as an authority figure and provider. And looking ahead, I get a glimpse how I will age. Which is not only sobering, but another thing that makes one question the notion of free will: that is, a reminder of the genetic determinism we carry in us from birth. (Not to mention, for the deterministic sticklers, the family culture of example and modelling that also enters into this question of absolute personal agency. Except, of course, that the environment in which one is raised doesn't show up in a mirror!)