Giving a Goat

This is my second reading of Kalama Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve, though it has been many years since I've read her autobiographical novel. I don't remember all the details, but I'm already cringing remembering that the impending changes in India will result in disaster in her life, which is already anything but easy.  I remember being deeply affected by all the unfortunate circumstances that shaped the main character, Ruku's, life.

In the first fifty pages of the novel, Ruku is married as a very young girl (per tradition in India) and eventually gives birth to a daughter and five sons. She and her husband are completely dependent on the rice paddies and vegetable gardens she grows for food.  Like many agricultural workers throughout the world (see post on Rigoberta Menchu and present day migrant workers in the United States), they do not own any land.  Instead, they work incredibly hard to grow and harvest the rice on someone else's land, a man they have never met, and they are paid by a manager.  Of course, the trouble with reliance on an agricultural job is the unpredictable  weather.  One year, after eight days of severe monsoons, the entire rice paddy is lost and Ruku's  vegetable garden is completely destroyed.  She has nothing to feed her five sons, all under the age of 7 years old. She and Nathan have a meager savings, but there is no food for sale in the village because everyone's crops have been destroyed.  

The severity of Ruku's food situation is sobering.  I live less than a mile from a grocery store where food is always available.  Although the effects of weather on agriculture makes prices rise and fall, and I may not be able to buy everything I want all the time, food is always available.  Ruku and her husband are unable to feed the children anything besides seasoned water for weeks.  When they finally drain the rice paddies and catch some fish, their stomachs are sore from "feasting" on food after weeks of starvation (48).  It's hard to imagine that kind of desperation.  I especially cannot imagine watching my children cry, starving for food, knowing there is nothing that can be done.  

Sadly, this is still happening throughout the world.  Though I support a child in Mali and another in Peru through World Vision, I never feel like I am doing enough to really make a dent in this problem of hunger. Recently I received a World Vision gift catalog in the mail.  For $75, I can donate a goat to a family in need. One goat could save a family from starvation in a place like India or Africa.  

(Check out this video about a family in Tanzania who gets a goat!)

Though money is a bit tight with a baby on the way, reading Markandaya's novel again has made me think about the baby and not being able to feed one's family and how that would affect me.  So, tonight I bought a goat through World Vision for a woman in need. It feels like an appropriate gesture for this class and the readings I've done this semester.  In The Hunger Games, Prim's goat was able to help the family survive by providing milk and goat cheese, which Prim could sell or add to the family's meager food supply.  Markandaya also mentions a goat that helped provide for the family; unfortunately, she had to sell the goat in a time of need and was unable to buy milk  after the goat was gone.  When I taught 12th grade English at Portage Central, we raised money to buy cows for families in Rwanda trying to rebuild their lives after the 1994 genocide.  It was good to be able to do something to help after we read the devastating story of their people. Though I am still only helping one family at a time, it's comforting to be able to do something when reading about hunger makes me feel helpless.  The problem is just so big.