Dinner and Somalia

After work Kevin and I went for a run and I ran farther than I have in a long time... get ready for it... 1.5 miles.  Yeah, kind of embarrassing when some of our friends are running 26 miles in marathons for fun on the weekends. After our run I made some dinner - chicken marsala, roasted brussels sprouts, and quinoa pilaf.  I'm trying a "five dinners in an hour or less" menu from allrecipes.com.  I know I've said it before, but I freakin love allrecipes.com.  I just took a look at this menu, decided it looked pretty good, and it automatically put together an entire grocery list together that I could use on my iPad as I grocery shopped.  

It was 8:30 p.m. tonight, and I had successfully worked a long day at work, gone for a run with my husband, and cooked a dinner consisting of 3 different recipes that involved chopping up more than 4 different fresh vegetables that I just bought from Whole Foods.  I opened a bottle of red wine and was feeling pretty good about what I'd accomplished today, when I started paying attention to what was playing on TV - Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN.  He was reporting on Africa and the worst drought in 60 years.  Right now over 2 million people are on the brink of starvation.

Suddenly my home-cooked organic brussels sprouts didn't seem so cool...

When I googled it, this is what I read:  The World Food Program expects 10 million people in the Horn of Africa to require food assistance.  They currently provide aid to 6 million people in East Africa.  The group said it is facing a shortfall of 40% on the $477 million needed to address hunger in the region.  In these famine zones, almost 10% of the children under 5 die every 3 months.  

Here's a one minute video:

When I hear numbers like 2 million, it's almost hard for me to really wrap my head around it.  I'd like to think of myself as a generous person, but let's be honest, I hear about causes, read about charities, and get solicited by people all the time, and do nothing.  I don't know if it's because the problem seems too big, or if I'm too busy, or if it's because I already donate money to other things, but I just walk away and don't give.

But something about all those children starving while I'm comfortably drinking my glass of wine just got to me tonight.  At the end of the UNICEF video it said you can donate $10 by texting the word "food" to 864233.  And for $10 you can make a difference.  It can keep a child alive for 10 days.  So I did it.  And it was easy.  And it felt right.  And it was a small difference, but it still helped.  10 days worth of food.

When I post on this blog, somewhere between 30 and 60 people read it that day.  Imagine if every single one of you reading right now just pulled out your phones and text "food" to 864233, or jumped on the UNICEF website and gave 10 dollars.  That could mean food that can save people's lives for almost 5,000 days....