Today I started the refugee rations fast, and aside from the fact that the food is tasteless, and I felt somewhat light-headed and hungry, things didn't go badly at all. In fact, I felt pretty guilty.
Much of the point of the fast is, after all, to go through what the people of Darfur are going through. Since most of the international aid organizations have been expelled, rations are much less readily available, and many people are starving. To be more in touch with this reality, I think that I will stop eating my rations after noon for the rest of the week. I should be able to get through school while still learning what it is truly like to be hungry.
I was discussing my decision to eat today with a friend of my mother's (who admirably managed to continue his water-only fast for almost 48 hours), and he made a very interesting point.
He told me that he thought I got psyched out because so many people told me that it would be absurdly difficult, if not impossible, to follow through for an entire week. He then said something like, "It's interesting that as soon as you talked about doing the fast, people were really concerned about you. But about the people over there..."
And I think he's right. We care so deeply about our own friends and family that we learn to compartmentalize suffering. It's unacceptable if it is affecting our own loved ones, but if it's someone else's loved ones, we often learn to ignore it.
At risk of sounding completely corny, I think the cliched "we-are-all-brothers-and-sisters" idea is really worth remembering. I know I certainly haven't mastered it, and I ask you to join me in trying.
Please begin by thinking of the people affected by the genocide in Darfur.
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