HOW HUNGER GAVE ME A DREAM

I'm very careful not to share any of my painful experiences until the time is ripe for doing so. Today, by the grace of God, I'm studying Economics as a DAFI scholar at one of the most prestigious universities in Ghana, GIMPA; but the journey that led me here is improbable. Whenever I'm flipping through the pages of my dear diary and recalling few of the painful experiences I’ve been through, I can't wait to share my struggle, survival and success so far. Permit me to share this piece from my dear diary with you so that you can understand why I strongly believe that "the things that are hard to bear in life are sweet to remember."

Today is a beautiful day but I can’t feel it. It's 9:35am and here I am, still sitting on my floored mattress in this tiny dusty refugee room in Buduburam, wounded by this throbbing hunger that has treated me like this for four consecutive days. I never tasted sleep last night. I’m exhausted from praying and thinking. The pangs of hunger are awfully penetrating indeed. Hunger really has the power to enslave anybody, I mean anybody, to the most dreadful of circumstances. Hunger is no respecter of personality. Hunger is a knife that cuts away pride until all pride is slashed out completely from a man’s personality.

I know Hunger does not regard dreams at all. Sitting on this dirt and ill-ness stained mattress this morning with the confidence gained so far from experience, I can tell anyone that hunger has a huge propensity of aborting dream within the least expected moment. Now I understand why Esau sold his birthright for just a plate of soup…Mensa Otabil, the preacher, was right when he said, "Hungry people function on short -term survival vision." If a man’s dream can pass the test of hunger, that dream is certainly bound to meet eternity.


Honestly, I've never felt hungry like this before in my entire life. If you ask me how I managed the terrible moments of hunger that came along with the civil war in my country that brought me here, I can simply tell you: it’s more painful to lack a basic need as food under normal circumstances than to lack in total scarcity during a crisis. What is more painful for me at this moment is that there’s food, but I can’t afford it. As a Liberian, the love of liberty brought me here: the liberty that I thought would give me food and education, at least. But where is that liberty? I can’t feel it; all that I can feel is hunger. What is the meaning of liberty when I’m free from war but still enslaved to hunger.

Hunger, I know, is a by-product of poverty. Hunger produces dirt. How do you expect me to sweep my grimy room this morning, fix this rotten mattress and wash this filthy over-used bed sheet when I have this never-ending battle going on in my stomach? What do you expect me to do when hunger is wrestling up with my intestine? Even if I had the money for the soap and the water to wash now, do you expect me to choose clean clothes over empty stomach? Tell me.

The truth is, at this point, the stomach has the absolute power to dictate to the mind. Every thought that does not include the stomach now is certainly bound to fail.

I actually want to take my bath this morning too, but the little pride left with me now is preventing me from going to credit another bucket of water as I did yesterday. Honestly, I’m not prepared to take any more ugly words from that ugly short man who is selling the water at the reservoir.

Even if my toothpaste had not finished yesterday, I won’t even bother myself about brushing my mouth this morning because, from experience, it even makes me hungrier. Yes, the same thing happened yesterday and the day before.

The question is: who is responsible for this ugly situation- a situation where ordinary hunger can easily abort dreams and suppress potential? Is it my parents’ fault or my country’s bad choices or our continent’s curse?

This question has actually fortified my reasoning and propelled my confidence to study Economics. Honestly, I never knew exactly what career path to follow until I had this life-transforming experience. This was how hunger gave me my dream to become an Economist. Since Hunger gave me this dream I have never stopped learning. Albert Einstein, the man whose life has given me the DAFI opportunity today to pursue my dream once said, “The most significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”"Hungry man, reach for the book; It is a weapon", I was also advised. Therefore, in order to solve this significant hunger problem I need to be at the level where people are thinking new thoughts through education, especially in Economics.