Priorities

Priorities

“There wasn’t enough food.” The ghost of a little girl named Anna, who was about five years old when she passed away, explained her early death to the ghost of a slightly older boy. “They said the weather was bad, so they didn’t grow enough food. It hurt.”The little girl’s ghost wore hand-loomed wool clothes from an age of unsophisticated production technologies.Her fair hair was very clean and styled and braided. It was the least her mother could do.

The boy, named Francis, was nearly nine years old when he died, and his ghost understood Anna’s ghost. “They were eating in the towns south of us, but soldiers were not letting us leave.They made us stay in our town.”He was tall for his age, and he had not known hunger before the war. He wore tailored slacks and a school uniform polo shirt that was blue and white. “On the road, they stopped and taxed the trucks that would bring us food, and the trucks stopped coming.”

“Our neighbors were eating,” a third ghost commented. He was the ghost of a fourteen-year-old boy named Vijay, and he wore a screen-printed t-shirt, with a written script he did not know, promoting a band he did not know, that was already out of fashion when he received the t-shirt.  “They were eating – bread and tomatoes and onions and even chicken – every day. But we didn’t have the good food. Some days, we only had a cup of corn meal that we stirred into boiling water. We called it mud and it would make our mother angry, but we didn’t understand. We would add more hot water to it throughout the day and sip it so our stomachs didn’t hurt. Some days we didn’t have that.”

The ghost of Vijay spoke with less sadness and more resentment. “I got sick, and I couldn’t eat at all, and one afternoon I went to sleep and didn’t wake up. They said I died from a stomach infection.” The ghost frowned: “The people who eat every day don’t die from stomach infections.”

Francis’s ghost recounted, “It was scary. The fighting was not in our town, but it was scary because people started being different; everyone was sick and mad and they stopped being friendly and smiling.People changed.”

Anna’s ghost commiserated. “The scariest thing, though, that I remember, was that one time I could have eaten if I had stolen. I had bad thoughts of stealing that time.”

The ghost of a widow named Mary was sitting nearby. Mary’s ghost had been listening passively but keeping to herself, knitting hats for the children, as she had done in life and for centuries after.The children had come to call her Mama Nema, as she preferred.

“The scariest thing, children,” Mary’s ghost counselled in the old accent of some place whose peoples and names had changed many times since she lived there, “is that the hunger problem that has always haunted mankind, may be beyond mankind’s ability to address.” She only meant to validate the children.

Mary had been widowed when she was too old to remarry, which was a bad mark on her socially. And years of carrying water and working the garden exacerbated a piercing gout and an aching arthritis, and impaired her mobility severely in her advanced years.She took care of her small home better than could be reasonably expected of someone so handicapped, but still she depended upon the generosity of the community for support.

Mary’s ghost explained to the children that when the rains failed two seasons in a row, food became scarce. The men took the boys and went farther and farther afield to find pasture for their precious herds of cattle, until they ventured so far that they stopped returning to the village regularly. The women and the girls struggled, and Mary lost the support of the remaining community, and starved, alone in her home. She spared the children the terrible details of the protracted death, though they knew starvation well.

“But Mama Nema,” Anna’s ghost attempted a respectful challenge. “The people are making more and more food.”  Anna’s ghost spoke with no insolence but with respect for the elder’s wisdom. She wanted more of it. “People will solve the food problem.”

“It’s a war problem,” Francis’s ghost objected. “The food was there – we saw it sometimes, at the checkpoint – but the soldiers took it or turned it away.”

“It’s a money problem,” Vijay’s ghost corrected. “My family didn’t earn enough money to feed us all the time.”

“Children, there’s some truth in all the things you are saying,” Mary’s ghost began in an affirming way. “And I know bad weather, and I know poverty, and I know being trapped in a place without food. But I’ve watched the people for quite some time now, and I’ve watched them grow more and more food – more food than I could have ever imagined, in all types of weather – and they just won’t feed everybody every day.” She doubted whether she had provided any consolation or clarity to the children at all. “It’s a people-problem.”

The children did not like what they heard. This upset Mama Nema, for her job was to comfort them. It was a self-appointed job here, but in the place and time she came from, it was a well-defined role and she took it seriously. The ghost had no comfort to give this time, and she felt sad for the children. 

“Oh it’s okay, children,” Mary’s ghost tried to minimize her own awful observation about humankind. “People are silly creatures. I know that I certainly was a silly creature – why, one time when I was about your age, Francis …”

“But,” Vijay’s ghost was not done with the topic at hand. He interrupted the recollections of Mary’s ghost in a way that was surprisingly curt: “but are you saying, that the people will never fix the starvation, Mama Nema?”

Mary’s ghost forgave Vijay’s ghost immediately for his brush with rudeness.After all, Vijay was an indignant young teenager, and always would be. She took a breath and considered her response.

“You see, men are,” Mary’s ghost tried to put her long-private sentiments into words, “men are, by and large, not kind, and they choose cows.” She hastened to explain the somewhat queer statement.

“I’ve been watching them,” she explained.  “They will tolerate some small amounts of charity. But, there is a certain point where they stop feeding the hungry people and start feeding the cattle. I’ve been watching them for a long time.”

The children were puzzled. Vijay was puzzled and angry.

“That is what happened to the women in my village, long ago,” Mama Nema continued.  “The men abandoned us to feed their cattle. The men collected cattle like prizes, and chose to keep their herds large and not to feed their families, with meat or corn, or anything. They applauded each other, and were jealous of each other, all while we went hungry.”

Vijay looked away and huffed quietly. Mama Nema noticed. Vijay doubted that the old ghost’s wisdom had any relevance on the matter now. Things were more complicated in the modern world.

“And that is what’s happening now, still,” Mama Nema continued, in plain contradiction to Vijay’s skepticism. “Look, children,” she gestured to the world, “it’s happening, all over: the poor people are eating less corn meal because the cattlemen are buying up the corn with their money and feeding it to the cows.”

Mama Nema was not certain that she had devised the right explanation for the people’s hunger. She only pieced together what she had observed, the best she could. She, too, wished for a better explanation.

“Cows eat a lot,” Francis’s ghost offered, from his brief experience in the world. “But look, the people eat the cows.”

“And meat is very good to eat,” Mary’s ghost agreed, “but it feeds far fewer people than the corn would.” 

Thoughtfully and sadly, the ghost of Anna said: “There just wasn’t enough food, back then.” 

“There is enough food now, Anna, and that’s what makes it so tragic,” Mama Nema said.

Vijay softened his dismissive and skeptical attitude and hardened his angsty and fractious attitude. He didn’t want to feel sad. “What’s the solution, Mama Nema?”  He insisted on an answer. “The people won’t feed each other; so, what can be done?” He pointed to a dense collection of emaciated people in the world, then to another. “There’s almost a billion of them,” his voice broke and his face screwed into an intense but brief grimace. He turned his head and smothered his aching empathy with anger, and he composed himself. “And I can see their faces.”

Mary’s ghost sighed. “I’ll be honest with you, children: I don’t know the answer. How about we all take a break from watching them, though.” She gathered the children around her to distract them from their despondency with games and stories, just as she so artfully did in life.

“Okay, okay children, one at a time,” she instructed the children as they all became engaged in a word riddle game. “This is the Talking Hat. We all have to listen to the person who is wearing the Talking Hat, or else we won’t hear anybody at all.” She even got a reluctant smile out of angry Vijay.

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The End

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