-By John Armor
Last Saturday, we did something that was only a small step up from mindless, unskilled labor. I’m glad we did it. We recommend it to everyone else.
An enthusiastic lady came to our Rotary meeting a week before. She was a teacher, acting as a volunteer for her church. She asked us to join with people from another half dozen other Rotary Clubs to pack 100,000 meals for starving people in Haiti. We decided it was a good cause, and we went.
There were two shifts requested at the National Guard Armory in the County Seat of Franklin, North Carolina. We arrived at 10:30 am, early for the second shift. A nice guy in a Rotary jacket gave us the good news that about a hundred extra volunteers had shown up for the first shift and there was not even room to park.
We came back in forty-five minutes, found a spot to park, and went in to sign up. We both got hairnets. (It was the first time in my life I’d worn a hairnet in public.) And we took our places at a table set up for five workers. There was a funnel in the middle of each table, with pre-printed plastic bags underneath. On the corners of the table were four containers: soy meal, vitamins, dried vegetables, and rice.
That was the order in which the people on the corners were supposed to fill the bags. As the labels said, each bag would provide minimal meals for six people, when boiled for 20 minutes in water. When each table filled a small box of plastic bags, we’d call out “runner,” and young people would take the box to the sealing tables.
Those people would adjust the rice (placed on top) slightly so each bag would be within two grams either way of the intended 390 grams. Then they would heat seal each bag. They’d box them up and seal the boxes. And every time another 5,000 meals were placed in the waiting semi-trailer, a gong ring and the 300 or so people in the room would cheer, and then get back to work.
The organizers of this whole effort were a North Carolina group named Stop Hunger Now. Their overall goal was to get a million meals packed and shipped through the Rotary Clubs and churches just in Western Caroline. We gathered that parallel organizations in other states would do the same thing we were doing. The result would be hundreds of millions of meals, produced and delivered at a cost of 25 cents per meal.
We asked about the distribution of the meals. The first targets in Haiti were the schools. This provided a double benefit. Parents would know that their children would receive at least one, nutritional meal in a day. And, the children would have some exposure to learning.
You know me. I can’t avoid some discussion of politics. I know the history of Haiti. When it was a French colony – and when it had slavery – Haiti was a net exporter of food. Haiti had a successful revolution only years after our Revolution. But for more than two centuries it has been plagued by incompetent and/or corrupt government.
Based on the speech of the President on Haiti at the White House two weeks ago, Haiti still has incompetent, self-destructive government. From a rich island which produced much food, it has been reduced to a nation of starving beggars with collapsible houses. The lady who spoke to our club brought along a sample of mud cakes. These are mud, shortening, and salt, baked in the sun, that mothers give their children to at least make them feel like they have eaten.
Beyond Haiti, two other examples of competent verses incompetent government are Zimbabwe and Singapore. The former was once the bread basket of Africa, exporting food to surrounding nations. Now, its people are starving; reduced to butchering and eating the carcasses of dead elephants. Also, its currency has been inflated almost to the point where printing money reduces the value of the paper.
Contrast that with Singapore, one of the most crowded nations on earth with the least amount of natural resources. Yet, Singapore is one of the Four Tigers of Asia, with a standard of living close to that of the United States.
What is the difference between Haiti and Zimbabwe on one side, and Singapore on the other? Singapore has a free and competent government, and it is dedicated to free markets as the basis of its economic prosperity.
Obviously, I support feeding people when they are starving. But in the long run, feeding the starving depends on policies of government, not packages of dried food.
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John Armor is a graduate of Yale, and Maryland Law School, and has 33 years practice at law in the US Supreme Court. Mr. Armor has authored seven books and over 750 articles. Armor happily lives on a mountaintop in the Blue Ridge. He can be reached at: John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
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