HUNGER GAMES HERE AND HUNGER GAMES FAR AWAY.

I've had a strange week. Really strange. I've been sitting here for a while wondering how to go about the task of committing the last seven days to paper. Smoking. Staring out at the June sunshine. Trying to find a way to make a start.

Well, I have concluded the best approach is to focus on cold, hard facts. So here they are.

This week, I have been involved in two food emergencies. One here in South West Scotland and one many thousand miles away in Kasese, Uganda. The common thread connecting the two is a whole bunch of people with not enough to eat.

But there the similarity stops.

Big time.

I'll take them one at a time. Scotland first.

Once again the foodbank I manage has been required to provide just over 500 people with emergency food over the last week. In normal times this number would have been about a 100. So believe me, 500 is a lot.

It is Saturday now and the task is complete. Every one of the 500 people who needed emergency food has received emergency food. Cupboards aren't exactly full, but they are no longer empty.

To achieve this I have been lucky enough to have been able to call on significant resources.

First Base has a base to work out of in Dumfries where three volunteers are dab hands at handling food in and food out.

Beyond this, we have six distribution centres across the region where a further 20 volunteers handle food in and food out.

A whole bunch more volunteers deliver the food to those who need it.

I move most of the food from A to B in my Arnold Clark transit van.

Providing enough for 500 hungry people of course requires lots of food. Like this much

500 pies

500 rolls

500 portions of homemade Scotch Broth

500 packets of biscuits

500 bags of cereal

500 bags of pasta

500 portions of pasta sauce

500 portions of mashed potato

500 tins of beans

500 tins of rice pudding

500 boxes of eggs

500 pints of milk.

Plus a variety of extras which we add in according to availability.

Some of this stuff is donated, though it's a whole lot less than it was a couple of months ago. Lockdown is pretty ruinous when it comes to getting in food donations.

So coming up with the food listed above needed lots of the most important resource of all.

Cash

Yeah, I know. Duh!

How much? About £3500. Some items were donated, but most had to be bought. All of a sudden First Base is burning through the thick end of £10,000 a month on buying food.

How long does each parcel last? 2 days. Maybe 3 days at a stretch.

Cost per person per day? Let's say £3.50.

Which in my book ain't half bad. You can't expect to help feed 500 people a week on fresh air.

Thankfully we have had the money to spend. We have received funding from the Scottish Government, the local Council, businesses and Trusts as well as overwhelming, jaw dropping generosity from the local community.

All of which means we are well set to help out 500 people again next week. And the week after that.

In the depths of next winter's recession, it might well be a different story. But next winter is quite some time away.

OK.

Food emergency number 2.

Maybe you read my last blog which told the story of a young guy called Rabson who is heroically trying to find a way to feed 1000 people who are hanging on in makeshift camps having seen their homes washed away in a sea of liquid mud.

Three years ago, Carol and I set up a small charity called the Kupata Project. We raise cash here in Scotland to provide sanitary pads to 2000 school girls in Kabale Province, Uganda.

We are lucky to have several brilliant young Ugandan volunteers who make things happen on the ground.

And Rabson is one of these volunteers. His day job is tour guide, but things all went west when Covid 19 came to town. The borders were closed and suddenly his living was gone.

So he went home to Kasase and within days a biblical deluge of rain wreaked havoc and wrecked lives.

The Kupata Project was never set up to be involved in emergency relief work, but we decided it was a case of needs must. If Rabson was willing to take on the mighty task of somehow feeding a thousand desperate people, then it would be quite unnacceptable for us not to try to help him.

So I wrote my blog, asked for donations and crossed my fingers. The response was heart warming. We hoped to raise £400. After a week we have in fact managed to raise £1800. One couple who I will not name gave us £1000. This isn't the first time they have helped First Base and the Kupata Project. They are truly, totally huge hearted people. As Colonel Kurtz said in Apocalypse Now "If I had 40,000 men like that, our problems here would be over very quickly....."

I contacted Peace, our lead volunteer. I asked her to get a handle on the cold hard facts of the situation in Kasese. Here they are.

Ok. 203 families with nothing to eat. How long for? How long until they can make their homes habitable again? Maybe a month?

Maths time.

£1800 to last for a month.

£450 a week. 1057 people. 42.5p per person per week. 7 pence per day.

7 pence.

Christ.

Peace tells me the normal way of sorting things is to distribute weekly to each family.

So started to do to the calculations over WhatsApp. And after a few goes, this was what we managed to come up with.

5 kg Cassava Flour

1 kg Maize Flour

'Brown porridge' for babies

Half a bar of soap.

It's what you get with 7 pence per person per day. It isn't enough. Not nearly enough. An NHS nutritionist would have duck fit, but what can you do?

And when I compare what we helping Rabson to provide in Kasese with what First Base is providing to those in need in Dumfries and Galloway....

Well. It's pretty hard.

It is worth touching on the logistics. When I run food around Dumfries and Galloway, I drive a spanking new hire van along quiet roads. Tarmac roads.

Rabson's task is a tad stiffer. The Cassava meal comes in 65kg sacks. By hook or by crook, he gets two sacks onto on the back of his old motorbike and then he somehow navigates dirt roads with pot holes filled with liquid mud. Not a task for the faint hearted. But nobody could ever say Rabson is faint hearted.

Anyway. Here's the long and short of it. Nobody in Dumfries and Galloway is going to starve to death in June 2020. And nobody in the makeshift camps of Kasese is going to starve to death in June 2020. And for that we should be thankful. And everyone who has helped Forst Base and the Kupata Project to make this happen should be proud of their generosity.

But there is a huge difference. Nobody needs go hungry in Dumfries and Galloway this June. There is enough food available for all. Good food. Nutritious. Plenty enough to maintain life and limb and then some.

Sadly, this isn't the case in Kasese. 7 pence a day is enough to keep them alive, but not enough to drive away the gnawing pain of hunger. 7 pence a day is only enough for starch. We can't afford any protein. Which sadly means the diet is far from healthy.

It is what it is. Can it be better? Well, I have no doubt you already know the answer. Of course it can. If we manage to raise more money, then we can provide more. 15 pence a day is enough for some protein.

I actually hate asking. We are all living through truly miserable times. I get that. But we would dearly love to able to bring the people Rabson is helping in Kasese just a little closer to the people we are helping here in Scotland.

You can find the Kupata Project's online fundraising page by following the link below.

THE KUPATA PROJECT ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

For all of you have given donations to help Rabson, I hope you feel some pride and satisfaction. Because of your generosity, nobody is going to starve. Without it, they might well have done.

And that's quite something, right?