The Lion Within

A man I knew a long time ago, a kind of uncle to the kids on the block named Leo, used to describe hunger as the lion inside of us.

It was during the Depression and we all knew what hunger was because we were poor and there was never enough food on the table.

We took the description to mean that the lion was the growl in our empty stomachs, but I think Leo, a dedicated revolutionary, was talking about rage too.

Nothing is more responsible for fury than the dichotomy between those who feast and those who starve. It’s right up there with religion and territorial imperative as a major cause of history’s calamities.

Eighteen million people die of starvation every year in the world and almost 1 billion are chronically undernourished. That’s a polite way of saying they’re hungry, man, very hungry.

They hear the lion within even as technology allows them to watch television programs that show the rest of us living high on the hog, and that’s got to stir the beast to a level of hatred beyond rage.

He roars not only from across the seas but occasionally in our own backyards. It’s a chilling sound.

This was on my mind Saturday as I stopped by an old brick warehouse in South-Central L.A. to talk to some teenagers about hunger and helping.

It was part of a 30-hour voluntary fast by 600,000 kids in the country to raise money to fight famine. About 150 of them were in that warehouse trying to imagine what it was like dying, literally, for something to eat.

*

The annual event is sponsored by World Vision, a Christian relief agency that does what religious organizations ought to be doing, laying aside hellfire and hallelujah for the benefit of human need.

The teenagers were sponsored by adults who donated money, hoping to raise about $6 million in the United States to buy food for the hungry here and in a dozen third-world countries.

The fasters in the warehouse came from Los Angeles and Orange counties and if you’re thinking they were just a lot of little fat white kids hanging out on a sunny Saturday, you’re wrong.

In the first place, World Vision was utilizing the day to prepare used clothing for distribution to the same people without enough to eat, and the teenagers went at the packing and sorting with the kind of wild energy that only the young can bring to an effort.

Blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians were all a part of the mix, and the blend of their languages was a medley that drifted through the huge old building, laced with drumbeat bursts of shouts and laughter.

Not all of them were dedicated activists from cultural ghettos trying to change the world. That’s what made the mix real and the effort universal.

Kids like Heather came from the cushy suburbs and had no idea what hunger was like because they had never heard the lion growl.

A pretty girl with spontaneous appeal, she thought about the whole business of famine then said in a tone meant to convey solemnity, “When I look at my plate and see food I don’t like, I think there’s someone in Africa who would jump at this.” Then, flashing a smile full of braces, she added brightly, “But if I don’t like it, I don’t eat it anyhow!”

*

Not everyone is that lucky. A kid like Nathan, being raised by a single mother in a family of five children, has a good idea of what hunger is like.

“It’s not a nice feeling,” he said softly, uncomfortable with the idea of talking about it. “You get by if there are people who love you, but it’s still not good.”

There’s a humiliation to hunger that those who have known it expressed in different ways, conveying the impression that poverty or reliance on public assistance made them somehow less than everyone else.

“I feel what they feel,” a boy named Allen said, talking about people in places like Mozambique and Swaziland. “I’ve been hungry, and I hate it. I guess they hate it too.”

By fasting, Allen wants to send the message to others that he’s aware of what they’re suffering. Yen Phan is also aware. Her family fled Vietnam by boat when she was 7 and almost starved drifting to Thailand.

“We came here and now we have food,” she said. Her mother is grateful to be working in a garment factory, the sole support of seven children. “We don’t always have enough to eat, but we have more than the people who can’t come to the U.S.”

Watching the teenagers, listening to them trying to empathize, I had a glimpse of what the future could hold.

My generation knew hunger and responded by working like hell never to know it again. I’m hoping that the generation in the warehouse will respond by working to eliminate it for everyone.

A lion prowls through forests of human deprivation, and unless we heed its roar there will be no peace in the world. The name of the beast is hunger.

*

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com