I recently began a research internship at the Capital Area Food Bank of Central Texas. As part of my orientation, I was sent to help stock shelves at one of their food pantries located in the poorest parts of Austin.
Now, I will preface by saying I knew VERY LITTLE about poverty in Central Texas. As a graduate student, I am very insulated from class disparities. In the working environment, everyone around me is extremely well-educated and have a world of job prospects open to them. Even when my dad supported my mother and me on just his graduate stipend while I was growing up (and yes, that actually economically counts as living in poverty level), he knew financial relief was coming in a few years and worst case scenario, a small loan from my grandparents was only a phone call away. In my current social environment, even those who are not as highly educated are well off - whether it is due to their affluent background, or if it is because they have decent-paying jobs in a service industry. Even the friends I have who meticulously cut coupons can afford an occasional glass of wine or beer out. All that is to say, I have NO CLUE what it means to not have enough for food, and to not know if I'll ever have enough to provide for my basic biological needs.
Even when I started learning about poverty in Central Texas, it was in the form of numbers and statistics. For example, 48,000 people in Central Texas alone rely on food pantries to eat. Almost half of that number consists of children. These people regularly experience the physical pain of hunger and have to choose - on a weekly basis - between filling that hunger with food, or paying for utilities and shelter. That is heart-wrenching enough, but still it seems less real when the problem is so abstract. (More facts can be found here).
I arrived at the pantry this morning, prepared to help stock dozens of shelves with food they will distribute tomorrow. I was dismayed by how little food there was to stock. Apparently, the economy is hit hard right now, and people are giving the little resources they have to the victims of the Bastrop Fires. Which is great, since those victims have a real, immediate need. But what I didn't realize is there is a steady contingency of hungry people in Austin who are overlooked as a consequence.
This specific food pantry feeds about 140-180 people each week. We finished stocking, and I was shocked when the director looked at the few shelves lined with food and concluded with sadness "well at least we have enough to feed 130 people this week." How much food was she referring to? Let's just say my mother stocked more in our garage during the Y2K scare. Furthermore, the filled shelves could actually physically fit into my tiny Austin studio. The choices were canned corn, canned peas, cans of mixed fruit, canned peaches, applesauce, some potatoes and meat. That's it. This is what 130 people will survive on this week.
I drove home to a nice lunch of salmon and asparagus, and felt sick to my stomach knowing that tomorrow, 10-50 people less than a mile from me will find out they have nothing to eat this week. Yet here I am spending my money on pretty clothes, wine, fancy makeup, expensive haircuts...in short, things that are not crucial for survival. Now I'm not necessarily advocating denying yourself of any niceties and pleasures and giving all your money away; I realize that our economy is a much more complicated system than that. But it definitely gives me pause about the way I think about my money and how I spend it.
I'm not sure what to conclude about all this as this is an issue I'm still processing through. I will say I am glad I got involved with CAFB. And that although I do feel called to international ministry of some sort, I am beginning to see that the same brokenness and the same disparities exist next door to me, even in such an affluent city as Austin.
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