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A different kind of banquet

by Dan Nickerson

Brussels (30th March 2008).- St Anthony’s Peace and Justice Group sponsored the first St Anthony’s Oxfam Hunger Banquet on Saturday, 26 Jan 2008 at St Anthony’s Parish Hall. Many volunteers put in a good amount of time and energy to not only prepare for the Hunger Banquet, but also to support the event on that Saturday evening. The turn-out for the event was well above what was expected, as we were joined by parishioners, friends and many families. 

The basic concept for a Hunger Banquet comes from Oxfam, which supports programs worldwide to fight the causes of hunger on our planet. An Oxfam Hunger Banquet provided us an opportunity to educate St Anthony’s Parish on hunger issues; raise funds to support Oxfam's poverty-fighting work; and recruit new volunteers for Oxfam.

Many of our guests were surprised by the actual Hunger Banquet format, with many expecting to come to a nice dinner, receive some literature, listen to a guest speaker, then be on their way. Instead, the Hunger Banquet is more about the actual experience than about any specific speaker. As guests arrived, they drew tickets at random that assign them each to either a high-, a middle-, or a low-income tier, for which they received a corresponding identity card and appropriate meal for that income tier.

The surprise is that what Europeans consider high, middle or low income is not the reality in the world stage in which we live. High-, middle-, and low-income statistics used in the Oxfam Hunger Banquet were based on the World Bank Development Indicators 2007.

High Income is basically most people in Europe, and certainly St Anthony’s, as they have a job, steady income, and excess funds to spend beyond the basic needs. 15 percent of our guests in the high-income tier were served a nice several course meal, including wine and dessert, by a waiter, as we would expect in a restaurant.

Middle income is the group of people that have enough to eat each day, and an income or basic needs source, but with one bad turn of events, such as a bad harvest, regional conflict, job lay-off, they would be in the lower income level. 35 percent of our guests in the middle-income section ate a simple communal meal of rice and beans.

Lower income is the group of people in our world that skip meals each day, or sometimes for several days due to the lack of food or the lack of resources to buy that food. They may be victims of drought, political strife, wars, or just poor distribution networks and policies that keep them from having access to enough food to sustain them. 50 percent of our guests in the low-income tier stood in the Oxfam Food line to receive their small ration of rice and not so clean water.

As the high income table enjoyed drinks and appetizers, our middle and lower income guests looked on as Lazarus must have from Jesus’ parable. Then a surprise came as several of the middle and lower income guests assuming characters were provided with real-life circumstances that either moved them from the lower to middle income table, or from the middle income table to the floor with the rest of the lower income guests. Nobody moved to the high income table, as is the reality for most of the world. 

Finally, the Hunger Banquet ended with some short discussion and sharing. Especially heart-wrenching was the story from one parishioner who was in Somalia helping with a food distribution center. As a woman waited in line, she realized she could not carry both the food being distributed and her baby, as they had no buckets or bags, so she would have to use the front of her dress to hold the food. She wrapped and laid the baby down on the ground while she stood in line for about 20 minutes. When she returned with her dress full of flour and rice for her family, she bent down to pick up her baby. Then she dropped all her supplies, and began to weep, as she realized in that short time, her baby had died. How fragile life is when you don’t have food.

We encourage the Parish to continue to watch out for and participate in more interesting Peace and Justice Group events. The Hunger Banquet was definitely a moving experience for all that could attend.

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