One time I was on a food distribution in the village of Niankore. We were able to buy 10 tons of corn to hand out that day. I remember handing out bucket after bucket of corn to people who had been pre picked before hand and given a ticket. It was getting down to the end of the food but it became clear quick that we were nowhere near the end of the line of people. After we had satisfied those that had a ticket we had enough food for about 10 more people. The problem with this was that there were 100-200 people left in line. I was asked to be the one that picked the lucky few who would receive the food we had left. I was immediately overwhelmed by this task. I kept thinking to myself how can I do this, what if I pick the wrong person, what if I give it to someone that ate yesterday verses someone who hasn’t eaten in 3 days. I turned Robert Sanou, who overseas a lot of the work we do in Burkina who is like a brother to me now, I asked him how do I even begin to pick. He responded with this advice to me, “you pick the elderly first, then we can move to the women with children and then we can move to the men.” We knew that we didn’t even have enough to give to the older women that where there waiting.
Forever in my heart will be burned the experience of walking through the crowd trying to find the older ladies that the Lord was leading me to. Praying the whole time please do not let me chose the wrong person please don’t let me chose the wrong person. I will never forget how it felt to turn away women who could have been my grandma. After I had picked a couple of people the crowd realized that I was in charge of handing out the last bit of food. I remember the crowd started to close in on us not because they became violent but because they just wanted to make sure that I knew they where there and they the could be chosen. The crowd backed Robert and myself into the old church where we had held the grain. We were both crying at this point and I looked at him and I asked him how he did this week in and week out, how does he turn people away? He just looked at me and said, “this is life, this is what it is like to live in Burkina.”
At that moment I knew that we had to stop handing out food and come up with a solution for the country. I knew that if we were truly going to make a difference we would have to infest our time, effort and resources into coming up with a solution to the problem of hunger not just a band aid that might last 6 weeks.