We hear in the news and through the grapevine about the financial crisis in America. It’s rather hard to imagine. Is the whole thing like a balloon with a little too much air in it? Just ready to pop? I have trouble feeling as disturbed as I should by the stock market and the real estate losses. I just want to know how all this affects the big picture of world economics and how much we ourselves are responsible for. Do we create this havoc as we do so much other havoc - by demanding more than the world was meant to give?

Food prices are skyrocketing in our little town of Nyhuka. When we arrived one and a half years ago, 800 shillings could buy a cooked meal at the local “restaurants.” That’s about fifty cents. Now, this short time later, the price has nearly doubled to 1,500 shillings for a comparable meal. Rice is selling for nearly twice what it used to; so are beans. And from what we read in the online papers - this food shortage is widespread. Soon, they say, as the rich get richer, the poor of the world will simply cease to survive.

Apparently this lack of food has to do with choices us rich people make (I might not seem rich to you; but believe me, relatively speaking, I am.) As we focus more on biofuels we divert for our own uses the cheap, easily grown grains that the less affluent use for filling their stomachs and gaining their calories. And as the wealthy parts of the world eat more meats, the less wealthy end up with even less of their normal grain diets. Our meat uses an unbelievable amount of their grain to get to the table. Running on biofuels, our energy uses even more of what their bodies need simply to survive. This is simply what I read, you understand. And because I’m a rich American with choices; I choose how much I want to know and how much I want to ignore.

I don’t have answers to these problems, and I’m going to avoid offering cliched solutions. I’m just taking this chance to notice, to observe the casualties. To realize that the painful prices of fuel affects our way of life so little in comparison to the lives of the poverty-stricken across the globe. To notice that the average annual income in Uganda is $300 and to realize that our part of Ugandan falls far, far below the median of that average. We have choices about how we will live. They are hard choices but important ones, because they affect lives. God cares about the least and about those of us more privileged with affluence. Solutions are there to the problems if we look to the true Answer Man. And I’m preaching to myself here, as I find comfort in a car with fuel, meat hauled from the city, and care packages sent at great expense from home. Where is the balance of enjoying good gifts with protecting those less fortunate? Truly hard to say.