Guest post: “Karibu” to Salem! By Kim Shrader

October 6, 2010

The Child Hunger Corps is a national service program designed to increase the capacity and capability of food banks to execute programs targeted towards the alleviation of child hunger. The objective of the program is to increase the number of nutritious snacks and meals served to children in need in local communities across the country. The Child Hunger Corps initiative is sponsored by the ConAgra Foods Foundation.

The first round of six Corps members began their work in August. They will each serve two years at a Feeding America food bank. A new group of ten Corps members will be onboarded in August 2011. This post is by Kim Shrader, Child Hunger Corps member at Feeding America Southwest Virginia.

For roughly half of the members of the Child Hunger Corps, this two-year hunger fighting adventure is a chance to pack our bags and undertake a brand new territory. For the other half, it’s a chance to take a second look at our home communities and make an impact where we are. I fall into the latter half.

Being placed at Feeding America Southwest Virginia in Salem is part of a “full circle” experience that began several years ago. I am a Virginia native, born in a town located about two hours west of Salem. It’s a place better known for coal mines than farms but cow pastures and family gardens are the norm. Strangely enough, it took moving to a small farm in East Africa to get me interested in food and hunger related issues. Although Tanzania was a million miles away from my home, I felt strangely at ease among the rolling green hills and large forests that encircled the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, where I worked with farmers to address HIV education and improve sustainable farming efforts.

This “at home” feeling came from the overtly friendly nature of everyone I met while in Tengeru, the farming community where I lived for three months in 2008. I rarely ever passed a person who didn’t greet me with “Karibu,” meaning “welcome.” I quickly learned the proper term to address my elders, saying “Shikamo,” which literally translate to, “I am at your feet” or acknowledging the wisdom and life experience of the older individual. In response, elders say, “Marahaba,” which means “I see you,” recognizing the presence of the younger person and letting them know that they are valued. I always found this exchange to be particularly important when connecting with those people who had lived and worked in their communities throughout their entire lives and possessed a wealth of knowledge about their community’s condition.

Everyone expects that these two places, my home in southwest Virginia and that tiny East African town, should be so different and yet they really aren’t. For weeks after moving to the food bank, coworkers stopped by my desk to say hello, introduce themselves, ask how I came to be here, and to tell me to call on them if I needed anything. The mornings are filled with “good morning,” “How’s your family?,” etc. Though perhaps just a way of life around here, these small gestures let me know that I’m being “seen” by those around me. Likewise, I am attempting to treat every encounter with the phenomenal “food bankers” of 10+, 20+, and 30+ years experience by remembering my “Marahaba”—always looking for what I can learn from their experiences and thinking how I can be of value to the future of the food bank.