No focus without food

This e-mail of March 6 had me choking on my breakfast toast: "You probably do not remember that last year you picked up a girl near Welwitschia [a women's residence on the Free State University campus] who was on her way to the shop; you asked her to come with you and told her to choose her own groceries in the mall.

"She came back with a couple of plastic bags. I was surprised because she had gone to Welwitschia to borrow R5 from a friend so that she could buy chicken livers for supper. That was my roommate. Thank you."

There is no pain worse than student hunger. You are caught between the promise of a degree that will, they say, one day change your life and that of your family, and the pangs of hunger that keep reminding you of much more immediate, instinctual needs that must be met in order to survive.

Do you stay in class or do you drop out and scavenge for basic resources on the streets?

Do you stay on campus, holding on to that promise of a better life, but find the means of making the money that can still the pains of hunger? And if you simply cannot find time for a part-time job between classes, why not just make that money by selling your body or stolen goods?

These are the hard questions that thousands of university students across this country ask themselves every day. The choices are stark.

I remember days like that as a student. Even though my parents always managed to have bread in the house, I recall days away from home when hunger struck. Like the times I sat outside a bakery shop in Montagu with my cousins and simply took in the smells of bread being baked at the back of that winkel to at least give us the sensation of taking in fresh slices of vloerbrood, as it was called.

It is a horrible pain, made worse in a university, where you are assumed to have one leg up on the ladder to economic wellbeing.

It is a colourless pain, and some of my African students find it hard to believe there are white and Indian students supported by the university's No Student Hungry Campaign. And it is a pain that can determine the life chances of thousands of university students.

As I watched the superbly talented radio personality Redi Thlabi interview the inspirational Niki Adbinor at the launch of the campaign, I could see my NSH students' spirits lifted with courage and determination.

Adbinor is the clinical psychologist without arms and with shortened legs who drives a modified car with her shoulders and puts on her impeccable make-up with her toes.

Yet we are all wired differently. To some, another night without food might be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.

To others, desperate measures kick in, such as servicing the sugar-daddies who trawl some of our campuses in search of vulnerable young women. They often leave nothing but devastation in their wake. Unwanted pregnancies are not the worst problem; deadly viruses can find their way into the bloodstream of a hungry youth.

"You want me to have a good academic record to qualify for a food bursary?" asks one of my students.

"The problem is my weak academic record exists precisely because I do not have that food available."

The young man has a point.

Even well-intentioned bursaries seldom cover all the needs of a desperately poor student for whom not only tuition and accommodation must be covered but basic living expenses as well. And then it is well-known that the bursary is also used in part to sustain the broader family. A dedicated food bursary can make a difference to such students.

We can't afford more talented youth with untapped potential falling by the wayside.

Nor can we expect the government to fill all the holes in the net of student support.

The hunger on campuses calls for citizen action. It takes R30 a day to provide one student with a nutritious meal; that comes to R600 a month and R6000 a year.

The recipients of such bursaries are required to give back to their communities through a service plan that enables others to benefit from the gift they received.

I invite you to contribute to the No Student Hungry Campaign of the University of the Free State. Bank: Absa; account number: 1570850721; branch code: 632005; reference number: NSH and your surname, for example "NSHJones".