August 28, 2005, most Mississippians had no idea what they were going to do if Hurricane Katrina was going to hit the Gulf Coast. It was expected to hit Florida and fizzle out. But suddenly, it had strengthened tremendously in the Gulf of Mexico and my home state was on a direct collision course with the hurricane of all hurricanes. Mississippians had experienced many hurricanes in the past and knew the drill. Get food, water and gas. Then hopefully after a few days the electricity would be back on and the gas stations pumping and the stores open for business.

How wrong everybody was. My family had gathered at the V.A., the federal hospital where

my dad worked and was on call. We personally had not brought much food with us, because the hospital said it had enough food for the families of the hospital staff. After all we, Mississippians were used to the drill of gathering in shelters that usually had their bases covered in terms of feeding evacuees. I liked hurricane season, it gave me an extra long unplanned weekend.

On hurricane day, August 29, things started going from bad to worse. The storm was hitting much worse than anybody had expected, and the first things to go were the structures on the beach. Two hospitals were on the beach. They were filling up faster than the Titanic. The only place where the critical patients could be evacuated was the V.A. So the hurricane was not as fun as I expected it to be, because now everything was hot and sweaty and people were in pain. Then a few hours later, the administration had made an announcement. The food reserves had

been washed away by a series of rouge waves, and that due to the influx of sick patients, the emergency supply would be gone in a day. Therefore only key staffs, which were the doctors and the nurses who were on call, would be able to receive food. Rations were severely limited.

The coming hours and days at the V.A were some of the most painful days that I had ever experienced. It was not because I myself was dead hungry and trying to cope with my house being hit by a tornado and then flattened to a pile of sticks by an uprooted tree, but it was the cry of others who had lost or were missing family members. Not only that, most of these people had not eaten within 24 hours. Where the hell was the federal government? This was America, people were not supposed to go hungry, especially during near heart attack levels of stress. In fact, two people had committed suicide at another section of the hospital just because the stress got to their minds.

Our car that we had parked at the V.A. was floating somewhere in the bayou which had swept it away. It was too much to sit and listen to the agonizing cries of people at the hospital. We had to do something to help these people who were in shock. My dad had developed a contingency plan just in case this scenario happened. 11 miles to the north of the hospital was our gassed our Ford E350 van. Suddenly our mission was clear. We had to get to the car and then try to get to Montgomery Alabama, where we knew for sure we could stock pile on food and then bring it back to our family as well as the other families who had lost everything. We needed that hope.

Meal Ready to Eat (M.R.E). What our soldiers eat in the field.

They were actually quite good to eat.

August 31, we started at the crack of dawn and then walked the 11 excruciating miles to the and then made it to Montgomery where we stockpiled on 500 pounds of canned goods.We had arrived back at the hospital at 11:36 p.m. that same day. Still the federal assistance had not arrived, but we had been assured by the President and the Governor via emergency radio that federal assistance with food trucks would be here by noon the next day. That was too long. The situation was getting exponentially worse it seemed as news was disseminated.

My dad and I started to unload the van and distribute it to the people who had lost all hope. We knew food would get these peoples hopes up and help them get to work with rebuilding their lives, but we could have never possibly have understood just how much of a bastion of hope it was. . When we distributed the food, most people were moved to tears that, a father and son, two random strangers, would do such an act of generosity without remuneration.

I was 14 going on 15 at the time this happened. Most people yearn for that seemingly random string of coincidences which culminates into a greatly positive life changing experience. Hurricane Katrina was that experience for me. Even though my entire house and my lifelong possessions were gone, it did not matter. I would get through this ordeal. All I needed was to find something that I could hold on to from my past life. Food was that.

I had seen the light. Before, I had never even heard of countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Burkina Faso. I only became acquainted with them when I did research and found out that millions upon millions were going hungry. And a good percentage of those were fleeing from some kind of war in some other impoverished African country. I realized my losses were nothing compared to these people because they often went without food for sometimes weeks at a time. At that moment I wondered why I had never come to the conclusion that some parts of the world were bad. Incomprehensibly bad. Why wasn’t the problem being addressed much more rapidly, especially if we had the technology to read someone’s license plate from outer space? From that moment on, I realized food was precious and that it should never be something to be wasted, when some people would literally cut of their ear for what sometimes people waste.

(This post was published later than the other food blogs due to techincal errors.)