[South Carolina] Hunger banquet brings poverty close to home

from The Island Packet

BY TIM DONNELLY

BLUFFTON -- Suzie Ibarra, a petite college freshman who was born in Mexico, lived on the edge of poverty for about an hour Tuesday.

With her baby in her arms and pregnant again, she was told she had AIDS, which she got from a wealthy young man named "Don Pablo" whom she had a tryst with in Mexico.

For shaming his family, Don Pablo's privileges and inheritance were revoked. He was living side by side with Ibarra in the poorest 60 percent of society in the flash of a silver spoon.

The situation wasn't real -- Ibarra wore a fake pregnancy stomach, and the student playing Don Pablo looked visibly uncomfortable in a tie and sweater -- but it was representative of the larger gulf between wealth and poverty in the world.

The students at University of South Carolina Beaufort were taking part in a "hunger banquet," an event designed to lay out the disparities of the world in stark terms.

Students, dressed in chic formal wear or posh foreign garb, sat on soft couches for a high tea while others sprawled on the floor, some covered in dirt or wearing ripped clothing, eating rice with their hands. In between was a throng of students representing the 25 percent of the world's population in the middle group, the segment of population only a paycheck or two away from falling into poverty.

"Everyone on Earth has the same basic needs," said Cherryl Garner, a psychology professor who organized and hosted the banquet. "It is only our circumstances ... that differ."

The banquet, a mixture of economics lecture, dinner party, immersion classroom and a play, was part of International Week 2006, a campuswide effort to celebrate international cultures and raise awareness of world issues. The theme for this week is addressing global poverty, and for Garner, the best outcome would be to see the students take an interest in learning about hunger -- and do something about it.

"I'm hoping we take this theme of global poverty and carry it into next year and do something really proactive," she said.

The themes of the hunger banquet were laid out in purposefully contrasting terms: The few students representing the elite were waited on while missionaries mingled among the poor, doling out rice from buckets; the bright oranges of posh Asian dresses and the bright red of a formal kilt clashed with the forlorn-looking poor, some of whom were barefoot or who had wrapped their feet in makeshift shoes of cloth and tape.

Hunger banquet is an event created by Oxfam, an international charity that works to overcome poverty and injustice. The purpose is to represent the three tiers of world society: the 15 percent in the high-income range, the 25 percent middle-income population and the 60 percent of the population considered to be in poverty. Aid organizations estimate that 1 billion people in the world are impoverished, while 850 million people in the world suffer from chronic hunger.

For Ibarra, whose family moved from Mexico when she was young, participating in the banquet was enlightening. She said it helped her realize her parents made the right decision to move to the United States and give the family new chances at success.

"It has helped us, " she said. "They gave me an opportunity to get an education."