Jeremy Willet, Co-founder of The Hunger Strike, and husband to one of our current Uganda Volunteers, Kat Willet, recently wrote an impacting blog post about his trip to Uganda.

My Visit to Africa during the Famine/Drought
Written by Jeremy Willet

It was somewhere between sleeping in a slum house next to the stench of a latrine, standing over 7 graves with a family impacted by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), taking a shower outside with a bucket, or riding on a dirt bike (boda) into a village in Gulu, Uganda that I realized I was free. I was free from distribution agreements, tour schedules, concert promoters, ticket sales, record sales, and music producers. With the travel involved in our past 5 days in Uganda, it felt like I was on tour with my band, Willet…just without backstage greenrooms full of food, hotel rooms, crowds, live performances and long conversations with pastors asking for just 5 minutes to speak about the poor in a church service. It is August 2011, and I took 10 days off of my tour schedule to visit my wife in Uganda who is serving as a field agent for the non-profit I co-founded called, The Hunger Strike, partnered with Light Gives Heat, Stop Hunger Now, and Food for the Hungry. We traveled by dirt bike, bus, and vans from the city of Kampala up to Gulu to spend a weekend with a family impacted by the LRA attacks only 3 years ago. The next few nights would be spent eating, bathing, and sleeping where this family lived.

In January, my wife and I started to read through the Bible chronologically. As I woke up in a village in Gulu, 70 miles from the Sudan border, I was amazed that our reading plan text for the day was Matthew 25. I sat on the floor that we slept on staring at bullet holes in the structure of the house from the LRA contemplating (once again) what it meant to “love the least of these”. Because of where we slept on this trip, our prayers become very simple; “God, we know the water we just drank was unclean, so please protect us from waterborne illnesses, and protect us from malaria as we sleep without a mosquito net”.

My wife, Kat, has been serving with Light Gives Heat (LGH) in Jinja, Uganda since June, daily working alongside women that are refugees from the north because of the LRA. Only a few weeks before my trip, one of the worst famines/droughts in 60 years hit the horn of Africa impacting Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Northern Uganda. For weeks prior to my trip, I was working with The Hunger Strike and our partner, Stop Hunger Now to provide 10,000 meals to children impacted by the food shortage. In the first 3 months of the famine, over 29,000 children under the age of 5 died due to malnutrition, with an estimated 3.3 million other lives at stake. During my trip, Kat and I decided to visit Northern Uganda. We attempted to go with an organization, however, the cost was too high for us, therefore, we did what we normally do when we are alone in a country (without a team we are leading), we took the “un-safe” route of unpredictable public transport. We took a dirt bike to a post office and caught a ride up north on a postal bus that delivers mail. After arriving in Gulu, we stayed in slum houses with families that we knew, and traveled by cruisers and more dirt bikes into villages. God protected and directed our every step.

Once in Gulu, we learned that the combination of inflation and drought are causing a rise in food prices, causing many families to go hungry. As the famine/drought continue in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, the situation continues to worsen in Uganda. Only 1 hour from where we were was a camp of thousands of people in an “emergency malnutrition zone”. The media has never reported on this, so you have never heard about it. One of the most impacting moments of the trip was on my last full day in Uganda. We visited a “Malnutrition Rehabilitation Center” run by a 27 year old women who brings in anywhere from 9-15 children under the age of 5 every several weeks who were suffering from extreme malnutrition. Now, over the past 6 years, I have seen my share of hungry children in Haiti, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Uganda, but I will never forget what I saw in this center on this last trip. The children’s conditions were so bad that I refused to even take a photo of them out of respect for them as a human being made in the image of God. There was one infant in particular that was so small and malnourished that as he slept in his little crib with an IV stuck in his head, I watched to make sure he was even still alive! He never moved. Finally after 5 minutes, Kat slowly rubbed his back just to make sure he was still breathing. Thank God he was. Unfortunately, that is not the case for 1 out of every 10 children that come into this center. 10% mortality rate because of malnutrition! Am I using too big of words? What this means is this: 1 out of every 10 children in this area DIE because they didn’t have access to one of life’s most basic needs: FOOD. Unbelievable and… Unacceptable.

If you have been following me on twitter recently (@jeremywillet) or on Facebook (www.Facebook.com/jeremywillet), you can probably tell I’m pretty angry about this situation. In fact, I’m furious… and I believe God is too. God HATES injustice, and children starving to death anywhere in the world while America goes to the banquet table daily for 2nds and 3rds is an injustice. In fact, did you know that when a child is suffering from extreme malnutrition, it normally causes diarrhea, and this leads to the child’s death? Do you understand what I’m saying? An infant boy or girl literally dies in their defecation because their body lost functionality due to dehydration and lack of nourishment!

I know this is not popular to talk about and that you are tired of hearing about “starving kids in Africa”, but I’m tired of watching them die, and my goal in life is to become LESS popular so that God receives more glory. Fighting for the justice of the poor should not make you popular, it should get you killed, and I would gladly lay down my life for the sake of the gospel of Jesus and the poor that he commands us to love anyday. As I return to the states, and Kat continues to work in Uganda, it’s time to turn our anger into action.

For more information on Jeremy Willet and the Hunger Strike, go HERE!