Real lessons learned on the 'Bread of Life' in Zambia

The piece below is today's Thinking Anew column in 'The Irish Times'

Michael Commane
On Friday May 30 sometime around 10 o'clock in the morning I met Mushimbei Mwendabai selling eggs and a few vegetables at her makeshift stall at Malengna on the outskirts of Mongu.

Mongu is a town in western Zambia approximately 600 kilometres west of the Zambian capital Lusaka.

I work as a press officer for Concern Worldwide and this was my first time to see first hand some of the work the agency is doing.

Western Zambia is the poorest part of the country and that's why Concern is there.

Zambia is approximately 10 times the size of Ireland though with a population of just 13 million. The average life expectancy is 48.

Mushimbei is a young woman probably in her early 30s. She has two children, aged 11 and four. She lives near her stall.

Before she became part of the Concern programme she was living in a fallen-down shack and her older child was not at school.

"I was chosen by Concern because I did not have enough money to send my child to school. Today my older child is at school, I can afford this now with the profit I make here.

"Yesterday I sold 20 eggs and I'm learning to do business," she tells me through an interpreter.

Mushimbei, with her 13-month-old daughter in her arms, goes on to explain that before she joined the Concern programme she just had one meal a day. She now manages to eat twice daily.

"Concern really has helped us change our lives. I hope soon to start selling fish. I am now actually able to save and am doing things for myself," Mushimbei explains.

Mushimbei is one of a number of people who is part of a Concern programme that is specifically designed to bring people out of poverty so that they can fend for themselves. It means she and others receive a small monthly supplement to support them. Mushimbei receives through a bank transfer 30 Kwachas a month, which is just a little over €3.

In tomorrow's Gospel Jesus tells us: "I am the living bread which has come down from heaven; whoever eats of this bread will live forever. The bread I shall give is my flesh and I will give it for the life of the world." (John 6: 51)

Every Sunday around the world Christians break bread in commemoration of the life and death of Jesus. Jesus right through his ministry stressed the importance of solidarity with the poor and marginalised.

In order that our breaking of bread makes any sort of sense surely our eyes have to be focused on those who are struggling to make ends meet.

Indeed, poverty is often seen as something relative. We all have a different understanding of the meaning of the word. People in Ireland who are unemployed and are experiencing negative equity on their homes are certainly poor, people who are forced to depend on agencies such as the St Vincent de Paul are in a place not worthy of human dignity. And as a nation, we have a responsibility to see to it that there is a fairer distribution of the nation's wealth and assets.

But that morning I was in Mongu it brought home to me in as real a way as it gets that there is something terribly wrong in our world.

Mushimbei is beginning to manage, she is coming out of extreme poverty. But what about the billion people on our planet who have not enough food to eat?

Is it really possible to talk in nice theological terms about the 'Bread of Life' while turning a blind eye to the suffering of so many people in the world?

While in Mongu I met a young man from Dublin. He is doing a remarkable job. We never discussed 'faith issues'. There was no need.