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professors at the University of Saint Petersburg - some of the most
civilized and gifted people in the world - began to realize that they were
all going to starve to death. During this crisis the intelligentsia kept a
careful watch on themselves, as Professor Pitirim Sorokin reported in his
monomaniacal world history, Hunger as a Factor in Human Affairs (1975),
which he wrote while he was starving. Sorokin categorized world hunger
into a strict taxonomy of absolute-deficiency starvation,
relative-deficiency starvation, individual-comparative starvation,
social-comparative starvation, and quantitative-qualitative
relative-deficiency starvation. So the faculty at Saint Petersburg knew
precisely what to expect: feelings of hurt, weakness, headache, dizziness,
and upset stomach, followed by nausea and terrible aches in the joints.
Later, when unremitting hunger obscured the clarity of consciousness, they
knew they would forget where they were, where they lived, and, finally,
their names. A dull and hopeless apathy would set in, and then the
infamous "famine psychosis" would reign: depression, paralysis, and an
overwhelming sensation of existential emptiness. Pathological expressions
of anger and rage would soon follow, along with hunger delirium and
hallucinatory paroxysms like those experienced by Saint Anthony, Saint
Ignatius of Loyola, and Jesus in the wilderness, as Satan tempted him to
twist stones into bread.

As the professors quietly awaited their fate, the rest of Russia went mad.
In Moscow, a starving husband murdered his wife, carved a roast out of one
part of her body, made a soup from another, and a jelly loaf from her
feet. In Minsk, two children killed and gradually consumed a third. In the
village of Esipovka, a woman cut up the body of her seven-year-old
daughter and ate it. "Hunger makes a norm of abnormality", wrote Pitirim
Sorokin. "Starvation tends to alter our ideology".

Every evening, the professors would seat themselves around the university
refectory for their single daily meal of watery broth flecked with scraps
of potato peel. As they ate, the biologists among the crowd would grimly
prognosticate how long each could expect to survive. The behaviorists
would report how many laboratory dogs had died that day, while the
philosophers discussed the growing wave of hunger suicides. Entire
families had ended their lives by carbon monoxide poisoning, others by
infecting themselves with spotted typhus fever, others by hanging
themselves or by drowning. "Mostly the conversation turned on who had been
arrested, or had been executed, who had died", Sorokin reported. "In one
way or another all became thieves and swindlers".


The United Nations had convened its Sixty-third General Assembly, which
meant block after block of river-view high-rises cordoned off by riot
police, gunships on the East River, frogmen in the water, helicopters in
the sky, SWAT units in SWAT vans, waves of incensed demonstrators from
China and the Upper West Side, and a rainbow coalition of dark-suited,
grim-faced, crew-cut, heavyset men who spoke into their lapels. Past the
police barricades the climate-change, bioenergy, and hunger crowd had
magically reappeared - the same presidents, prime ministers, and assorted
excellencies, in addition to a new entourage whose identity badges read,
BILL GATES DELEGATION. Among the representatives of 192 member states, the
presidents of Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda may have been happiest of all
to see this new delegation, for it signified a gift.

I wound through the United Nations' underground maze of baby-blue
barricades, mini-militias, and metal detectors until I reached Conference
Room 4, one of those vast interiors that promised the future of the world
in its bold angles and curves and molded plastic chairs bolted to the
floor. The burly guys with automatic weapons were not letting anyone in
until the K-9 unit had given the all-clear, so I loitered beside a huddle
of World Food Program underlings who snapped to attention when Nancy Roman
marched into their midst, followed by their executive director, Josette
Sheeran.

When the hounds headed out of Conference Room 4 the press headed in. We
dispersed around the great modernist semicircle of egalitarian unidesk,
and I settled less than ten feet from the big nameplates. The three
African presidents were flanked beyond the empty chair for Bill Gates,
their excellencies Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and
Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, all in their gray suits, all attended by
bodyguards and aides.

Yoweri Museveni had been born a peasant and Paul Kagame had spent his
youth in refugee camps, but today they would sit with one of the world's
richest men. Jakaya Kikwete's grandfather had been a chief, so perhaps he
felt a bit more comfortable than the others in the presence of power. When
President Kikwete came to America in 2006 he visited the headquarters of
NASDAQ and appeared on CNBC to tout Tanzania as an international
investment opportunity. But as business with Shell, Dominion Petroleum,
and De Beers increased, Kikwete's country veered into what the
International Food Policy Research Institute was now calling an "alarming
level of hunger".

When Bill Gates and Josette Sheeran walked up to the dais, deep in
conversation, the flashbulbs lit her red dress and his yellow paisley tie.
Silence settled as Bettina Luescher, the former CNN International anchor
and current World Food Program senior public-affairs officer, took her
spot off to the side and soberly thanked everyone for coming. "This is a
wonderful event", she observed. Then she introduced her boss.

"Thank you", said Josette Sheeran. She welcomed everyone to the kickoff of
Purchase for Progress and then got right to the point. "Today you see a
partnership determined to put hunger out of business".

Sheeran recited her litany of ever worsening facts and figures, including
the latest hunger statistics, which indicated that the number of
malnourished people had gone up once again and the cost of fertilizer in
some areas had risen 400 percent. "Farmers are reeling", said Sheeran.

ActionAid International, the global anti-poverty organization, had
recently reported that a full quarter of the world's population were now
being denied their "right to food". The droughts in Australia and Ukraine
had destroyed harvests. In Nigeria, the price of gari had doubled. And
authorities in Bihar, one of India's poorest states, suggested that
everyone switch from eating rice to eating rats. "Eating of rats will
serve twin purposes", Vijay Prakash, an official from the state's welfare
department, told Reuters. "It will save grains from being eaten away by
rats and will simultaneously increase our grain stock".

As Sheeran continued from where she had left off in Rome, Bill Gates
began, as was his habit, to rock in his chair, his eyes fixed somewhere in
the middle distance. He rocked and picked his ear and nodded and grinned,
and eventually he turned on his microphone.

"It is an honor to be here with this group", he said. He looked down the
table and nodded at the African presidents, who nodded back.

Then, in the great visionary tradition of the United Nations, Bill Gates
spoke of a world in which the haves can teach the have-nots how to sell.
"Ultimately, the goal here is to have these markets be self-sustaining",
he said, noting that most of the world's poor people happened to be
farmers. "Allowing them to participate in these markets is a real win-win".

Through such received wisdom and cliches did the chieftain display his
generosity, and turn wolves into dogs.

"Let me join Josette in expressing my sincere appreciation to Bill Gates",
said Jakaya Kikwete. "It is our problem", continued Kikwete. "You are
coming to our rescue".

Paul Kagame was the next African president to speak, and the Tutsi general
who had dominated Rwandan politics since the genocide was on his best
behavior. "We are very happy in Rwanda to be associated with this
program", he droned. "It is our duty as governments to make these
cooperative efforts work". Indeed, out of a population of nine million,
almost five million Rwandans are at risk of going hungry.

After his short speech, Kagame yielded the floor to Uganda's president,
the elder statesman of the little group. "High food prices are very good
for us", said Yoweri Museveni, who had been criticized for arresting
opposition leaders, clamping down on the press, and working to destroy
some of the last remnants of Uganda's rain forest in order to reward
politically connected plantation owners for whom high food prices were
indeed a very good thing. In the northeast of Uganda more than 700,000
people did not have enough food. And in the provincial capital of Moroto,
three-quarters of the population were starving to death. Here, escalating
prices for maize, sorghum, and pulses would not be good news.

"Thank you, Josette", concluded Yoweri Museveni. "She buys a lot of food
from us", he said. "And I salute Mr Bill Gates".

Now Bettina Luescher returned to her microphone and asked if anyone had
any questions. I raised my hand but she called on someone else. Second
question, she looked right past me. Ditto for the third.

"We are running out of time", said Luescher. "One last question".

She gazed at the multitude of hands from front to back and all around the
arc of the majestic semicircle. Then she smiled and said, "Fred".

I clicked on my microphone and said I had a question for Mr Gates: Despite
all he was doing to end world hunger, might not programs like Purchase for
Progress in the end perpetuate market conditions that actually promote
world hunger?

An uncomfortable silence settled on the room, and for the first time that
morning Bill Gates stopped smiling. Instead of answering my question he
asked one in return, the only indication of his annoyance the fact that he
had forgotten to turn on his microphone. "What do you mean by 'market
conditions'?" he asked.

I had planned my question in advance, but never suspected I would be
required to speak at any length. Now I found myself in front of a
microphone, in full possession of my own famine narrative, a story that
had been accruing for months. An irresistible urge took hold, and I
launched into the tale of Dionysodorus the Athenian grain merchant, Roman
mobs rushing the Palatine, and medieval markets for human flesh and living
children. I cited Xenokles and Archestratos, the Bemba and the Bushmen and
the Tikopians of the South Pacific. The history of the world was the
history of hungry people, I explained. Money, politics, war - none had
ever been enough to stop starvation. And so on and so forth. Josette
Sheeran sat frozen behind the dais and Bill Gates scowled.

"You should track what the food output has been", he said, and this time
he remembered to turn on his microphone. "The amount of food being
produced in the world today is much greater than millennia ago". His face
had grown florid as he gazed down from his perch beside the African
presidents. "Incredible progress has been made", he recited. "You get
operating markets, they can feed the world very well. This money is being
spent because it improves the human condition." And now his smile
returned. "If you look at historical figures and do not see a positive
trend, you might not choose to be involved", he said, "but I do see a
positive trend".

Gates shook his head and turned off his microphone, and Bettina Liiescher
announced that the news conference had come to an end. At which point,
Jakaya Kikwete switched on his microphone.

"To assume that what the assistance that Bill Gates and Howard Buffet are
extending to African farmers is doing is perpetuating hunger", said
Kikweke, "that is a big misconception". The idea that Bill Gates and the
World Food Program might actually be increasing famine had interrogated
the very essence of the gift heading Kikwete's way: his fertilizer market,
his seed market, his loans, his commodity-options technology, his slice of
progress pie. And so the president of Tanzania recommenced his
well-rehearsed paean to the new era of hunger management.

"I am seeing a lot of sense in what they are doing", Kikwete continued,
but no one was listening anymore, not even Bettina Luescher, who repeated
that the news conference was over. The press continued their quest to
extract something more from Bill Gates, who ignored the noise. And still
Tanzania's chief executive would not stop. Jakaya Kikwete wanted his money
and his markets, and he would keep reciting until he got them.

Eventually, the African president tired of his speech. The aides and
secretaries cleared the room, along with the World Food Program crowd and
the Bill Gates Delegation. And for a moment, Conference Room 4 stood
empty. Then Indonesia's minister for foreign affairs took a seat at the
dais, alongside the prime minister of Denmark, the president of Poland,
and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. A new press person announced a new
press conference.

Hunger was over. It was time to discuss climate change.
_____

Frederick Kaufman is the author of A Short History of the American Stomach
(2008). His last article for Harper's Magazine, "Wasteland", appeared in
the February 2008 issue.


Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/index.html


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