Its the week-ennnnnd bay-beeeeee!

No its not – its only Friday morning but the radio shouts this to me a number of times before work even starts for me this Friday morning (and most others).  It gets me thinking about the apparent madness that greets the weekend for some, and yes, I understand that it’s about play and a break from the routine, a welcome break too. 

But what about those for whom a break from routine means so much else? Not play and party, but real hunger.  I have often come across this ‘other reality of the weekend (one of many other realities of weekend). The view of a weekend as a foodless stretch of two days. The reality lived by so many young people who depend on a daily meal through some or other NGO or CBO feeding programme - these programmes often not going ‘beyond the working week’.   

I often ask why, cynically acting astounded that this or that community has a group of young people who simply don’t appear to need food over weekends – or better still, school holidays. The responses I get sometimes – “who will cook?” or, “well, we can’t work every day of the week/year can we?” So what is the whole notion of providing this form of food and nutrition support about then, if it accepts the existence of the two ‘invisible’ days called ‘weekend’ and the ‘missing’ weeks called ‘holidays’? (Is there a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of days of the year happening here?) 

I hear at times that the food is provided to help the young people to “concentrate at school” and “learn better”. Hmmm, I think this rationale is a tad limited. Whatever happened to social learning – to learning outside of the class room or school boundaries? To learning about life beyond the tatty (and scarce) supply of books in the overfull classrooms that become the courts of the overburdened teachers? If we use the ‘concentration and learning’ rationale for food, should we not be feeding our young nation every day? I’d say so and even more so about teaching them ‘out of school’ things. How to spell hippopotamus on a marginally full tummy on a Tuesday is going be a lot less important in the long run than self esteem on an empty tummy on Sunday, I’d say (but I accept some may differ, oddly, about hippopotamus vs self esteem). 

Another argument I hear offered against the feeding of young people at the weekends and holidays is “well, they have family (or community members) to help them at those times.” Nice try. Yes, they may have family and community members, but let’s be realistic here. If a young person depends on a feeding scheme during school days what can change anything significantly on non-school days? Not much (yes, again, I know there are arguments around this – like the “family members returning home” from their week day work, etc, but I am talking about significant change in access to nutrition). 

Then the old and worn out “dependency” word pops out. It has to – we are ‘doing development’ after all. I’m not going there today. Or maybe I should, just a little – try explaining that concept (‘you can’t become dependent on us’) to the child, then we can talk more about it. 

Then the final blow – “we don’t have money to do this extra work.” This is very interesting. Does this mean that the donors who support the feeding during the week and during the school term don’t think children need food at other times? Ask them! 

So go ahead – have a great weekend, and let’s eat again on Monday!