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Author Chris Bohjalian affirms CROP Walkers, kicks off Middlebury, VT, CROP Walk with these reflections

October 17, 2007

Middlebury, VT

Reflections from Chris Bohjalian at the opening of the Middlebury CROP Hunger Walk, Oct. 7, 2007

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure, it is an honor, it is a privilege to be with you today. Really, usually when I am part of a tradition involving food, it has something to do with the bizarre rituals that marked the Bohjalian family at Thanksgiving – and, yes, it was a tradition marked by plenty, not scarcity.

Though, in all fairness, I am half-Armenian, which meant that I grew up with the expression "starving Armenian," an integral part of my identity.

Armenians are known, as far as I can tell, for three things:

Making rugs. My Swedish grandfather actually refused to attend his daughter's wedding to my Armenian father, insisting that he would not witness his beautiful, blond daughter marry that son of the rugmaker. In truth, no Bohjalians have ever had anything to do with rugs.

Being a very nice people. Strangers often meet me for the first time and tell me they have met another Armenian, and he or she was from a very nice family and we are, as a general rule, a very nice people. I find this reassuring: It's nice to know we are not viewed as a race of serial killers.
And

Starving. As a result of the attention the Red Cross brought to the plight of refugee Armenians at the end of the First World War, we might have been the first great people to be known in very large measure for being very hungry.

I am not making light of that.

The twentieth-century began with much of the world wondering how it could help a starving people. That's also, of course, how the century ended.

And, yes, the twenty-first century has continued that practice: We have yet to figure out how we can have some people on the globe who live their lives almost grotesquely sated, while others remain horrifically hungry.

The fact is, we in the United States – we here in New England, in Vermont, in Middlebury – are among a minority in this world in that we eat whatever we want – not whatever we can. We choose what we eat; we eat recreationally. We have clean water in excess, whether it's from a well, a reservoir, or (the ultimate in ecological and gastronomical excess), a plastic bottle.

Well over a billion people in this world don't have access to clean water, and we here in the US insist on drinking it out of designer plastic...

But then I see all of you here to support today's CROP Walk, and I feel a wondrous rush of optimism.

Among the places where CROP Walk has provided invaluable assistance in the last year alone? Central America. Kenya. The Sudan. Indonesia. Pakistan. India. And, the U.S. Gulf Coast. Altogether, people in 80 countries benefit from the millions of dollars CROP Walkers raise around the U.S.

CROP Walk, of course, doesn't merely offer a hand out -- it offers a hand up, providing the tools and the feed and the livestock and, yes, the water buffaloes to a developing community to allow it to become self-sufficient.

And when I say "they," I should be saying "you." You are a part of a long and glorious tradition. Since the mid-1970s – an era when we were listening to KC and the Sunshine Band and the Captain and Tenille, and our idea of a video game was "Pong" – people have been gathering in Middlebury to walk for food. Many of you, I know, are veterans, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of you have participated in all 29 of the CROP Walks that preceded today's.

Last year alone there were over 150 people on the walk, and the community raised $18,000. (That is, incidentally, more than ten times what Addison County raised the first year we participated in the CROP Walk.) Much of that money went around the world, but a lot of it stayed right here in Addison County, supporting a variety of critical area agencies and food shelves.

My point? The work you do is amazing and powerful and more meaningful than you know. Truly. Take pride in what you do and the difference you make. This little three-mile jaunt? It brings grain and it brings hope. The resources you are providing will go to food shelves, to villages, and – yes – to refugee camps.

Someday, I know, we will begin a century and the chasm that exists now between the full and the hungry will have been bridged, and our hearts will be as full as our plates. Someday, I know, we will begin a century without children in refugee camps in Armenia or Bosnia or Darfur.

Someday.

In the meantime, there is you. And you. And you. There is all of us.

I want to send us off with a part of a lovely poem by James Russell Lowell – a nineteenth-century New England poet and abolitionist who I am confident would have thought quite highly of the work we are doing here today:

"Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare.
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three.
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me."

God bless you all.

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Church World Service sponsored CROP Hunger Walks are community-wide interfaith events to raise awareness and funds for international relief, development, and refugee assistance, and for local hunger-fighting in the U.S.

Chris Bohjalian is the author of ten novels, including THE DOUBLE BIND (which debuted earlier this year at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list), MIDWIVES (a #1 New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah's Book Club), and BEFORE YOU KNOW KINDNESS. His work has been translated into 19 languages and been published in 22 countries. He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;

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