Aunt Gertrude and Elizabeth are baking bread for the bread sale at church.  You may remember that Aunt Gertrude is staying with Elizabeth while her parents are back in Tanzania.  “I hope this helps the hungry people!” Elizabeth said.  “Cause I’ve never been that hungry, but I don’t think I would like it.”

“Yes dear,” said Aunt Gertrude.  “Please continue to stir the yeast before the water cools too much.”

“One time I was sick and I didn’t eat for two whole days and my mommy and daddy were really worried, but then I got better.  But I wasn’t really hungry, I was just sick.”

“Pay attention to what you are doing dear.” Aunt Gertrude reminded Elizabeth.

“Have YOU ever been hungry Aunt Gertrude?  I mean REALLY hungry?”

“Yes dear.”

Elizabeth looked at her aunt.  “Really hungry?”

“Yes Elizabeth.  I was really hungry.” 

Elizabeth thought about this for awhile.  If Aunt Gertrude was hungry, what about her own mother.  They are sisters after all.      “Was my mommy hungry too?!” she asked

“Yes Elizabeth, your mother and I were both very hungry.  But that was a long time ago, when we were little girls living in Tanzania.”

Elizabeth knew her mother was born in Tanzania, but she never heard stories about her mother being hungry.

“What is it like?” Elizabeth asked.

“What is what like?” Aunt Gertrude said impatiently as she placed the bread in the oven.

“Can you tell me about when you and mommy were hungry?”

Aunt Gertrude set the timer on the oven, wiped her hands on her apron and looked at Elizabeth.

“Let’s go sit on the porch swing.”

Aunt Gertrude and Elizabeth sat on the porch swing and Aunt Gertrude started to talk.  Maybe it was the cool evening breeze and the gentle darkness that fell as they sat.  Maybe it was Elizabeth’s eagerness to hear. Whatever it was, Elizabeth had never heard Aunt Gertrude talk so much.  And it was all so interesting!

She told Elizabeth about when she and her younger sister Val, that would be Elizabeth’s mother were little girls.  They were very happy.  Every day they helped their mother with the chores by walking to the watering hole with large plastic buckets and carried water back to their hut.  They swept the dirt floor in their hut and gathered sticks for the fire their mother cooked over.  Apparently Elizabeth’s grandmother was a wonderful cook. 

“When I was 13 and Val was only 5, our mother and father died.  That was when we became acquainted with hunger.”  Aunt Gertrude paused a moment.  Elizabeth wondered why and how her grandparents died, but she didn’t want to interrupt.  “Sometimes your mother would cry and I would give her some of my bread.  Shortly after that a lady at the church arranged for us to live with an Aunt in Dar Es Salem.  That was the first time we saw a city or saw a car or an electric lamp.  Oh my, that was so far away and so long ago.”

Aunt Gertrude looked at her niece and said with much love “I hope you are never as hungry as your mother and I were.  I hope you will do all you can for others, just like your mother is doing now in Tanzania.”

The buzzer rang on the oven.  It was time to check the bread.  The spell was broken.  But Elizabeth never forgot this conversation. She vowed she would always help the hungry.  I happen to know, when Elizabeth grows up, she will indeed help the hungry!                
THE END

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