EDMONDS — For a minute or two, hushed crying was the only sound in the room.
Guests at Edmonds-ÂWoodway High School, attending a dinner to raise awareness about hunger, lowered their eyes Thursday night, many of them quietly wiping tears.
Eliot Cantave spoke again.
The 43-year-old computer engineer from Everett, who was born and raised in Haiti, talked about what it feels like to be hungry.
“Hunger is more than lack of food. To me, it’s synonymous to extreme poverty,” he said.
His own voice heavy with tears, Cantave remembered families who struggled to cope every day.
He also remembered the times his own family had to go to bed on empty stomachs.
“Fortunately, it didn’t happen every day, but it happened enough for me to say that I had suffered from hunger,” he said.
Students at the school’s multicultural club organized the dinner to raise money and educate people about hunger in the world. Guests received tickets representing three income levels: low, middle and high.
The 10 percent of participants who got high-income tickets were served a nice meal, neatly served at a table with a white tablecloth. Some 30 percent comprising the middle-income level sat on long benches and dined on rice and stir-fried vegetables. The remaining guests, representing the world’s poorest population, shared a bowl of rice and some water, sitting on blankets on the floor.
Janet Seager of Mountlake Terrace, who got a low-income ticket, said the presentation had a powerful effect. “It makes you aware how lucky you are,” she said. “You don’t really think about people dying of hunger. It just breaks your heart.”
Seager said learning about how widespread hunger was could make any person feel powerless.
Melody Zhao, a 17-year-old international student at Edmonds Community College, shared a story about getting to know hunger on a more personal level.
Zhao, who is from China, told guests about a trip she made several years ago to a small, rural village in her home country, where she stayed with a local family for five days.
“I had never seen such a poor village. But although they were so poor, they were very kind-hearted,” Zhao said, showing slides of smiling members of the family.
At the end of her speech, she urged those in the room to give it a second thought every time they’re about to throw out food.
“Be sensitive and please remember: Hunger cannot wait,” she said.
Edmonds-Woodway senior Elizabeth Wilke said members of the Mixed and Multicultural Club worked hard to put the event together.
“We’ve been waiting for this a long time,” she said.
Olga Kachook, another organizer and senior at the school, said the club gives students a chance to appreciate diversity. “One of the goals we have is to raise awareness about diversity in our own school.”
Ebele Nwokobia, also a senior, joined the club because she wanted to learn about different ethnicities. “I was so excited to celebrate all the different cultures,” she said. “There are so many here at our school.”
At the beginning of the event, the girls were greeting guests at the entrance into the hall. They said they were especially excited to meet and hear from the four speakers: from Burundi, Haiti, China and a former Peace Corps volunteer who spent three years in Africa.
Cantave was glad to share his knowledge. “The people here, especially the young kids who don’t know much about hunger, it may really teach them something,” he said.
As much as Cantave wanted students to learn about hunger, he wanted them to learn about sharing. “In Haitian culture, there is always enough for one more person,” he said.
Reporter Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452 or kyefimova@heraldnet.com.
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