Review: Where Am I Eating by Kelsey Timmerman

Just as Nuru International was getting started, so was the writing career of a former diving instructor from who hails from Ohio but currently calls Indiana home. Back in 2010, I had the privilege of reading and reviewing Kelsey's first book, Where Am I Wearing?, and I had the additional privilege of sending signed copies of his book to some of our first monthly supporters at Nuru International that he and his publisher had donated.

Last summer he sent me a copy of his latest book, and I had the intention of writing a review of it last summer, but I never quite got around to it. And the real shame in that is that I had a hard time putting it down once I started reading it, and I really wanted to share my thoughts about it with others. Better late than never, right?

So first off, I was really impressed with Kelsey's first book and while I was expecting a variation on a theme with "Where Am I Eating?", I found that Kelsey's skill as a writer had developed, and the stories he shared were even more compelling.

I also admittedly thought I would read Kelsey's book and find it interesting and compelling, but at the same time I felt like I was pretty well informed on food. Jamie and I eat pretty healthy--she researches tasty recipes with healthy ingredients using Pinterest and other internet tools. We tend to buy local at the Morgantown Farmers' Market and belong to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) called Mountain Harvest Farm. If you live in/near Morgantown WV, you should join it next year! If not, you should find one in your community and support local agriculture!

In the meantime, let me tell you more about this book. Kelsey started his book with coffee. He traveled to Colombia with a Starbucks bag in an effort to connect with a coffee farmer who may have been related to the coffee he had enjoyed back in the US. The book starts here, and then Kelsey takes us on a journey with the farmers of Colombia who work long hours growing and picking coffee. He joins with these coffee farmers in their labor and does the same with banana, cocoa, lobster, and apple farmers as the book progresses. And as he labors and shares his story and the stories of the people he meets, I feel like as I read, Kelsey is taking me (and anyone else who has the privilege of reading his book) on a journey into the lives of farmers around the globe. And this is not an investigative journalist kind of journey. I believe that Kelsey walked away from each experience having made new friends, and having a better understanding of our global food economy than most people, and because of his writing, I may not have made friends, but I understand much better.

I don't know about you, but as informed as I think I am, I run through my daily life on a number assumptions. I want to trust that most of the food I see and/or purchase in the grocery store comes from the United States. But I feel like I made a number of discoveries in the book. I thought that Maine is the place where the majority of our lobster comes from. I was wrong. It's Nicaragua. I figured most apples and apple juice come from Washington, Michigan, or Virginia. They're grown in China.

I'm really tempted to go into detail on each section of the book, but I'll truncate this already long post with a simple encouragement for you to buy it, read it, and let it inform your choices about what you eat, and where you eat. Kelsey writes in a way that is winsome. He's not an angry protester. He's a man who is just trying to wrestle through wise decisions for himself, his family, his community, and his world. And maybe we all need a little nudge of encouragement to wrestle as well.

And Kelsey, please forgive me for this delayed review. The book was engaging, inspiring, and has left me and Jamie thinking deeply about where we are eating.

Bhopal Disaster Revisited

This photo isn't pleasant. I believe it was taken after the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India in the early 80s. Through the social networking website of facebook, I was invited to join a cause called Students for Bhopal. For those of you who don't remember the disaster (or weren't alive), here's the student group's synopsis of the event;

On December 3rd, 1984, thousands of people in Bhopal, India, were gassed to death after a catastrophic chemical leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant. More than 150,000 people were left severely disabled - of whom 22,000 have since died of their injuries - in a disaster now widely acknowledged as the world’s worst-ever industrial disaster.

More than 27 tons of methyl isocyanate and other deadly gases turned Bhopal into a gas chamber. None of the six safety systems at the plant were functional, and Union Carbide’s own documents prove the company designed the plant with “unproven” and “untested” technology, and cut corners on safety and maintenance in order to save money.

Today, twenty years after the Bhopal disaster, at least 50,000 people are too sick to work for a living, and a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed that the children of gas-affected parents are themselves afflicted by Carbide’s poison.

Carbide is still killing in Bhopal. The chemicals that Carbide abandoned in and around their Bhopal factory have contaminated the drinking water of 20,000 people. Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women living near the factory.

I recently received this email from the group on facebook citing a major victory.

The Government of India has announced that it will take legal action on the civil and criminal liabilities of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical for the ongoing disaster in Bhopal, India. This landmark announcement comes after over 5 months of campaigning by Bhopal survivors and their international supporters, which included a 500-mile march and a 130 day sit-in on the streets of Delhi by survivors of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Disaster.

Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers Ram Vilas Paswan announced that the government will vigorously pursue Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, when he visited the Bhopal sit-in camp today. Dow Chemical has not presented Union Carbide in Indian criminal court, and has been fighting to avoid cleaning up the toxic site left by Carbide in Bhopal that has poisoned the drinking water for 25,000 people in Bhopal.

Paswan also announced the establishment of an empowered Commission on Bhopal. The Commission will address the health and welfare needs of the Bhopal survivors as well as environmental, social, economic and medical rehabilitation. The Commission will be empowered to allocate resources to different rehabilitation schemes or research projects, issue tenders, identify implementing Central or State Government agencies, and change the agencies if their work is unsatisfactory.

Read more: http://www.bhopal.net/blog_pr/archives/2008/08/historic_statem.html

I know this is a lengthy entry, and i appreciate you taking the time to read it. I posted this for two reasons.

1) It's exciting to see change taking place even if it is taking over 20 years. Change doesn't come easy, and it takes the efforts of many standing up and contributing.

2) This change is taking place because of efforts of everyday people like you and me. You see, contrary to what you might believe or lies you may have been told, by the choices you make in this life, YOU can make a difference in the lives of people you may never meet.

All that to say, let's dream big about how God might want to use each one of us to change the world!!!

Takin it to the Streets

I just read this article in the New York Times about demonstrations taking place all over the country with regard to the Immigration policy being discussed in Congress.

As I personally reflect on the issue, I find it a bit ironic that there is an immigration policy. When my ancestors were in charge of the immigration policy, everyone was welcomed. People came from all over to enjoy the New World of America. Maybe we should have set more strict parameters back then, who knows?

Regardless of perspective, it is truly a wonderful gift that people are able to peacably demonstrate for their respective causes. If you were able to speak out about one issue in our world, what would it be?