Why I chose to dedicate the rest of my life fighting hunger off the face of the Earth.

If you are reading, chances are that you have never experienced hunger on the scale that the one billion people of concern live with it everyday.

I have never experienced hunger either. But I have been in a few situations where I did not have access to one single meal and I thought that I was going to die. I certainly did not like the feeling and I could not focus on anything for that afternoon until I got to a nearest town and bought food (a long bicycle ride gone wrong).

A few days later, I asked myself how people could live like that on a daily basis.

I grew up on a continent where hunger is rampant. I have seen people on the streets begging for food and as a young child (I was probably 7 or 8), I remember seeing someone on the street who was being helped by a group of people to swallow food and water because from what I was told, he had not eaten in days and was to weak to even open his mouth.

I will never forget the man’s hazy gaze and I will never forget how his body was shaking and the convulsions he had.

Without food, no living organism will survive. It does not matter whether it’s a human being or a plant.

Without food, all of human crises can never be solved.

Without food, you can not expect anyone to pull himself or herself out of poverty by going to school, to start a small farm, to seek employment and in HIV AIDS patients to even benefit from the effects of the drugs that he or she may have been prescribed.

Food and water are two of the most vital elements that are crucial to survival and without them, death is a certainty.

What boggles my mind is that hunger is not a complex problem like climate change, wars and other issues facing humanity. Yes, they are very linked but hunger is one crisis that can quickly and easily be disposed of.

All it takes is really the world sitting up and collectively saying: “Enough”. If the world could have the same fever that it had when Obama was running for office or when the World Cup Football is on, I promise you that we would not hear of hunger within years.

Global hunger needs global awareness. People behind climate change have done a wonderful job of popularizing the notion that us humans are killing our dear planet and that we should put a stop to it as our lives literally depend on it.

Now no matter where you go, everyone is concerned about the environment whether they like it or not. Corporations get boycotted when they pollute, people get reprimanded when they do not recycle and political powers get voted on their climate policies. That’s the kind of vision I have for global hunger:

MAKING IT EVERYONE’S NUMBER ONE PROBLEM TO FOCUS ON

The day companies of all size include fighting worldwide hunger in their mission statements, the day politicians and other office candidates include hunger on their agendas and manifestos and the day it is expected from individuals to partake in hunger elimination or prevention activities, is the day that hunger will see its last day on Earth.

It’s as simple as that.

The World Food Programme, the world’s largest hunger relief and humanitarian agency, wrote: “If everyone online gave just $80, there would be no world hunger in 2010” (At the time of writing this message on Twitter, there were a billion people online).

$ 80 billion sounds like a huge amount of money from an individual’s viewpoint but if governments, businesses and individuals collectively decided to raise that amount yearly, it could be done.

Then, organisations helping people get out of poverty would teach them how to fend for themselves and forever be immune to the poverty plague.

My goal is to get the world to focus on hunger and make it their number one human crisis to eliminate. You cannot eliminate extreme poverty, AIDS, global warming if people are hungry. You cannot preach the gospel or a political ideology if the person you are brain bashing is running on empty. You cannot get people to stand up and fight for their human rights or tell their leaders that they want whatever change they seek if they don’t even know if they are going to have something to eat and the next meal time.

If the world that’s not hungry could focus on the world that’s hungry, it would be a first solution to dealing with most of the world’s problems.

For those people who do not like immigrants flooding into their country, if these people are not facing hunger and are able to prosper, you can rest assured that they will have no reason to live their countries.

For those people who do not understand why their countries has to keep sending their hard-earned money to other countries in the form of foreign aid, know that if these people are not fighting to survive from hunger, they will pick themselves up and become active in their economies.

For those people who wonder why some wars simply never end, you can be sure that if people are able to eat, they would be able to get an education, know their rights, exercise them and keep a close eye on corruption and stop situations from escalating into wars.

This is not a class in politics or global issues. It’s just common sense. Hunger can be a weapon. Think about it… what happens to your own thinking when you have skipped a couple of meals? What happens to your energy? What becomes your primary focus? Eating or figuring out what the next episode of your favourite TV show is going to be like?

If you want to make a big business decision happen, won’t you make sure that all the parties partaking in the negotiations have a full stomach first? Or, do you even think they will be paying any attention to your presentation?

Why do you think romantic dates happen over dinner? How do people generally feel when they have eaten? More uptight or more relaxed and open to your courtship initiatives?

If you are Christian and are well immersed into your Bible, you’ll even remember that in many instances Jesus fed the people before he even started preaching. Maybe, He was onto something?

If you want world peace, if you want the planet to stop being in peril, if you want to travel the world without fearing for your life, if you want a better tomorrow for your children or if you don’t know where to start in tackling the world’s most pressing issues, here’s the first step to achieving your ideals:

Help wipe out hunger from the face of this Earth and you will be on the fast way to building a perfect world.

That’s what I am dedicating my life to achieving while living my dreams too, two outcomes that are not mutually exclusive.

A round-the-world DJ tour to set multiple Guinness World Records and raise awareness about and funds for the one billion hungry people around the world who urgently need help is not your typical project.

Most projects consist of one simple or complex task and that’s about it. My world tour encompasses so many elements that it should be viewed as a fully-fledged enterprise in the same category as a business start-up.

There are five aspects of the Big Journey:

- The club world tour (performances in nightclubs around the world)
- The DJ world tour (what I could refer to as promotional performances/appearances such as radio guest slots or in-store performances)
- The round-the-world road trip (driving around the world in a car is a mammoth project)
- The worldwide hunger awareness and fundraising work (to get people, artists, performers and companies in the dance music field to pledge resources – time, money, effort, attention, to name a few – to fight and prevent hunger)
- Management of my soon to be launched record label, my current record label and other business interests while traveling the world.

I thought about all this when the idea of going around the world by car was taking shape and I just figured that it would also be a great experiment to see what motivated and focused humans can achieve.

That is why I have found a tour director so far. She’s actually a partner in the company that we’ll start-up together to manage the world tour (logistics, costs, itinerary, expenses, funding and so on). Her credentials are impeccable and above everything, she has the right thinking both in “what could be achieved” and in “we need to do something for the one billion hungry people around the world”.

My number one beef with project management are the stupid graphs that come with the territory. Anyone who dangles one in front of me will be showing himself or herself out of the door, guaranteed!*

I will also need to launch and run the new record label while I am on the road. I have exciting ideas that I will share in future posts. But I will definitely need a “woman or man on the ground” to help me oversee this parallel project. This person will obviously need to have a background in the record industry but also have a twisted sense of challenging established rules because the concept that I will unleash on her or him is not for the timid!

I said that there were five projects but there are actually six. I also intend on appreciating the places and meeting people along the journey. This cannot be neglected as it defeats the purpose of the biggest road trip ever.

I am also blessed with having so many good friends who are scattered in various countries and cities around the world (that’s what attending international schools and universities and also playing music to diverse crowds generates!). I plan on paying a visit to as many as possible. I have been told many times that my room is waiting for me. I have not seen many of these precious friends face to face for many years but we keep in touch via email, telephone and/or Facebook.

And by the way, due to the unpredictable nature of this first ever endeavour, plans can change quickly meaning that what has taken months to prepare can be thrown in the garbage within a few seconds. For instance… what would happen if my body decided that it could not withstand a continuos car trip???

What’s the point of this article?

This project is no simple picnic planning. It’s a whole enterprise. That’s why I am carefully laying the ground work to put the wheels in motion. I am also giving myself some tight headlines because the window of opportunity is so small as 2010 is going to be a very busy and important year in recent history.

So to all who think that I am going on a joyride, let me assure you, it’s not all fun and games. But I will choose this “pain” gladly than be confined to a 9-to-5 job, slaving away for someone!

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Graph source: Wikipedia

I must be losing my mind from getting older or getting busier. Since I started actively planning for the Big Journey, I have been forgetting things on a constant basis. This is not the time in my life to become super forgetful!

I am forgetting about gigs and booking others, I stopped to blow my nose after one DJ engagement and I left one my CD bag on the street thus losing it, I wanted to go to the gym and when I got outside I realised that I was carrying my DJ record bag instead, I am forgetting coffee dates with friends, I thought that one important phone call was at 14:00 while it was at 13:00!

Let’s hope that the fact that I am too busy is the reason behind this never-before-seen behaviour. I suspect that because there are so many things that are running on my mind, some things are becoming trivial.

No wonder my poor brain is hurting. It's already full (just replace beer and sex with chocolate)!*

I have always boasted on having a good memory but I now think that there’s too much to remember that I need to start taking notes. Thankfully, I can use the notes and calendar applications on my iPhone. It’s just that now it’s going to be a pain to note down everything that I have to do because once you start relying on notes, you need to stick to it as your mind will forget how to remember stuff.

Or perhaps, I should just be searching for information on how to deal with information overload?

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* Illustration: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com