I don’t know that I’ve encountered a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize before today, and I wouldn’t have expected it to be about the food, in any case. But Victor Ochen has been on campus, and here’s what Corey posted on Facebook this afternoon:
Today I spent two life-changing hours photographing 2015 Nobel Peace Prize nominee Victor Ochen, 33, from Uganda. I witnessed two unstaged acts. First, he bussed most all of the dishes from the guest dining table – of which HE was the guest of honor. Second, he went out of his way to playfully engage a developmentally challenged dining service worker and addressed him by name. I can’t remember a single word Victor said. But his actions were incredibly powerful.
Then, tonight, Ochen accepted the St. Norbert Ambassador of Peace Award – the youngest person to be so honored, and the first African. He told his Birder Hall audience about growing up in a region terrorized by rebel forces. It’s not the bullets that terrify you, he said. It’s the disease, the hunger, the conditions of war.
For seven years, his family coped. On just one meal a day.
Read more on Victor Ochen in the next issue of @St. Norbert, out Oct. 6.
