BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau

The most heartbreaking thing about starving children is their equanimity.

They don’t cry. They don’t smile. They don’t move. They don’t show a flicker of fear, pain or interest. Tiny, wizened zombies, they shut down all nonessential operations to employ every last calorie to stay alive.

We in the West misunderstand starvation — especially the increasing hunger caused by the global economic crisis — and so along with Paul Bowers, the student winner of my “win-a-trip” contest, I’ve been traveling across five countries in West Africa, meeting the malnourished.

At the extreme, they were like Maximiano Camara, a 15-month-old boy here in Bissau, who was so emaciated that he risked failure of major organs. His ribs protruded, his eyes were glassy, his skin was stretched taut over tiny bones.

(Doctors try to help but are overwhelmed: One was showing me Maximiano when a nurse rushed in from another room carrying a baby who had stopped breathing. The doctor paused, revived that child on the next bed, handed her back to the nurse, and then calmly resumed his discussion of Maximiano.)