Posted on 06/23/2002 3:20:44 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
DOWA, Malawi - In February, when the food ran out, Ezlina Chambukira started selling her precious possessions one by one. First, her goat. Then an old umbrella. Then two metal plates and a battered pail.
When she had nothing left, she started praying for a miracle.
For the first time in a decade, severe hunger is sweeping across southern Africa. The United Nations says that two years of erratic weather - alternating droughts and floods - coupled with mismanagement of food supplies have left seven million people in six countries at risk of starvation.
Here in this dusty village of mud huts and unraveling dreams, 14 people have already died from hunger-related illnesses in the last four months, health workers say. It is harvest time, but crops are withered and many people are eating banana roots and pumpkin leaves.
"I have nothing else to sell," said Ms. Chambukira, 36, clutching her four ragged children. "I was praying, praying for the rains. I was praying for God to give me food."
Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Lesotho have already declared national disasters, and Mozambique and Swaziland are also struggling. Four million more people are expected to need emergency aid in the next few months as this season's meager harvest runs out, the United Nations says.
The crisis reflects the continuing economic fragility of many African nations, even here in the continent's most prosperous region. Africa's leaders are increasingly demanding greater access to Western markets for their textiles and agricultural goods in the hope of strengthening nations where millions of people remain vulnerable to the vagaries of weather, government missteps and foreign charity.
Officials say there is still time to avert a famine. So far, none of the haunting images associated with famine are visible here. There are no feeding camps full of hollow-eyed people. There are no carcasses of starved animals, no villages left abandoned as the hungry scavenge elsewhere for food.
Many families have small harvests of corn, the staple that accounts for 80 percent of the Malawian diet, which will carry those people through the months ahead. The World Food Program says it needs about 300,000 metric tons of cornmeal and other foodstuffs to feed the region through September. So far, it has received roughly 30 percent of that amount from wealthy nations that are also financing critical food aid in places like Afghanistan and North Korea. Aid agencies hope that more pledges will be forthcoming as the enormity of the need in Africa becomes clear.
The affected countries are already among the poorest in the world and many people have nearly exhausted their ability to cope.
Many families have sold all of their chickens, goats and cows to raise money to buy food. Others have reduced their daily intake to one meal a day. Others have begun relying on alternative food sources with little nutritional value like wild fruits, leaves, roots and corn husks.
Without adequate food, hundreds of people have died from sicknesses like malaria and cholera that they might otherwise have survived. In February, when many households went without food for a week or more, the European Union found that the number of cases of severe malnutrition identified in local clinics here in Malawi had soared by 80 percent.
Tiyankhulanji Chiusiwa, a 20-year-old woman with worried eyes and withered breasts, has gone so long without proper meals that she has stopped producing milk for her baby. He still suckles for comfort, but he is weakening.
He is 6 months old, she says, but weighs only seven pounds.
The people have given a name to the period of biting hardship. They call it the time of "gwagwagwa" - the time when "we had absolutely nothing."
"People who have seen what famine looks like are very scared right now," said Kerren Hedlund, the emergency officer for the United Nations World Food Program in Malawi. She says the warning signs here are clearly visible.
Villagers in Malawi typically go through their harvest stocks by around January, but this year some have already run out of food. Right now, the United Nations has food to feed only about a third of the people expected to need emergency assistance through September.
"All the signs indicate that a crisis is looming," Ms. Hedlund said. "Without any relief in sight we know it can only get worse." Not since the early 1990's, when a searing drought struck the region, has southern Africa faced such widespread food shortages.
That crisis was even more dire: about 19 million people needed emergency food, and livestock starved to death across the region because of lack of water and pasture. South Africa, which has been spared the current troubles, was also hit hard. International aid poured in and disaster was averted.
But over the last two years, severe drought, in between bouts of flooding, has battered the region once again. This time, the problem is complicated by the high incidence of H.I.V. infection along with the political turmoil in Zimbabwe and mismanagement Malawi.
The countries of southern Africa have the world's highest rates of H.I.V. infection, leaving millions of people vulnerable to the ravages of hunger. The sale of Malawi's entire backup supply of grain and the past year's political upheaval in Zimbabwe have exacerbated the effects of the natural disaster.
Until recently, Zimbabwe was one of the region's more stable and self-sufficient countries, and neighbors often turned to it for help during food shortages. But the government's efforts to seize land from white farmers, who own more than half the country's fertile land, have disrupted production greatly. The combination of severe drought and farm seizures has been disastrous.
Production of the corn crop in Zimbabwe plunged by nearly 70 percent this year, leaving almost half the population in need of emergency food. With triple-digit inflation, a limp currency and rising unemployment, Zimbabwe can barely help itself, let alone its neighbors.
Meanwhile, officials in Malawi have been assailed by Western diplomats, international donors and civic groups for selling off the country's 167,000-ton emergency grain reserve and failing to account for the proceeds. President Bakili Muluzi denies accusations of corruption. He says his officials were told by the International Monetary Fund to sell the grain to repay debt, a charge that fund officials deny.
But Mr. Muluzi acknowledges that he cannot explain why his officials sold off the entire reserve, when they could have sold part, given that 30 percent of the population may go hungry and there is nothing left.
"This is the question I was asking," President Muluzi said in an interview. "I didn't understand the intelligence about that." The debate is meaningless in the villages, where men and women are too busy scrabbling for food to weigh multiple causes of calamity.
The Chankhungu feeding center for malnourished infants is often full these days, which is unusual during harvest time. Inside the tiny red brick building, mothers and infants receive four bowls of porridge daily until they recover their strength. It is a stopgap solution. The women must go home to make room for other needy mothers, even though everyone knows there is little to offer at home.
"The child is getting better here," said Aliet Kaliati, 35, who cuddled her 1-year-old son. "I don't know how I am going to feed him at home."
Kenius Mkanda, a government health worker, says that about 75 percent of storerooms in the village of Kaundama are empty. The shortages have created sharp tensions between families fortunate enough to have a small harvest and those with nothing. Stealing - something that was rare in these close-knit communities of extended families - is now rampant.
The local chiefs have been gathering to try to ease tensions and to find a way to feed the hungry. In the churches, the congregations have been calling to the heavens. Everyone agrees that help must come from somewhere, but it is slow in coming.
"Last year, I had a little," said Moyas Abraham, a basket weaver, whose wife was scavenging for corn husks and peanuts. "I have nothing in my granary now." Mr. Abraham was sitting atop a heap of straw, braiding supple strands into sturdy baskets. His wife and four children rely on his earnings because their crops failed this year. But few people are buying baskets these days.
So when his children beg him for porridge, Mr. Abraham struggles for the right words. He considers telling pretty lies to ease their fears, to give them hope. Then he looks at his empty granary and tells the truth.
"I can't tell them things are going to get better," he said. "They can see for themselves. There is hunger and it is really bad."
More corruption. Those in power steal, knowing full well there will be more free money from the west. Well, this time there should not be. Their is a hell of their own creation, repeating itself for the umpteenth time. Let them bail themselves out.
I feel sorry for the basket-weaver mentioned in the above article. It must be hell to look into your child's eyes and tell them there is nothing to eat. The leaders of Africa need to be held accountable. If their people weren't starving perhaps they could overthrow the crooks. I don't know what the solution is, but wasting more money by having it go into these thugs' bank accounts is not the way to go.
Errrrr, aren't eggs, milk, cheese, meat considered food?
Yes but chickens, goats and cows also require food. If all you have is a small patch of ground to keep them on then it would be striped bare in no time. And the food you would have to buy to keep them alive could be better used to feed your family.
a.cricket
As someone who grew up in rural west Georgia, I was already aware of the fact that livestock does need nutrition in order to produce.
And, it is impossible to judge every situation that is going on in Africa.
However, the last thing I would get rid of if I were facing a shortage of corn or wheat would be goats or chickens, which can be sustained of a varied diet.
Making coffins is booming in Africa. It looks like it will be a growth industry.
July 2001 - Gadaffi bids to be leader of Africa*** THE new African Union (AU), launched at a summit of the Organisation of African Unity in Lusaka last week, is to have its own parliament. Indeed, the parliament building has already been built - in Tripoli. For the idea of the AU is being driven by Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the Libyan president. Now that his long-standing ambitions for an Arab Union have come to nothing, he is hoping to play a central role in a union of African states instead. The organisation promises to respect democracy and good governance more than the OAU ever did. The snag is that its new parliament will sit in a country that allows no opposition, no free elections, free speech or free press.
In March, Gadaffi announced plans for single a African identity and a union under which the boundaries between states would be scrapped, national armies merged and a single passport introduced. Amazingly, this vision seems to have been largely accepted by African leaders. It has also been decided that, besides the parliament, there will be a pan-African court of justice, a central bank and a common currency. Clearly with the aim of flattering Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, Gadaffi has proposed that the first AU summit should be held in Pretoria next year and should elect a president - presumably Mbeki. ***
November 2001 - Gadaafi to supply Mugabe with death squads***Harare: Zimbabwe- Libya's President Muammar Gadaafi has bought up 20 houses in Zimbabwe which seem likely to be used as safe-houses for death squads supplied by the Libyan dictator as part of his plan to assist the man he sees as his embattled comrade in arms, President Robert Mugabe. In addition Gadaafi has bought Gracelands, the gigantic Harare mansion belonging to Grace Mugabe, the President's young wife. The house is now to become the Libyan Embassy, making it by far the biggest embassy building in Zimbabwe, dwarfing the British and American missions.
In effect Gadaafi seems to be making a bid to save Mugabe which, if successful, would create a virtual Libyan client state at the far end of Africa. Already there is evidence of direct Libyan involvement in the violence which racked Zimbabwean farms in the last ten days.
……….More sinister is the fact that Gadaafi insisted on calling into conclave Harare's small community of Indian Muslims, telling them that they must assist Mugabe's plans by declaring a jihad (holy war) to throw the whites out. If they did not do this, he told the Muslim elders, he would bring in strong arm men from the Pagad movement in Cape Town with which he had close links. There has long been speculation that Gadaafi might have links to Pagad, an extremist Muslim vigilante movement often linked to bombings and murders in the Cape, including bomb attacks on US-linked enterprises such as the Planet Hollywood restaurant on the Cape waterfront, but this is the first open confirmation of the fact.
The bulk of Harare's Muslim community, consisting largely of merchants and professionals, was aghast at this demand and has failed to declare a jihad ,a failure which they believe lies behind the sudden spate of attacks on Muslim shops by Zanu-PF youths in the last ten days. For heaven's sake, said one Muslim merchant, we all do business with whites all the time. We rely on them and most of us are appalled by what Mugabe's doing. It's obvious that those youths who were sent to attack white and Muslim shops were meant to be punishing us for not complying. ***
It's time to break the cycle.
I don't think they could protect their stores or animals from hungry neighbors. Owning them might even be considered dangerous to their health.
I remember First Lady Reagen getting behind food drives for Africa in the 1980's, now twenty years of exactly the same thing!
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