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."
June 24, 2002.
[Source: The New York Times, June 21, 2002]
|