Dona Kijani dives into a crocodile infested river for water lilies, dicing with death for tubers that are barely edible and give her children diarrhea. She says it is her only source of food.
MANKHOKWE, Malawi — Dona Kijani dives into a crocodile infested river for water lilies, dicing with death for tubers that are barely edible and give her children diarrhea. She says it is her only source of food.
For Kijani and many of her neighbors in the dirt-poor southern tip of Malawi, water lilies have become a staple part of the diet in the face of worsening malnutrition caused by drought and crop failure and aggravated by poverty, politics and AIDS.
"I have nothing else to give to my children," grimaces the widowed mother of three young children, holding out some of the small, bitter-tasting, gnarled roots. "I'm desperate to be registered to receive food aid," said Kijani as she waits in vain alongside thousands of other hopefuls in front of a dusty warehouse for a 50 kilogram (110 pound) monthly maize ration.
Scenes at the Mankhokwe distribution center are a microcosm of what is happening across southern Africa, where an estimated 12 million people will need food aid in the coming months because of drought, mismanagement and disease. Malawi is worst affected, with up to 5 million of its 12 million population deemed at risk.
The long, landlocked country is no stranger to hunger. But aid agencies are worried that the traditional "lean season" which normally occurs in the two months before the March-April maize harvest has already arrived with a vengeance and that the resulting humanitarian crisis will be worse than 2002, when crops also failed because of drought. has so far been little response to a U.N. appeal for US$88 million (euro71 million) for Malawi and even once funds are promised, it still takes an average four months for the aid to reach hungry mouths.
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"Our window of opportunity to help Malawi and the rest of the region is closing fast," said WFP regional director for southern Africa, Mike Sackett said. "It will be too late once emaciated images appear on television screens," he said regarding the recent crisis in the West African state of Niger.
Maize still can be bought at street markets, much of it filtering through the porous border with neighboring Mozambique. But prices have soared beyond reach of the poor.
Most of the worst hit villages in the south of the country lie in a fertile river valley fed with water from Lake Malawi. But in a country where most peasants cannot afford spades and wheelbarrows, let alone tractors, farmers have no means to transport the water to their fields.
The government regards irrigation as the answer to the vicious cycle of drought and despair, and it has dredged a few of canals to link rivers and Lake Malawi with nearby villages.
"We are fed up of rain fed harvests. They are not predictable. We want to use irrigation to wipe out this hunger problem because it is perennial. We see it every year," Agriculture Minister Uladi B. Mussa, recently told a small group of foreign journalists.
There are some glimmers of hope. In the village of Chitsukwa, in the southern province of Nsanje, the European Union has helped fund projects using basic treadle pumps operated by one or two people to drain the water from a nearby canal.
At the start of this year just one person was irrigating 0.2 hectares (0.5 acres) but the idea has snowballed and 106 farmers -- 86 of them women -- are now irrigating 18 hectares (44 acres). The hope is to plant three crops a year.
The Irish charity GOAL spent US$50,000 (about euro42,000) on seeds, tools and training for two irrigation projects in the area. The results are spectacular, with healthy green crops of maize shooting up in the midst of barren countryside.
"I'm really happy we can irrigate our crops. It's good that I can finally produce my own food rather than being dependent on someone else," exclaimed Meria Gama, flashing a toothless smile as her two filthy grandchildren played happily in the muddy ground by her feet.
But the overall picture in the former British colony is relentlessly grim despite government efforts to modernize the economy and clamp down on corruption. Even in "normal" years, more than one in ten mothers dies in child birth -- and there is a similar toll among infants. Nearly one in five children don't survive to the age of five years old.
Some 48 percent of children under five are considered stunted, and 5 percent are so malnourished that they suffer from wasting. More than 1,000 acutely malnourished children were admitted to hospitals across the country in August, compared to 775 children in the same month last year, and health workers fear this number will soar in the next few months.
At Nsanje's Trinity Hospital, four-year-old Francisco Ngano lies in his mother's arms, his wizened arms hang limp at the side of his listless body and his glazed eyes are oblivious to his surroundings. He has had recurrent battles with pneumonia and tuberculosis, says his mother, Cecilia.
Nurses cope as best they can with their new patients but they are hampered by chronic staff shortages due to the hemorrhaging of workers to richer countries. One report last year found that there were more Malawian doctors in the British city of Manchester than the whole of Malawi.
Source: Associated Press
