Africa's hunger: up close and personal.

AuthorWentling, Mark
PositionEssay

"Cram-cram," replied Hadjara, when I asked her what she was eating. She and about thirty other women and a dozen children dressed in flimsy black rags were camped by the last water well in a vast barren zone 200 kilometers north of Niamey, Niger. Their animals had died and they had expended all their few assets. All the men in their clan had long ago migrated south to the coast or to Nigeria in search of work. Many of their children had already died from malnutrition and exposure, and more were likely to die in the days to come. All their old people had already died. They were the survivors, living on the edge of survival in a desolate place where all their usual drought coping mechanisms had been exhausted and death was a likely prospect.

I offered to help move Hadjara and her group farther south where their chances of survival were much better. Through my driver, and interpreter, Ousmane, I emphasized, "If you stay here, you will die."

This Bella woman, who looked much older than her years because of the harsh climatic conditions she had endured her entire life, responded in a weak voice, "No, we cannot leave here. If we are to die, we must do so in this place because this is where our ancestors lived and died. And, if we go farther south, we will not be accepted, as our kind is not welcome by those living in the south."

I was perplexed and saddened by her reply, but I knew what she meant. The Bella were descendants of former slaves and were often looked down upon by other ethnic groups. Her response reminded me that 'marginalization' was one of many factors that contributed to hunger and one's chances of survival in lean times. I did not know what to say to her; I did not want to say the words that were forming in my mind. I hesitated, but I could not hold back, "You know better than me that your strength will soon diminish and you will no longer be able to pull the muddy water from the deep well or search for what little food there is in this sandy place. You also know that your children, the sick and any remaining old people in your group cannot last much longer. How do you intend to survive?

In a soft, muffled voice she repeated what she had said at the onset of our visit, "cram-cram."

At that point, I turned to Ousmane to ask, "What does she mean by 'cram-cram?'"

He replied, "Look at the numerous stickers adhering to your pants. Those are 'cram-cram.'"

My pants had collected many stickers when I had walked through the sparse grass growing around the water well. These stickers appeared similar to the ones I knew growing up in Kansas. We called them 'goathead' stickers. I could not believe they could eat such stickers. I asked Ousmane, "How can they eat this."

He replied, "I don't know." He then asked Hadjara, "How do you eat 'cram-cram.'"

Hadjara took a tiny cram-cram sticker and opened it to reveal inside a microscopic grain. She defiantly said, "This is what we eat."

Her reply had my mind trying to calculate how many cram-crams they would have to pick to make an adequate meal. As far as I was concerned, if every cram-cram weed in a kilometer radius was harvested, there still would not be enough food to provide a decent meal to this group. I doubted that this group, which had already been reduced to bare bones and skin, would survive for another week. These were tough people and I, as well as most people in the world, would have perished long ago from such harsh conditions. Time was running out even for these masters of survival in the arid Sahel.

I again offered to take them farther south where they could join other drought-affected people who were being assisted by aid agencies. But, again, they refused, saying, "We prefer to die here in the place of our ancestors. At least, if our husbands, brothers and sons return, they will know where to find our bodies."

Their courage and stoicism against such dreadful odds made me feel small and useless. At the same time, my sense of deep pity for them made it hard for me to hold back my tears. I wished I had brought some food to leave with them, but I was not expecting to find any people still living on the southern fringes of the Sahara after years of drought. In a choked voice, I said my goodbyes and Hadjara responded in a barely audible voice, "Thank you for caring."

All this happened in the aftermath of the Great Sahelian Drought of the early 1970s. Hadjara's dire plight and words have haunted me ever since, but, sadly, I was to experience many more tragic hunger situations in Niger and other African countries in the years that followed. Much work has been done over the past few decades to combat hunger, but the disheartening reality is that there are more hungry Africans today than there were in the 1970s, and the child malnutrition crisis persists and amplifies. I was to learn that hunger, and its worst manifestation, famine, has many faces and those faces are growing in number and complexity.

After leaving the courageous Hadjara and her fatalistic comrades, we headed south to Filingue (180 kilometer north of Niamey, capital of Niger) where I planned to spend the night and check on the impact of food shortages in this provincial center. I took a walk through the town, visiting household compounds to ask people how they were coping with high levels of food insecurity. The responses I heard were uniformly bleak and void of any hope. This dreary setting was accentuated by the onset of high winds and blowing sands that reduced visibility. I was forced to wrap a turban around my head.

I visited with a head of household named, Moussa, who invited me to sit on one of the low three-legged stools gathered around a simmering but very smoky cooking fire. I was thinking of what questions I could ask so I could better understand how he and his family coped with not having enough food. But, before I could say anything, he blurted out in an alarming manner, "We have given up all hope of ever enjoying happiness again."

I was taken aback by his outburst and paused a moment before reacting, "What do you mean? What is happiness for you?

He immediately said, "Happiness for us is having tranquility."

I said, "I am sorry, but I do not understand."

He continued, "The only thing that can give us tranquility is a full granary. Ever since the annual rains have stopped falling as abundantly as they did in the past, we have not known full granaries for years because the quantity of millet grain we harvest is much less. At the same time, the number of mouths we have to feed are many more and the cost of food and other essential items in the market place is much higher."

His hard-hitting words were stark reminders of the increasing challenges for those living in the Sahel Region, as well as other regions in Africa where recurrent drought and food shortages were common. Climate change was already working to decrease rainfall and, thus, diminish harvests. And repeated attacks from pests, particularly locusts, birds, rodents and army worms made it harder to have a good harvest even when rains were sufficient. Moreover, a fast growing population made it impossible to feed and care for everyone. Rapid urbanization was adding tens of thousands of additional non-food producers to the hunger rolls. Rises in world food prices made it more difficult even for people with money to buy food. The number of people able to eat one good meal a day was decreasing, as was the dietary diversity needed to stay healthy. Almost nobody was satisfying their daily minimum food requirements.

Moussa's comments on the loss of "tranquility" struck me deeply and I was not sure of what to say. All I could muster was a sympathetic, common refrain, "I understand. Life is an eternal combat and becoming more costly, difficult and complicated."

Moussa appeared to be using the occasion of my visit to vent all his frustrations over the deteriorating conditions of life for him and his family. I sat humbly by as he continued to release a long and angry tirade, "We work very hard, but we get less for all our labors. The size of our farms is smaller and the soils poorer, but we can do anything to improve any of this. Our government does not help, and poor governance and political instability contribute to our misery. Things were not like this when I was a young man. We had 'happiness' then and a full granary could take us from one harvest to another. That no longer happens."

There was no stopping Moussa. He certainly had my full attention and seemed to appreciate a good listener. He placed his hand over his heart and ranted on, "If Allah blesses us with the good fortune needed to fill our granaries, they will be empty within a few months. A full granary no longer is enough, because we have more people to feed and it costs much more to buy essential items like salt and cooking oil. We have to sell more food at harvest time because prices are higher and we need to pay off debts contracted the prior year to buy food. Our increased poverty is like a prison. I see no way we can get out of the vicious cycle in which we find ourselves."

Moussa was almost in tears when he said, "Look at my scrawny children. Even in the best of years they do not grow as they should and are often sick because they do not have a good diet. Moreover, their mothers are undernourished and unable to breastfeed. In the old days, we would buy powdered milk if breast milk was not enough, but we can no longer do that as it is too expensive. Also, the remaining cows and goats are under-nourished and do not produce the milk we used to give to our children. How can we progress on empty stomachs and with stunted children? All our politicians do is talk. Too bad we cannot eat their words, because if we could, there would be no more hunger."

At that moment, Moussa screeched loudly in his language, Hausa, some words, "bukata na yahi reyna." I had heard this utterance before, but I did not know what it meant. I asked Moussa, "What do you mean by the...

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