Saturday, August 6, 2005

Starvation, malnutrition, death as a way of life--it's gone on so long it's been absorbed into an entire culture.

A Salon Premium article everyone should have access to:

"Babies first", by Jeevan Vasagar

Excerpts:
...

Throughout Niger, the hunger crisis is an affliction of the poor. While people in Terbadeen starve, there is food in the markets of the nearest big village, Abalak, four miles away down a winding dirt track. And in the hotels of the capital, Niamey, breakfast coffee comes with seven cubes of white sugar lining the saucer.

Even here among the poorest, there is a hierarchy.

The village chief, Salaman Mahamadou, a regal, hawk-nosed man in a navy blue robe, still has the best diet of anyone in the community. The villagers share food with one another, watering down the tiny amounts of rice they can afford, but women are served last and the elderly are at the bottom of the pile.

The people of Terbadeen were herders and subsistence farmers, whose wealth was tied up in their cattle and goats. When drought and locusts destroyed the pasture land, the animals wasted away. The villagers tried to sell their surviving livestock, but no one would pay a high price for a skinny, starving goat or cow.

Aid is beginning to arrive in Niger. But until three weeks ago, it was government policy not to distribute free food to the worst-affected communities because of concern that it would disrupt the markets. That has changed, and the United Nations plans to start the first general distributions of food aid next week, targeting 2.5 million people. Even then, it will take time to reach every affected village in a vast, landlocked country where the aid must be brought hundreds of miles by road.
...

By the roadside on the way to Terbadeen, parties of children from nearby villages gather weeds to eat. Carrying faded sacks that once held flour, they pluck up small, leafy plants that will be boiled with salt and spices.

"We have nothing else to eat," said Adama Zachary, a girl of perhaps 15, her hair tied back with a red bandanna. "The locusts ate the millet, and there is no money to buy food in the market."

Dead cattle and donkeys litter the fields -- piles of bleached bones and wrinkled hides. At one spot, there are 11 cattle carcasses, which villagers say were dumped there by a truck heading to market after they all died from lack of fodder.
...

Aid agencies here say they need to expand their operations, hiring more local workers to help the small teams of expatriate medical staff and nutrition experts.

Even without a food crisis on this scale, Niger is the world's second poorest country and struggles to feed its people every year. In the 1970s, when the uranium-mining industry was booming, the government built a network of paved roads, while multistory buildings and lavish villas went up in the capital. But with the end of the Cold War, the country's main export is no longer in such demand.

"This is a country with adult literacy rates of 17 percent," said McCabe, the aid agency spokeswoman. "It's got food insecurity every year, desertification. There are huge problems."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/05/niger_famine/

10:31:03 AM    comment []  


Temperatures will reach the mid-90s F. here today, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac forecast, and then highs begin a gradual decline toward Friday when they predict we will peak at 84F. I hope I hope I hope this is true. If so, though, then the seasons here continue a recent pattern of shifting forward in the year. The saying used to be "We have two seasons here--winter and August." Now it's more like "winter and July," and really not all that much of winter. The seasons seem to be homogenizing; where are the 15-foot snowdrifts of a decade ago? The July 4 blizzard that blocks the road over the pass? This is why property values continue to climb, and with the influx of outsiders the population (and culture) begins incrementally to swing the other way.

I shared some time with my Office Frog yesterday. As the light outside grew dim and the desk lamp came on, I noticed a movement over near the bookshelf. On went the spectacles--oh, the frog!--and I actually got to watch it as it made its way around, leaping from dictionary to basket, from shoe to shoe, toward the desk. I lost sight of him under the desk and then forgot about him (except to walk very carefully) as I continued my evening. I moved work to the bed upstairs after a while, leaving the lamp on. Later when I ran back down to check email before shutting off the computer I surprised the frog, who now sat square in the middle of my blotter in the lamp's beam feasting on gnats and little moths. I sat in my desk chair and the frog froze, and then with little leaps it made its way back into the shadows. It jumped flat onto the front of the fabric-covered speaker and climbed to the top, and from there to the little framed photo of Daddy George, and finally to the glass front of the large framed photo of my son. It climbed on sticky feet to the top of that picture frame in time to notice a moth on the windowshade. In an instant the frog had shot onto the accordioned paper shelf and had the moth in its mouth. This morning when I sat down at my desk I found a large healthy-looking frog turd front and center, atop the little white box of system discs. (Don't ask how one determines the relative health of amphibian excreta; one just knows.)
9:48:13 AM    comment []