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Africa, Malawi Dec 5th, 2002 Too Much Suffering, Not Enough Drama By Dr. LESLIE JERMYN © 2002 leslie@globalaware.org

Women chant, dance, clap and sing whilst others keep time pounding maize using large mortars and pestles. This is a picture postcard scene of African celebration as the women prepare for the fertility rites of young girls coming of age. But the women of Maiwazal village in Dedza district, Malawi, have little to celebrate. On closer examination, the realities of this idyllic scene become apparent. The mortars contain only husks of maize and the bulk of the feast will come from wild beans. The beans require a day of boiling and 3 days of soaking to extract their poison and make them edible if not enjoyable.

Drought in the southern cone of Africa caused starvation and malnutrition earlier this year. Hardship peaked in February and March at the end of what should have been the rainy season. Failed crops resulted in dearth at what is usually a time of plenty. Despite food shortages, subsistence farmers survived on shrivelled maize heavily supplemented with wild beans, roots and sorghum. This has seen them through to the planting season (September to November). Those that have seeds will plant as the first rains come, but harvest is not until February or March of next year and village food stores are already dangerously low or nonexistent. Last season’s failed crop will continue to cause hardship as the country runs out of its remaining food resources waiting for the next unpredictable harvest.

Unfortunately for Malawi, most adults look healthy enough. Hastings Samute of the UN World Food program explains the dilemma of the few journalists who have passed through to document and report on the famine, “A hungry person does not look any different to somebody who has just eaten.” He adds that he has heard too many people comment, “It’s not like Ethiopia.” Some children are suffering long term malnutrition with the hallmark signs of emaciation coupled with swollen bellies, but most hunger is invisible. Samute explains the “media dilemma”. “Famines, in the eyes of the public, are tragic scenes of hundreds of living skeletons gathered together to await the mercy of food aid or death. The shocking images from Ethiopia in the 1980s set the standard and anything less gets no notice.” The children suffering from marasmus malnutrition provide the expected media images but many have extremely dangerous kwashiorkor malnutrition where water retention causes swelling and children can look chubby or even fat.

Despite the lack of visual drama, indicators of impending disaster are not hard to find. Interspersed with the reed huts of villages stand smaller reed constructions raised from the ground, and at this time of year, these larders are usually full of maize. But throughout Malawi this is not the case. A handful of shrivelled, underdeveloped cobs are all families have to take them to the next harvest in March, if there is one. Hospitals are the single guaranteed source for nightmarish Ethiopian scenes that grab media attention. In Lilongwe Central Hospital Children’s Ward C, the sound of wailing babies is incessant. Tiny shrivelled children, their skin loose on their bodies, cry pitifully whilst resisting food and regurgitating what little their mothers manage to feed them. Marie Sassolas, a nutritionist for Action against Hunger walks between the beds persuading and even begging each mother to force her child to swallow. Marie Sassolas explains “the children lose the will to live. If the mothers do not force them to eat they will die.” Those that can be persuaded to eat the highly nutritional food quickly are usually safe, but the long term effects of malnutrition, such as brain damage, stunted growth and a lifelong susceptibility to illness, will likely stay with them. Sassolas is frustrated, “My job should be completely unnecessary. It should never get to this stage.”

In Maiwazal village, away from the singing, Benita Mapulesi sits in the shadow of her hut with her child on her lap. She is visibly happy. The child is the youngest of 5 and she says Mustaph is “the gift her husband left her” before he passed away last year. Benita Mapulesi is reluctant to remove the scarf that covers her head and on doing so reveals the stump of her right ear. Back in March, at the height of the first wave of hunger, she ran out of food. The entire village was hungry and no one could spare anything, “they did not have enough for themselves.” “He was dying,” she says, cradling her son. “He cried for hours, for days. I am not a thief but I stole.” She stole a few cobs from her cousin’s field. He cut off half her ear as punishment. Benita Mapulesi is still smiling as she rocks her child and recounts her story, “I expected him to kill me.”

In the first half of this month, James Morris, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for the humanitarian crisis in southern Africa, conducted a fact-finding tour of affected countries in the region including Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. His goal was to assess what can and should be done to relieve suffering now and prevent a deepening of the crisis affecting some 13 million people. To date, the UN has received only US$138 million for its Southern Africa Appeal – a mere 23% of the US$611 million they have called for. They are critically short of both food and non-food items such as medicines and medical/sanitation supplies.

Sister Brigget Moreta runs the Mtengowanthenga Carmelite Mission in Kasungu District. She predicts that “the desperation we saw in February and March will be back in November.” Incidents of amputations and murder over food were widespread throughout Malawi. Sister Moreta has introduced an emergency under 5’s feeding at the mission and the anticipated 300 to 400 has swelled to over 1000 mothers with their children. The sister moves slowly along the long lines of mothers trying to pick out the extreme cases of need. Malnutrition culminates in many other illnesses; diarrhoea, malaria and infections are all on the rise as people’s resistance is lowered by hunger. “They are all in need, they are all hungry and we do not even have enough food for the under 5’s.”

By the end of the day most of the babies have been weighed and measured and their mothers have been given a small bag of maize flour and sent home. Sister Moreta leaves the last thirty women huddled in the shade of the mission wall with their fragile bundles awaiting their turn. The mission itself had run out of maize and she had to go to Kasungu town to find more to distribute. On her return, the sister pulls the few sacks of maize from the back of her car and sits down on them tired and clearly in despair. “What will we do in until March?” she demands of anyone who happens to be listening.

© Dr. Leslie Jermyn and The Global Aware Cooperative. leslie@globalaware.org
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