We know some aid, including from Oxfam, has been getting through in recent weeks and months. But we also know the international aid effort has been too slow – funds from donors have been committed late, and aid on the ground isn’t coming through fast enough. As the people here face their toughest three months until harvest time in October, there’s a desperate need for international political engagement to ramp up the speed and the scale of the response.
In Niger’s capital Niamey, a gentle-seeming city of sandy-mud colored low houses and a population of around 800,000 people, there are few immediate signs of the food crisis. There are small food stalls along many of the tree-lined, dusty streets and the “petit marche” – or small market – is crammed with stalls selling food and other items. But even in the capital, many people are too poor to pay for sufficient food and the picture in the countryside is much much worse.
We drove two hours from Niamey, along a rough dirt track through the semi-arid, mostly flat and desolate landscape. It’s stony and sandy with a few short dry-looking trees and bushes, though some are turning green where a bit of rain has started to fall. We see painfully thin cattle, goats and donkeys, their ribs visible as we drive by. Men, women and children are hard at work in some patches of land, planting seeds by hand to take advantage of any rain that has fallen. It’s hard work, and often undone again by sudden harsh desert winds.
We stop briefly in the main town in the area, Ouallam, and talk to a serious, welcoming official there, who explains that more than 200 of the 300 or so villages in this area are facing severe food shortages. Due to the drought, thousands of animals have died or are too thin to be sold for a decent price or even to provide a good meal for the herders.
The situation is as bad as the deep crisis of 2005, our host tells us—and worse, even, because people have less money now than they did then. But at least speculators have not managed to drive the prices as high as they did five years ago. And, importantly, this time around the new Nigerien government has recognized the crisis and invited donors and aid organizations like Oxfam to support them in tackling the problem. Now, some aid has arrived – but much more will be needed in the coming months.
Driving on to the nearby village of Tondi Kiwindi, we find a small muddy river flooding the road into the village. Our driver wades across to make sure our vehicle won’t get stuck and we plow through. Tondi Kiwindi is a small community of mud-brick rectangular houses, quiet in the midday heat. The local village leader welcomes us and tells us about the difficulties here and in the surrounding villages.
He talks about how many animals have died, about how little food villagers have, about the difficulties of surviving the next three months until the harvest. The rains here are a month late, though further north they have started.
The village leader thanks us for the work we’ve done with a local aid group to buy sick and thin animals at better prices than villagers can get in the markets, and to provide animal feed and other support such as cash for work programs. He tells us that the women, especially, have taken advantage of the opportunity to earn some income through the programs as many of the men have migrated away to towns to look for work. They’ll return to till and plant the fields when the rains start.
But when the rain really comes, says our host, the river we crossed to get into the village will rise and there will be no access to the community. Can we help, he asks us.
It’s a story across a lot of the region: rains are desperately needed to ensure a good harvest this year, but until October when the crops are ripe, rains can block access and make delivery of aid much harder or impossible. And the rains lower the temperature a little—bringing death to thousands of weakened animals.
In a five-mile ride across the desert from Tondi Kiwindi, we come to a smaller village called Ko Kaina. The situation we find here is utterly desperate: The villagers talk to us of famine and question whether they can survive to the autumn.
We sit with four women who tell us they have nothing left to eat at all. They say that this year is especially bad. Last year at least the animals had enough to eat, but now the cows and goats are dead or dying. In hard times, their tradition is to share—neighbors helping neighbors—but now no one has anything to share.
“Everyone is down, down, down,” they say. “Our stomachs are empty.”
Their last source of food is a small, hard round green pea called “wanza.” It has a bitter taste, but villagers eat it when there is nothing else to consume. To find the wanza, the women set out from the village at 5 a.m. walking miles in their hunt. They ask me to taste one of the peas to see how bitter and sour it is; the unpleasant taste stays in my mouth for an hour. The peas first need drying in the sun then soaking several times in water before they become at all possible to digest.
They show us their only other food – a small bowl of cooked leaves from short small trees that grow in the dry earth nearer to the village. A woman puts a small amount in her mouth and mimics being sick, to show me how ill and malnourished they are on this diet. A short distance away, a small group of children stares at us hoping, I think, that we have brought relief. They are thin and listless.
The women explain that their animals have been weak and dying for months now and no longer produce milk. Some are even too thin to slaughter for food. A few days back, the women tell us, the villagers killed one weak calf before it died. They needed it for food. But four children became ill from eating the meat and had to be taken to a larger village nearby for medical attention. That cost money the families didn’t had and had to borrow—leaving them in debt, too.
People are so weak, the women explain to us, that after a few minutes working in the fields – vital work – they are already too tired to keep going.
“We are weak and dying like our animals,” they tell us. “If it goes on like this, some of us will die and some God will keep alive ‘til the next harvest.”
Oxfam has launched an emergency program to provide support to 800,000 people across Niger, Mali, and Chad. In Niger, the organization is helping 400,000 people by distributing food and supplies to the poorest households. Oxfam is also buying weak livestock at above-market rates to help herders who need to sell some of their animals. Meat from the livestock is being distributed to some of the most vulnerable households. In Mali, the organization will help 200,000 people by distributing food as well as fodder for livestock. And in Chad, distributions of food and seeds are accompanying agriculture support projects, with a goal of helping 200,000 people.
This is the reality of hunger in the Sahel region of West Africa, where more than 10 million people are now in the grip of a food crisis triggered, in part, by patchy rainfall last year thatled to a plunge in the production of cereals. In Chad alone, the cereal harvest fell by 34 percent. And pasture—critical for the well-being of the region’s livestock on which many families depend for food and income—is severely lacking because of the poor rains.
But the increasing intensity of seasonal droughts is not the only source of the problem. A lack of investment in agriculture and herding, and insecure land tenure also play a role in the suffering some of the world’s poorest people endure.
In Niger, where the crisis stalks more than seven million people, the country’s youngest children are among the hardest hit. IRIN, the UN news agency, reported in late June that acute malnutrition rates among children younger than five in Niger had spiked 42 percent higher than they were this time a year ago—to nearly 17 percent. That means almost half a million children are acutely malnourished, according to IRIN. Many others—almost half of Niger’s children—live with chronic undernourishment, said IRIN.
Other countries are affected by the food crisis, too: Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, northern Cameroon, and northern Nigeria.
Early warning systems revealed last fall that the Sahel was headed toward trouble, but the alarms failed to rouse a robust regional and international response. The amount of emergency assistance has, so far, been insufficient to meet the large-scale needs of the region. The West Africa consolidated appeal—a joint humanitarian fund-raising effort by groups working in the region, including the UN—is only 36 percent funded. The appeal includes support for food security activities in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania. About $69 million is needed to respond to the emergency in Niger alone. In Chad, the World Food Program needs almost $20 million to respond to rising food needs.
With the next harvest months away, and the approaching rainy season threatening to impede delivery of assistance to more remote areas, concerns of farmers like Fadoul Acheul are growing more acute. He is a 53-year-old father of eight children living on the outskirts of Mongo in Chad and has run out of options that could help tide his family over.
“The mango trees haven’t borne fruit this year, so we can’t sell those,” he said in April. “Also, there isn’t enough water to maintain our family orchard.” The family had used up its store of cereal a month earlier and was relying only on the income Fadoul’s wife made by selling a few items in the market.
The day Fadoul lamented his dry orchard was the day he had to make a decision—the same one many families now confront: selling their livestock. To get food, Fadoul sold his last ram, fetching just enough money to keep his family going for another week.
“Five years ago, the world ignored the warning signs from Niger, failed to act rapidly, and lives were lost,” said Mamadou Biteye, an Oxfam regional director in West Africa. “The international community cannot make the same mistake and again condemn many children to an early death.”
Oxfam has launched an emergency program to provide support to 800,000 people across Niger, Mali, and Chad. In Niger, the organization is helping 400,000 people by distributing food and supplies to the poorest households. Oxfam is also buying weak livestock at above-market rates to help herders who need to sell some of their animals. Meat from the livestock is being distributed to some of the most vulnerable households. In Mali, the organization will help 200,000 people by distributing food as well as fodder for livestock. And in Chad, distributions of food and seeds are accompanying agriculture support projects, with a goal of helping 200,000 people.
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“The destruction across the capital was stunning, and the sight of countless camps crowded with families gave me a powerful sense of how devastating this earthquake has been for people,” says Oxfam writer Coco McCabe, who recently returned to Boston from Haiti.
The camps are spontaneous, makeshift neighborhoods, marked out by plastic tarps, cardboard, and bed sheets strung between whatever’s there. Posts to hang materials on are in short supply, so people are scavenging wood from the wreckage of buildings.
“I saw one man with a flat, wide board, working hard with a small hand saw to cut the board into narrower pieces that could serve as poles for sheets, plastic, scraps of clothing—anything that might offer the semblance of a wall or roof to give families privacy,” says McCabe.
Plastic sheeting strung from poles may seem like a minimal shelter solution, and it is. But at this moment in the emergency, it’s something that works. Colored tarps keep off the sun and rain and, unlike tents, can be made to fit whatever space and terrain is available – or whatever other purpose they’re needed for on a given day.
Over the next two months, Oxfam aims to boost the supply of sturdy plastic sheeting, providing enough for at least 4,000 families (20,000 people) – a project that includes a cash-for-work component: we are employing local people to cut giant rolls of the material down to size. Families will get two pieces, each six meters by four meters, along with two 10-meter lengths of rope.
Meanwhile, we’re making plans to assemble and distribute home-repair kits to help those whose houses need patching up, not rebuilding.
But when it comes to figuring out if what’s left of your house is a danger to your family, no one should have to rely on guesswork. Oxfam will assemble a team of structural engineers to survey the damage to homes in Haiti and share their knowledge and suggestions with local residents, builders, and officials.
How long will it take for survivors of the quake to make their way from camp sites to temporary houses to real, permanent homes? For many, it will be years. But if donors continue to support the aid effort generously, Haitians will get the support they need every step of the way.
“Building back all that was lost in just a few seconds,” says McCabe, “is going to require a sustained commitment from us all.”
Oxfam intends to ensure that the people who were most severely affected by the earthquake have clean water and basic sanitation services. The agency will prioritize this support by serving cities and new camps to be set up outside Port-au-Prince, as well as medical facilities.
Working with community members and local authorities, Oxfam will provide support and equipment to help clean up solid waste and develop a long-term approach for solid waste management.
International standards for emergency shelter require 17.5 square meters of shelter space for a family of five; most families in Port-au-Prince are living in one-third that area. Oxfam will work with local partners to provide safe temporary shelter materials such as plastic sheeting, and help construct temporary housing. Initial plans are to distribute plastic sheeting to about 4,000 families (about 20,000 people) in February and March. In addition, Oxfam will distribute roughly 1,000 tents, and home repair kits to owners of damaged buildings that can be repaired.
Food is becoming increasingly available in affected areas. But survivors don’t always have any money to purchase the food. Oxfam is starting a cash-for-work program that will target particularly vulnerable survivors including women, support alternatives to food aid, and promote purchase of food produced in Haiti.
To promote availability of local food, Oxfam is working with farmers affected by the earthquake to stimulate local agricultural production.
To encourage involvement of civil society organizations in decisions about the initial relief and recovery process, Oxfam will help Haitian organizations recover from the earthquake and assert some control over how the government and international donors design and carry out the rebuilding of Haiti. This will help ensure that the billions that will be spent in Haiti will actually help the poorest communities recover from the earthquake. This will help build a Haiti that is stronger than it was before the quake.
Every project to rebuild homes, rehabilitate water systems, and help people get back to work will also include measures to reduce vulnerability to floods and earthquakes. This will help communities become more resilient in future calamities.
Ongoing assessments by staff working in earthquake-affected areas will help Oxfam refine this initial strategy for the reconstruction and long-term development phases of Oxfam’s post- earthquake assistance to Haiti.
]]>" All people who are professionals in our area, in our organizations…the country has lost a group of key people that could help for development and of course thousands of children, women, men…but mainly women and children are the worst affected. Our people are now sleeping in the street. The government, even people from the international community in Haiti and of course poor people, we are all living outdoors in the streets.
“We are not just talking about the disaster affecting the country’s institutions…it affects the government, civil society and the international community.
"Our coordination with the international community is still working. Our concern now is not the size of aid coming to Haiti, it’s how to get adequate people and resources to manage it. How to get the aid in place and to manage it. It needs to be done quickly.
“My colleague [incoming country director, Claude St Pierre] was coming to Haiti to replace me and we were trying to ensure a smooth transition. He had just arrived in Haiti that afternoon and came to our office to say hello and to be introduced to staff. Unfortunately, we were in the door of my office saying hello when the earthquake started. We stayed hugging each other for that entire minute. Of course, since I have worked in emergencies, I understood it was an earthquake, but I have never experienced an earthquake of this magnitude.”
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