On Empty Stomachs, Family of 14 Awaits the Next Harvest

Posted: 26 August 2005

With nine children to feed, Ibrahim Mohamed is counting on a healthy crop of millet and beans in October. But until then, there is little for his family to eat.

No one in Ibrahim Mohamed’s family had eaten in two days. The sheep that the 55-year-old farmer had sold a few days before—one of a dwindling number of animals in a herd that once numbered nearly 100—had brought in only enough cash to buy a little food, and that was now gone.

Mohamed, his lips set tight, stared into the camera held by an aid worker and spoke with determination about the harvest ahead.

“I cultivate sorghum, millet, and beans on some land about an hour from here,” the father of nine children told an Oxfam assessment team. “So far the rain has been good and I expect a good harvest in October. With God’s grace, we may have enough to last throughout the year.”

But October is still weeks away. Tea, and a few pinches of sugar, were the only edibles Mohamed’s family had left on the day the Oxfam team visited.

In this village in the Tillaberi region of southern Niger, Mohamed’s story is not unique. A food shortage, triggered by insufficient rain and swarms of locusts, has spawned widespread suffering among families in this part of the country.

Donations Lag, Danger Hovers

Throughout the Sahel, the semi-arid region that stretches across the African continent below the Sahara Desert, millions of people are now at risk of hunger: 3.6 million in Niger, 1.1 million in Mali, 800,000 in Mauritania, and 500,000 in Burkina Faso.

The suffering has caught the attention of the world’s richer nations, but not their full generosity. On a recent visit to one of Niger’s hardest hit areas—Zinder, a city in the southeast—United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the international community to pick up the pace of its donations. The UN has yet to bridge a $41 million gap in its appeal for Niger.

A shortage of funds to address the crisis is not the only worry. Oxfam is also concerned that the response the UN has mounted is failing to reach nomadic herding communities. Agricultural surveys serve as the basis for identifying which communities will receive food aid. But nomads aren’t farmers, and risk being left out of food distributions. The nomadic Tuareg and Fulani people, who travel hundreds of miles in search of pasture for their animals, make up about 20 percent of the nearly 12 million Nigeriens.

In Mali, bright predictions about the harvest that the current rains will bring may not paint a complete picture. Oxfam is worried about the situation in the northwest pastoral area of Gao, a region in the northeastern corner of Mali. In July, a medical nutritional survey by the World Food Program revealed a malnutrition rate of 15.3 percent, with 42 percent of the children under 5 at risk.

Additionally, around the town of Bourem, in western Gao, the rains have not been as plentiful as in other parts of Mali and green has yet to return to the pasturelands, which are a critical source of food for the livestock on which so many people depend.

Hunger Coupled With Malaria

In Tillaberi, Oxfam is now launching a voucher-for-work program that will benefit 14,000 people. People can exchange the vouchers for food.

But food isn’t all that Ibrahim Mohamed needs. With the advent of the rainy season, malaria is now coursing through the region as well, but Mohamed and his family can’t afford medicine to treat the disease.

The family, which also includes Mohamed’s two wives, his mother, and a friend’s widow, lives more than 13 miles from the nearest health post and market.

“I have sent a number of applications to the government to establish a mobile health service, a water pump, and school for the village here,” Mohamed said. “However, nothing has happened yet. I also know that mosquito nets would help. I just can’t afford to buy them.”

While sickness is the inevitable consequence of such poverty, meager means could not rob Mohamed’s family of its sense of graciousness. The family served steaming cups of their precious tea to the Oxfam assessment team, and as the cups went around, Mohamed gave each of his children a pinch of sugar—except for one of the youngest girls. Sick with malaria, she was too weak to collect her tiny share.

“This at least gives them a bit of energy if they can’t have anything else to fill their stomachs,” Mohamed said.

On empty stomachs, the task of trying to fend off hunger must be exhausting, but the women in Mohamed’s household must try nevertheless. To supplement the family income, they collect firewood for sale in the market. In a few days, the women planned to make the long journey again and return—maybe—with enough millet, rice, sugar, and tea to stretch out for another three days.