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manono IV, september 2008

The Hunger Season 

Well it’s ‘Hunger Season’ in Manono. Something which I had always been curious about as it pretty much seems like hunger season here all the time. I suppose when you are always hungry there are varying degrees of hunger and normal hunger is just that - normal. In recent weeks though there really is very little food, people are visibly malnourished and I am beginning to understand why they call it the Hunger Season. It hit an all time low when people started burning the grass outside our office and I asked the guards why they were burning it – ‘to catch mice for food’. That soon stopped the international staff moaning about our monotonous diet of skinny chicken, rice, cassava and beans. We really do eat like kings in comparison. As usual it’s the kids here who are worst off when it comes to malnutrition – this is not just because of lack of food but lack of education. Mothers think it’s nutritious to mix dirty sand from the ground in with babies local porridge. Cassava is the core staple even though it has no nutritious value. So no surprise that on arriving here in Manono back in February, my first real shocking experience was a visit to the Therapeutic Feeding Centre we support – although this was not just due to the state of the malnourished children. I arrived in and our nutritionist pointed at the gate and said ‘there are some of the mothers’. I asked her twice where they were and still couldn’t see them, I could only see a group of kids. Then I went into the centre and realised that the kids were the mothers. I didn’t know who to be more distressed about – the shy twelve year old mums or the babies, some of whom were not much more than skin and bones. Babies who looked a few months old were actually anything up to two years old. A five month old weighed the same as a healthy two week old should. The babies were so malnourished some of them couldn’t open their eyes and others tried to cry but couldn’t produce any tears. The child mothers were actually quite smiley and cheerful despite their circumstances. Maybe they didn’t think there was much wrong with their circumstances Although I don’t know how I managed to maintain a cheerful conversation with one lovely 12 year old when I found out that the father of her scrawny five month old baby was a policemen who had too many wives to be able look after her. Who needs laws in the Congo…..underage marriage and early pregnancy are the norm in the rural areas. On average in the villages most girls are married by 13 and have God only knows how many kids by the age of twenty. Despite the fact that food is thin on the ground African hospitality never waivers and the locals will always look out for a guest. Myself and a British colleague were absolutely mortified when we went to one village where we had set up a women’s literacy group. The village chief was so happy about it that he had produced a table and chairs and set them in the middle of the village with a big pot of rice, chicken and fou fou for us. All around were tens of half starved kids sitting salivating. We sat down and tried to protest to some of our local staff but they insisted it would have caused huge offence not to eat. So we picked about three spoonfuls of rice each and tried not to look the kids in the eye, while our Congolese staff happily stuffed their faces regardless of the fact they were probably the only ones in the locality getting a salary – ‘it is our culture to welcome guests’ they announced happily. We then went off to the literacy circle and the facilitator asked the women how they were – ‘we are fine but there is not enough food to eat’ they answered. Last week I was at a mother and baby nutrition education session in a village which included a cooking demonstration with nutritious foods. Sitting under a tree I counted about five different tactics the mothers used for sneaking the odd spoonful of baby porridge into their own mouths. Because that’s pretty much it in rural Congo – you grab what you can because who knows when or where the next meal will come from.

 
 
 
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