Unless the rain becomes more regular soon, another year’s crops may fail. If that happens, this food crisis is going to escalate even further leaving pastoral and agricultural families across Niger even more desperate.
We found a small girl wrapped in dusty cloth. At 3 years and 6 months, Haoua weighed only 6 kilograms. The child was completely dehydrated.
I like my job. I like humanitarian work. For me it’s the only way to help other people. I think it’s the only way I can express myself. Even if there weren’t any humanitarian organisations in Niger, I would create my own so that I could help others.
I met Saminou three weeks ago. He was being treated in one of our clinics for severely malnourished children. His eyes were sunken and too large for his head, his ribs jutted through his skin. He lay in his mother’s arms, his little chest rising and falling rapidly, in pain. I was worried about returning to the clinic and finding out what had happened to him.
The crisis in Niger has been underestimated. It’s certainly underfunded. And it’s an outrage.
Last week a new survey in Niger stated that 500,000 more people are severely food insecure than previously estimated, bringing the total to 3.3 million – that’s the entire population of Melbourne, Australia.
Boarding ECHO’s 30-seater plane heading for Wajir, I was feeling apprehensive. I have been writing and talking about our programmes since joining Save the Children, but this was to be my first experience of seeing our work on the ground, and of interacting with some of the most vulnerable children that we work with — my main motivation for working in this sector.
This little boy in the picture, is so malnourished that he looks like he’s only three-months-old, when in fact he’s about nine. The caption cuts through me like a knife. It says, “In the absence of nutrition, the body makes a choice: it decides not to grow in order to stay alive.” I’ve got goose bumps writing this down.
Second to politics, the hot topic in Niger is polygamy.
Many discussions amongst the staff over lunch result in two camps: ‘one wife is enough trouble!’ or ‘trouble is halved with polygamy!’ When I ask whether the first wife has a say, quite simply the answer is no. But it’s ok apparently, because they’ve known since the outset that it’s less ‘til death do us part’ and more ‘wait til another wife comes along.’
A week ago I was awoken at 4 am by rumbling, deafening crashes and flashes of light. What was it rudely disturbing my dream? Nightmarish thoughts flashed through my mind – it’s the referendum today….are people rioting, are those gunshots? A few moments later the rain began to thrash at the window. Relief, but then I couldn’t get back to sleep. How would the referendum turn out?
As we enter the first building, where children are admitted and diagnosed, there is an eery quiet. All the beds are filled with silent little bodies and anxious mothers. The children here are all so fragile, they are too weak to cry out. Many simply can’t cry, their bodies too dehydrated to produce tears.
We find Balkissa, who arrived 4 days ago. She is severely malnourished but also has septicemia, from an infected wound which threatens to poison her bloodstream. She weighs just 7.4 kilos. I remember holding my cousin’s 3 month old baby just a month before, who told me with pride that he weighed 7 and a half kilos. I ask how old Balkissa is – 36 months…she is 3 years old. That a 3 year old child can weigh no more than a 3 month old baby leaves me wondering how the dedicated team of doctors and nurses here ever manage to help children like Balkissa recover.
