“I
am old now, my body is now tired and I need rest. But I have
no option but to continue working for my family,” says
Emilda Chionika, 54, of Bindura, north east of Harare.
“I am the only person, who can still work for my family,”
she says, while finding a place underneath a tree away from
the scorching sun.
Six o’clock in the morning every day finds Emilda working
in her field, about seven kilometers away from her home in the
urban township of Chipadze.
“Last year was a bad year for us as we did not have enough
rain. I only harvested four bags of maize which only lasted
us only three months,” she said, wiping sweat from her
face.
“From May this year we have been surviving on donations
from well-wishers but these days no one is willing to give us
anything as they themselves do not have enough to feed their
families. We sometimes look for wild foods to supplement what
we have.”
Emilda’s face is lined with worry. Besides her back-breaking
farm work, she is now faced with looking after her three adult
daughters, who are all HIV-positive. She has been staying with
them for the past three years but until now, the harvests were
good enough to sustain the family food requirements.
“Most of the time when I am in the field, I am worried
about my children at home. Sometimes all three of them are bedridden,
and I have to go back home in the afternoon to prepare porridge
for them and that takes away my productive time in the field.”
Two of them are currently on their feet but not fit enough to
work in the field.
“I also stay with ten grandchildren in the same house
and this is why I have to work extra hard.”
The treatment that Emilda’s daughters get requires them
to have adequate food but there is little in the house for them
and the young children. It is not only a house of hunger. Despair
is beginning to grip the family. Their only hope is the next
planting season but they will only be able to enjoy the food
in March 2006. They need food now. The biggest question is who
will bridge this gap.
The Zimbabwe Red Cross Society, through its home-based care
programme, delivers food supplies for five people per household.
For Emilda’s family this is only enough for one week as
the number of family members out-numbers the ration.
“I feel my children will die soon if they don’t
get enough food now and it will be hard for me to look after
their children on my own,” she says, as tears start dripping
down her face. The family can only eat once a day and Emilda
spends the entire day under the sun without eating.
Emilda’s family is among 12 million people in southern
Africa whose lives are threatened by a severe food crisis. The
region, with the highest HIV and AIDS prevalence in the world,
was almost brought to its knees in 2002 and 2003, when aid agencies
chipped in to save human lives. The current food insecurity
emergency, although not as severe as that of two years ago,
has the potential to create tragedy.
“We need to act immediately to avoid a tragic deterioration
in an already alarming situation,” said Richard Hunlede,
head of the Africa Department at the International Federation,
which has launched an appeal seeking 39 million Swiss francs
(€ 25.3 million/US$ 29.3 million) to assist 1.5 million
people in seven countries in Southern Africa (Lesotho, Malawi,
Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe) for nine
months.
The recently launched appeal seeks to give assistance to 1.5
million people facing hunger, like Emilda and her family, until
the harvest of 2006. Apart from food aid, plans include food-for-work
projects, restoring self-reliance in agriculture, ensuring access
to safe water and building the capacity of national Red Cross
staff to deal with livelihood and food security problems. The
operation will target people living with HIV and AIDS, households
with orphans, female-headed households, people with disabilities
and households headed by older people.
But the response to the appeal so far is not good news for people
like Emilda, her daughters and grandchildren and others in the
region.
“The appeal response started off on a very slow note,
the bulk of donations going towards the Malawi operation. Yet
the stories we hear from other affected countries are harrowing
too,” says Françoise Le Goff, the head of the International
Federation delegation in Southern Africa.
In Malawi, one of the hardest hit countries, many families in
the south are desperate for food.
“People here are resorting to wild foods which they do
not normally eat even, when things are difficult, but they do
not seem to have an option” says Francis Musasa, the Malawi
Red Cross Society information officer.
“Some of these wild fruits can be poisonous and we were
hoping that by this time of the year food supplies would have
improved but the pace is very slow and urgent aid is required
to save human lives,” he adds.
Although Emilda still has to grapple with how to feed thirteen
people until the harvest, recently the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society
gave nearly a thousand households with seeds and fertilizers.
“We strongly feel one way of improving livelihood recovery
following the drought that destroyed crops is to give people
agricultural inputs,” says Abel Augustinio, the Relief
Coordinator for Zimbabwe Red Cross.
The seeds and fertilizer have made Emilda’s burden slightly
lighter.
“We were glad because we did not have money to buy the
seeds and fertilizer. We do not know what were going to do,
but we still need food now to take us to the next harvest,”
said Emilda adding that in good times she harvests as much as
fifty bags of maize which is enough to feed her family for the
whole year.
However as donors take time to respond, many humanitarian organizations
describe a vicious circle in the region, especially in Malawi.
Poverty, hunger and the need to sustain their families force
may young women into commercial sex, subject to the whims of
clients who often refuse to use condoms for protection.
In Emilda’s case, some of her grandchildren have already
dropped out of school and may be forced to contribute to family
survival through whatever means they can find. In such situations,
food aid does not just prevent starvation, but is a resource
that allows families the freedom to be able to opt out of this
vicious cycle. There can be no other priority more urgent in
the region at present than breaking the link between poverty
and the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The solution that the International Federation is working on,
would see food aid provided at the same time as livelihood support
such as seeds and fertilizer.
“I pray that the Red Cross continues and increases its
rations just for the sake my daughters and their children.”
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Emilda
with a packet of seeds that she got from Zimbabwe Red
Cross. (p13432)
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Emilda
tilling the field using her hoe in preparation for the
planting season. (p13433)
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After
a long day's work, Emilda takes time to look after one
her daughters. (p13434)
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