Food Relief in Torodi

I was asked to go to Torodi with Steve and Brenda (who are with a local NGO here) to a meeting with the local leaders to see if food relief was needed.  I am writing a proposal to a donor for relief funds and early indicators say that famine will be prevalent in the Torodi and Maradi areas this year.  They have a graph that shows the expected harvest this coming year from hundreds of farmers and this year was way under preceding years.  There has been food relief here every two years since 2006.

The questions they wanted from the Torodi people were do they need help? If so, how much? For whom? When and how?  So they picked me up at 8 and off we went for an hour to a town that is on the “main” road.  We took, what I was told was Main Street, off the main road and barely fit between the buildings, stalls, people, and animals.  We drove through the town and stopped at a big tree.  Usually they meet at the tree but the wind and dust were so strong we went inside a building maybe 12’ by 18’ and sat on plastic chairs in an oval shape.  There were 18 of us, seven from Niamey and eleven from Torodi.  I am not sure how many were translators because there were four languages being spoken, English, French, Hausa, and Gaurma… all at once.

We were supposed to sit under this tree for 4 hours.

The meeting in Torodi

I was struck by the fact that these people are so different from me.  They look, live, and speak differently than I do.  They are in a totally different development and economic situation.  They have culture that bears no resemblance to mine.  And yet, in the discussion that followed, we discussed issues that you would have in any food relief setting.  They were thoughtful, intelligent, and unselfish, trying to do the right thing for their people.

The issues that were discussed were very complex fundamental relief issues.  I thought relief was so simple.  You just go give food to those that need it.  Not so.  Brenda and Steve are against food relief unless there is a disaster or an impending disaster.  Relief builds dependency and dependency defeats development.

As I said, first you need to be sure there is a problem.  Some people didn’t believe the government’s assessment.  Some say the president of Niger just wants any and all relief supplies he can get and is willing to make the numbers come out that way.  Others say the signs are clear.  We asked the leaders.  Here are the reasons they thought there was a problem:

1.       More people have left to find work than before.  These include head of household who didn’t leave before.
2.       The cost of millet is at 600cfa’s a bowl.  Usually around 350 this time of year.
3.       The nearest neighbor, Burkina Faso, won’t let millet be shipped into Niger because they are expecting a shortage.
4.       There are people now going out into the fields looking for food to eat.
5.       People are eating only once a day and animals are in jeopardy.
6.       New huts to store grain are not being built and old ones are not being repaired.              Sounds like the road to famine to me.

      Second, is this an inconvenience or a life and death issue?

1.       One question raised was - are we subsiding their staying in this part of Niger when they should be moving to more fertile land?  We know the desert is moving this way every year.  Borrowing from an old story, you can give a man a fish but it is far better to teach him how to fish, but what if the pond is drying up, then what do you do?  Give him a fish or help him find a new pond, if there is one.

a.    But this is their home.  Well not really, they are Christians who came from Burkina Faso many years ago.

b.    If they leave, many will simply be refuges somewhere else.  Is that good?

c.    They are starving.  Well, we haven’t seen anyone starve to death yet.

Third, they said we don’t want our people to get used to begging for food.  This destroys us.  Then they discussed these issues.

1. We told them at the beginning, three strikes and you’re out.  For some this will be the fourth strike, no food for them.  But what does that mean? 
2. We want our people to do their part in working hard to increase production with new improved methods.  Some haven’t done as much as they could have.  Is it fair to give them food?  What happens to their children who didn’t get the chance to work?
3. Will giving relief hurt our efforts for long term development?  Well, is long term development, farming sufficiency, really possible?

They voted on whether or not they wanted relief by getting up and moving to one end of the room or the other.  There wasn’t much room to move but they still voted.  They ended up wanting relief this year because they felt people would die without it and they could not let happen.

They decided on a food for work program (where you get x amount of food for every hour you work) but unlike prior years, the program this year would require work as a community not as an individual.  Building a cistern, building a dam to create more water, improving roads, or buying improved seeds are all things the community needs developmentally and could do.  They would ask the people what they wanted most.

I thought about being a leader of a community that is facing famine for the fourth year out of the last eight and wondered what would I want for my people.  They need to get out from under the outside help but being tough and having them die is not the way to do it.  They talked about helping the people cope.  Helping them to “break the rock” (their term) together or working through their problems, together.   I think they were on to something here.  It is a very complex problem.

We sat for four hours.  Ate a meal together of noodles, sauce, and goat bones.  They give you a big bowl of food and then you eat it with your hands.  I ate it and then went outside and learned how to wash my hands.  First you wet them, then you rub sand (dust) on them, and then rinse them.  The sand takes the grease away.  Not sure it did much for the dirt.

When we got back, I quickly went to our apartment with a fever, chills, and diarrhea.  All the symptoms of malaria, fortunately, my self-diagnosis assigned it to tainted goat bones.  This Niamey diet program is great.