Food Insecurity and Inequality

Many people have misconceptions about South Africa, thinking it is a developed country without many of the problems the rest of Africa faces-poverty, disease, environmental degradation, food insecurity, corruption, etc….and in some parts of that country, that’s more or less true. You can go to highly developed areas of the country and find every modern convenience, mistaking it for some city in America.

But the reality is that South Africa is plagued by inequality and poverty, leading to widespread food insecurity. It’s estimated that at least 12 million South Africans go to bed hungry each night. In the rural areas, where I’m living, this is pretty evident just looking at the children. Many children show signs of long term malnutrition, through stunting or kwashiorkor. Others show signs of emaciation, indicating short-term or seasonal malnutrition. This affects their development, and impacts their success in school and beyond.

Malnutrition is a problem in South Africa, but it’s often hidden by the modern advances of the First World.

There are a lot of things going on in South Africa that affect food security, and race happens to be one of the factors. During Apartheid, black people were removed from some of the most fertile land in South Africa, freeing it up for white farmers. They were removed to some of the harshest, least productive areas of the country. At the end of Apartheid, much of that farmland was retained by the white farmers. Now, twenty years later, vast inequalities in land ownership exist. 36,000 large-scale farmers control 86 million hectares of land, while 1.4 million black farmers have access to 14 million hectares. (iol.co.za)

Stop and look at that sentence again, and really think about what it means. Out of 100 million hectares of farmland in South Africa, 2.5% of the population of farmers (non-black) control 86% of the land. And 97.5% of the population of farmers (who identify as black) control only 14% of the land.

Imagine how that impacts food insecurity, and which ethnicity is most impacted. Yes, there are white households that are food insecure. But the vast majority of families who face insecurity are either rural black South Africans, or township (think urban slums) black South Africans.

I work in a rural village trying to improve food security through small-scale, intensive food gardening, working with potential young black agriculturists. Many of the children in my village are considered orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and come from food insecure households. Even if their family has frequent access to food, it might be only during certain times of the month/year (i.e. near payday), it might not be enough food, or it might be food that lacks proper nutrients (i.e. pap, or maize porridge). My goal during my third year is to work with both adults and children to teach sustainable home gardening methods that are high-yielding, low-technology, and which use water responsibly. The idea is that if a family knows more efficient ways of growing food, they can contribute to their own household food security by growing healthy vegetables.

Food insecurity has the potential to cripple this nation, and the problem gets worse as food prices rise. Pensioners in SA receive 1,500 rand/month from the government (about 150USD). For each child in the rural areas (for needy families), the parents receive R250 (about $25) to care for the child. Can you imagine raising a child on $25/month?

Many of the kids at my workplace are one of several, and some belong to households of 8-9 people who rely on 1 or 2 child grants and perhaps a pension from the grandparent. This means that many children either go hungry, or only eat pap. Pap fills the stomach but provides little in terms of nutrition.

But this is why I’m here…in hopes that I can many some small change to increase food security.
-Jen

Food Parcels

In the rural areas in South Africa, a common thing to do for food insecure children is provide food parcels. Of course, this is not the best development option, but it is important to make sure children aren’t going hungry at night, and the food parcels help with short term food insecurity.

At Xitsavi, we have identified about 90 OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) who receive food parcels on a regular basis. I was at work last Wednesday when I noticed cans of beans and fish being set out along the lawn, and I knew they were preparing to hand out food parcels. I went over to help sort the food and distribute. To me, the food parcels seemed a little nutty: 12.5kg of mealie meal, 2 cans of fish, 2 cans of beans, tea, oil, 1kg of sugar, 2kg of rice, creamer, 10 soup mix packets, morvite (breakfast porridge), 5 bullion packets, 1 packet of curry powder, and 1 tube of toothpaste. Nothing fresh, very little protein, but it’s food that the children are used to eating and that the adults can easily cook. I probably would have selected a few different things, but overall it was a good food parcels for the kids.

The process ended up taking a few hours. Parents had to come pick up the packages, otherwise the children would try to sell the food on the way home. Plus, that’s a heavy load for a kid to carry. It was fascinating to watch the process. The parents had to sign for the food, then the families would go two by two to collect their parcel. Hardly anyone brought sacks to carry things in, and the centre didn’t have any. So people got pretty creative in how they managed to carry the stuff. Most of the women would carry the 12.5kg (25lb) of maize meal on their heads, which still impresses me, and the kid would load up their backpacks with the both things.

Most of the food is probably already gone, even though it’s only been a week. I did a quick approximation of the amount a person would spend buying all of that stuff at the store, and it came up to about R300. When a family only makes perhaps R1200 or R1500 a month, that makes a big difference in the monthly grocery bill!
-Jen

The Crazy Third Year Volunteer Life

By the nature of the education sector in South Africa, my first two years of service were pretty structured. I went to school five days a week, from 7:30-2:30, roughly. What I did at school was sometimes far from structured, but I was there. I had a schedule, and rarely was a not around during the workweek.

For my third year of service, I switched from the schools to working with an organization that promotes rural development. I wasn’t really aware how much things would change in the structure of my service. I didn’t realize that I was getting myself into a whole new service dynamic.

The structure schedule I have been working under for the past two years has been entirely thrown out of the window. I still haven’t had a normal workweek. Usually, I spend M/W/F at the Trust, and T/Th at the food security project. But this week alone, I spent Tuesday in town working on getting an invoice to purchase materials for a seedling nursery at the food security project. Then today, Friday, I spent the morning having a meeting at a nearby primary school to discuss the creation of a garden there. And on Wednesday, though I was at the Trust, the day was insane because we handed our food parcels to 90+ of our OVCs.

I’ve tried crafting a schedule, but things haven’t settled into a normal. I suppose this is my new normal. I’m in a quasi-supervisory position at the Food Security Project, so my responsibilities are a bit different than a normal volunteers. Plus, I’m starting for form partnerships with area schools to help develop gardening schemes there, which will mess up my non-existent schedule even more. At any rate, it all keeps me on my toes!

I’m still in the process of getting my programmes up and running, but I’m seeing some positive trends, even if my life happens to be a bit chaotic. The meeting at the primary school went remarkably well, and I’m excited to work with another PCV to establish a school garden there!
-Jen

“The Farm”

Xitsavi Food Security Project

Today was my first visit to the Xitsavi Food Security Project’s site, where I’ll be spending a lot of time over the next year.  This project is actually the entire reason I am at my new site, and will be the focus of my work as a third year PCV.  A little background on the project:

Hosi Nwamitwa started the Xitsavi Youth Project back in 2009, and small groups of learners started going through the new Fit for Life Fit for Work programme at that time.  FFLFFW is a programme aimed at getting youth (18-30 years old) out of their houses and gaining important life skills, such as sexual and reproductive health, computer literacy, coping skills, and employment skills.  From the FFLFFW programme, the Xitsavi Food Security Project was created to help graduates of the programme gain agricultural skills.  Two years later, the Xitsavi FSP has about 10 hectares of land producing a wide range of vegetables year round, 2 duck and tilapia ponds, a banana orchard, and upwards of 100 moringa trees.  Now, this is a pilot project in polyculture/aquaculture, and I am here to help it move into permaculture.

So to backtrack, today was my first day at “the farm”.  I actually don’t really like calling it a farm, because that brings to mind fields upon fields of heavily fertilized, sprayed, monocrops….which this certainly isn’t.  But for ease of writing, let’s call it the farm.  I was basically just observing today and figuring out what their needs are…and wow, there is a lot I can help with, which is exciting.  They are growing all sorts of delicious things: green beans, okra, tomatoes, cabbage, spinach, mustard spinach, peppers of all colours, beetroot, onion, bananas, moringa….and probably some other things I forgot.  But one of their problems is that they are afraid to plant too much because sometimes finding buyers can be difficult.  So through a series of events, I found myself in town, walking to about 6 different shops and finding out who would be willing to buy our produce.  Three of the shops were very eager to do so, and asked us to bring samples next week so they could assess the quality of our produce.

Score!  I was exhausted after walking all over the “mountain” that is Tzaneen (my counterpart’s words, not mine), but I felt really good about the prospects for this project in the coming year.  Now to build a nursery…. 😀  After all, we are going to need a LOT of seedlings!

-Jen

Moringa!!

What is Hunger?

I will warn you from the start that this post has a good deal of technical language, and wouldn’t necessarily be considered as entertaining as some of my other posts are.  However, because I’ll be talking about the more technical aspects of hunger in the next few posts, I thought it would be nice to lay some groundwork, in case you haven’t studied hunger and food security before.

I have already indicated that many of the children in my school are hungry and live in food insecure homes.  I’ll come back to what exactly food security is in a bit.  Hunger, as you know, if a feeling people get when they haven’t eaten in awhile.  Pretty simple, right?  Things get a little murkier when you start looking at hunger as it relates to international development. 

What exactly is hunger?

There are a few different types of hunger.  One of them is simply the feeling you get when you haven’t eaten for a few hours.  Everyone has experienced this, and this is NOT what people mean when they talk about hungry children. 

What we mean when we talk about hunger is children who do not get enough food or who do not get enough of the right kinds of food.  Did you know a child can have three full meals everyday, rarely experience the sensation of hunger, yet still be very malnourished?  A child can also be overweight and be malnourished.  How?  Well, malnourishment simply means a condition which is caused by not eating enough healthy foods.  An obese child is every bit as malnourished as an underweight child.

Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) is the kind of hunger discussed when aid and relief options are put on the table.  These are the “hungry children” I have mentioned in my blog.  PEM happens when a person is not getting enough protein or calories (energy) from the food they eat.  A person could have three meals a day and feel full, but still suffer from PEM.  This frequently happens when a person is eating primarily empty carbohydrates (rice, pap-stiff maize porridge, potatoes, corn tortillas, etc) without any meat or other protein sources. 

Kwashiorkor causes hair to lose colour.

One form of PEM is Kwashiorkor, which is a severe protein deficiency.  It frequently happens when a child is weaned from breast milk and given food of inferior quality and nutrition.  Kwashiorkor loosely translates into “what happens to the child when another child is born,” referring to the period when a child is weaned.  In severe cases, children will lose hair color, have thinning hair, develop bloated bellies, and/or have swelling in the legs.  Dozens of kids at my school have wispy, blondish hair, indicating cases of severe Kwashiorkor.

Another form of PEM is marasmus, which is severe emaciation.  When you see pictures of a child who is skin and bones-frighteningly thin, you are looking at a child with marasmus.  Marasmus is a condition where there is severe calorie (energy) deficiency, resulting in rapid fat loss.  Some kids and adults in my village show signs of marasmus.

Both conditions are life-threatening if left untreated. 

Milder (though still danger
ous) cases of malnutrition are manifested by children being at a low height-for-age (stunting), low weight-for-age (underweight), or low weight-for-height (wasted).  If a child is below the 5th percentile for weight or height, they are considered moderately to severely malnourished.  What does this mean?  Percentiles are a way to determine how a child is growing/developing compared to their peers (worldwide, children of their age and gender).  If a child is at the 90th percentile for height, 89% of kids their age and gender are shorter than they are.  If a child is at the 25th percentile for weight, 74% of children their age and gender are heavier than they are. 

Underweight children watching a gardening demonstration.

If a child is at or below the 5th percentile for either height or weight, it indicates either short-term or long-term malnutrition.  An underweight child (at or below the 5th percentile for weight) could be suffering from seasonal or chronic hunger because weight fluctuates frequently.  Low weight is easier to treat and more likely to be “caught up” at a later stage, if a child is given the proper nutrition.  A wasted child (low weight-for-height) is often a child who has suffered from being underweight for a long period of time, and is now wasted.  It is a more serious condition than being underweight.  A stunted child (at or below the 5th percentile for height) indicates long-term malnutrition, resulting in a child whose growth is stunted.  Stunting can be treated, but stunted children rarely “catch up” later on, even if they are given the proper nutrition.  Furthermore, stunted women frequently give birth to underweight babies, meaning they are already malnourished at birth.

Hidden hunger is another form of malnutrition, different from PEM because the body receives enough of both protein and energy (calories), but is still malnourished.  Hidden hunger is a micronutrient deficiency, and can have severe impacts on health.  Deficiencies of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients can inhibit the body’s ability to develop or function, causing secondary infection and defects.  Hidden hunger is not visible or even noticeable, and therefore is frequently ignored.  Though it is hard to know without proper testing, signs indicate that many of the children at my school suffer from hidden hunger in one form or another.

All of this relates back to food security.  If a household is food insecure, the children are more likely to be impacted and experience hunger.  But what exactly is food security?

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle.” (FAO 2005)

For a household to be considered food secure, they must be able to afford, buy, and prepare enough nutritious and healthy food for everyone in the house, during all seasons of the year.  Food security can be transitory, meaning a household can move from being food secure to being food insecure and back throughout the year, based on employment, growing seasons, etc.

What is food insecurity?  It’s the lack of the above criteria.  Also, “food insecurity exists when people are undernourished as a result of the physical unavailability of food, their lack of social or economic access to adequate food and/or inadequate food utilization.”  Furthermore, a person is considered food insecure when their “food intake falls below their minimum calorie (energy) requirements”. (FAO 2005)

Keep posted for information on how all of this technical information relates to my service and the children at my school.
-Jen

Living in a Food Insecure Household

Prior to moving to Africa, I failed to understand what food security meant on a personal basis.  Though I grew up in a household that didn’t have a lot of money, we always had food.  I never went hungry. 

However, during PST, the first few months of training in South Africa, I lived with a family and ate what they ate.  I didn’t truly realize it at the time, but the family I stayed with was food insecure.

Let me be clear, I never went hungry. But I often wasn’t full.  Our meals were limited in choice and greatly emphasized cheap carbs like pap (stiff maize porridge), rice, and bread.  Though we had protein at almost every meal, the servings were quite small.  I didn’t eat many fruits and vegetables, and sometimes would go days without either.

Peace Corps delivered a food parcel every two weeks.  The first few days after it was delivered were great-we had fresh fruit, green vegetables, and our meals were varied.  The rest of the week, the fruit was gone and the vegetables started to peter out.  The second week meant I was often hungry after lunch, and meals were mostly comprised pap and chicken.  My family almost always had chicken at the evening meal, which was great, but the portions would dwindle during the second week.  Some of the meals I had included penne pasta noodles with ketchup and chicken; lettuce and cheese sandwiches for lunch; pap and baked beans; and eggs, bread, and homemade French fries. Not exactly nutritious or delicious.

I remember times when I would open my lunch at 10am and frown because I was already hungry from breakfast and there wasn’t much for lunch.  There were no snacks.  There was no junk food.  During PST, trainees are given a tiny stipend of about $15usd a week, so I was not able to supplement the family’s food often with my budget.  I would occasionally buy some fruit to share or some chips to eat at lunch, but with such a small stipend, and it didn’t go far.

I lived in a food insecure household for 8 weeks, and that experience will never leave me.  I can’t imagine living that way for the rest of my life, but at least 12 million people in South Africa do.  I have no idea what it would have been like if Peace Corps hadn’t provided food parcels to our host families.  Those food bundles ensured our food security while I was living in the household, and it troubles me that this wasn’t necessarily the case prior to my arrival.

Food insecurity has become an important issue for me since I arrived in Africa.  Food security ought to be a basic human right, but at least 12 million people in South Africa are denied it.  Most of the people in my village live in food insecure household.  I’ve spent most of my service trying to ensure that, in some small way, families in my village can learn to be self-sufficient and ensure their own food security.  Yet climate change and its impact on villages like mine concerns me, and threatens to undo all the work I’ve down over the past few years.  Sadly, there’s no easy answer.

I can’t wave a magic wand and fix these problems.  But I can give people the knowledge to improve their own lives and ensure a better future.  And I’m trying to do that on a very small scale.
-Jen

Surrounded by Hunger, Part 1

Since I arrived in my village almost two years ago, teachers have told me that many children at my school go to bed hungry, wake up hungry, and often have only one meal a day-the meager meal provided by the school nutrition programme. Looking around, I believed that was true for some of the learners, but I couldn’t imagine that most of them didn’t have food at home. Maybe I was in denial-I didn’t want to believe it.

The fact is that I am surrounded by hunger.

No, children aren’t wasting away before my eyes from acute malnutrition. Instead, from birth they are set on a trajectory of chronic malnutrition, evidenced by low weight-for-height (underweight), or low height-for-age (stunting). Their unfocused eyes in the first hours of school, heads dropping towards their desks, and slow, shuffled movements prior to the school serving the lunch at 10am tell me that most do not have breakfast. These kids are hungry.

And some are dying.

In fact, 1 in 15 children die before they reach 5 years of age in South Africa. One third of those children die when they are severely malnourished, and 60% are underweight.

Their death certificates don’t state that they died from malnutrition. No, instead they die from things children should be able to overcome. A 14 year old in a friend’s village died a few weeks ago from a dog bite. Not rabies, just an infection from a dog bite. In a nearby village, a two year old passed away last year from an unspecified illness. A friend of mine told me about a horrible incident at her school, where a first grader accidentally killed a fellow first grader by hitting her in the head with a rock. A last weekend, there was a funeral in my village for a learner from one of my schools. He was “sick for a long time”, which translates into “he had HIV”.

Kids shouldn’t be dying from dog bites, bumps to the head, or preventable and treatable illnesses. This happens when kids are chronically malnourished, suffering from protein-energy deficiency. 2.7 million children in South Africa live in homes where there is child hunger. Overall, 12 million South Africans are considered food insecure, and 4 million of those are on the brink of starvation. These are just a few of the stories….but it’s happening every day.

Earlier this week, I recorded the height and weights of all of our Grade R, or kindergarten, learners. We are in the process of identifying who our Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs) are, in order to support them through the school gardens. Finding out the orphans is relatively easy, because the social workers keep track of them and provide a stipend for families who take in an orphan. But the vulnerable children often fall through the cracks. It is up to the school to identify them, and without a standard, it is difficult. I can look at the kids who come to school barefoot, or without coats in the winter, or who wear the same uniform day after day, and I know they are vulnerable. But almost every child in my school is painfully thin-how do I determine who is going hungry? I can’t ask them; they won’t say. So I worked with the principal and decided that we would record their heights and weights and compare them to international standards to determine which children are stunted and which children are underweight.

Out of 39 learners, 18 fall below the 5th percentile in either height or weight. If a learner is at the 5th percentile, it means that 95 percent of children their age in the world are taller or heavier than they are. Nearly half of the class is stunted or underweight. 28 of the learners have a Body Mass Index (BMI) below the 5th percentile. Body Mass Index is a calculation that uses weight and height to determine the amount of fat a person has. Only 1 child has a BMI at the 50th percentile, the rest were below, mostly far below. The 50th BMI percentile mark for a 5 year old girl is 15.1 and for a boy is 15.5.

One of the learners only weighed 11.5kg, or 25.3lb, which is considered underweight for a two year old, and she is 5.

How do we fix this? How do we feed these children? How do we improve this situation?

Stunting has lifelong impacts on a child, even if they receive better nutrition later on in childhood. They rarely catch up with their well-nourished peers. Stunted women often give birth to children with low birth weight, and the cycle begins again. When children have HIV, TB, malaria, or other opportunistic infections, they often do not have the ability to fight the disease, leading to death when it could have been averted. Hidden hunger and parasitic infections exacerbate all of this.

According to the Global Competitiveness Report in 2012, South Africa ranked 107 out of 144 in the world for infant mortality deaths, and 133 out of 144 for life expectancy. In a country that is the economic leader in Africa, a relatively stable economy, and rich in resources, this is a tragedy. In 2011, the GINI coefficient labeled South Africa as the most unequal nation in the world, surpassing Brazil. In a country where wealthy children receive a world class private education and feast on well-rounded, nutrition meals three times a day, rural children are slowly fading away, with empty bellies and immune systems that are unable to cope with the onslaught of physical, psychological, and social maladies. A child raised in poverty in South Africa is four times more likely to die before reaching their fifth birthday than a child raised in a wealthy family.

It is estimated that 30% of children in South Africa are stunted, and 12 million of 52 million people in the country regularly go to bed hungry. In Limpopo, 48% of children were considered stunted in 2005. In 2004, over 800 children died from kwashiorkor, which is an acute form of protein-energy deficiency. Kwashiorkor is commonly seen in places such as war zones, famine relief programmes, and refugee camps. There is no reason it should be seen in a country that has enough food to feed everyone. Kwashiorkor often causes children to have bloated, distended stomachs, and their hair will begin to turn reddish, orange, or gold in severe cases. It is obvious to me that some of the learners I interact with on a daily basis are suffering from kwashiorkor.

What can we do? We can give them seeds and teach them to plant. We can put the power in their hands and help them to ensure their homes are food secure. But I live in the desert. Is it enough?

I’ll write more about ways the government in trying to intervene, and ways in which they should intervene. This country is in a crisis. Food insecurity is a far-reaching problem, which has direct impacts on health and education, and is extremely difficult to overcome. But we must have hope that something can be done.

Otherwise, I’m looking at children who are doomed to be sick and hungry for the rest of their lives, who will raise hungry children, and who will ultimately die prematurely. I am very afraid that this could very well be the reality, unless something changes.
-Jen

http://www.westerncape.gov.za/eng/directories/services/11512/6451
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC201028/
http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2013/01/30/twelve-million-going-to-bed-hungry-in-sa

Guest Post on the Realities of Life in the North West Province

As promised, here is the guest post written by my friend Sue.  She has spent most of her life in South Africa, and has spent much of her professional life traveling to the far corners of this country, teaching schools about permaculture.  She understands the importance of food security, and sustainable, small scale food production.  About a month ago, I received an email from her discussing the realities of life in rural villages in the North West province, where I’ve spent the last two years.  Her words resonated with me, and captured many things I was unable to communicate to friends, family, and whoever else reads my blog.  Sue agreed to write a post for my blog, and I hope you enjoy this post and take something away from it.  It’ll be discussing more about the issues she raises in the coming week, so keep tuned in. 
-Jen

“Greetings, readers of Jen’s blog!  I have been following it with great interest, too – I am enjoying reading about her experiences and seeing my country through her eyes.  I am an immigrant to South Africa, but have lived here longer than I lived in my motherland.  In some ways I feel I am still learning about this wonderful, rich and diverse country.  Today I share some of my learning with you.

South Africa is a dry country – a rainfall map shows that the coastal areas receive far more rain than the inland areas.  More than half of our population live in built up areas and the rest are at the mercy of poor service delivery (long interruptions in water provision) and an arid landscape.  I recently moved to one of our driest provinces – a huge shock to my system, having lived in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth for twenty years, and a challenge to my permaculture skills.

This province mimics the pattern of South Africa’s rainfall, too!  The parts of the province that border Gauteng and Limpopo are wetter and warmer; so much so that avocados, paw-paws and bananas will grow.  Much of the province, however, is not warmer; it is blisteringly hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter (such as where Jen lives).  Spring and autumn are short and provide little relief from seasonal extremes.

What worries me most is the decrease in rainfall in the areas bordering the Kalahari Desert. Climate change is experienced with devastating force in these areas; where we have some of our projects and schools there hasn’t been a ‘planting rain’ for two years.  Planting rain means 50 mm over two days, so that there is a ‘wet’ depth of up to half a metre – which will enable seeds to germinate.  Planting main crops without this much rainfall is a waste of time and precious seeds. After that there has to be a little more rain to maintain growth, and fruiting and seeding – and this has not happened either. To put it into context, Johannesburg receives up to 700 mm per year on average.  The dry parts of this province can expect up to 500 mm of rain per year.  For the past two seasons the rainfall has been below 200 mm.

I have travelled the length and breadth of the province over the past few weeks – peak harvesting time for main crops – and have seen more fields of crop failure than I ever have seen before. The only really good harvests are those cultivated under irrigation.

I have seen very, very few home food gardens.

Climate change hits the most vulnerable people the hardest.  Living in the rural areas of South Africa is not the idyllic, easy lifestyle one might imagine.  It’s tough. And it’s a constant battle to stretch the few funds that float around; one out of twenty nine adults in our rural areas has a job.  Yes, read that again.  Education is at the foundation of this problem; many children quit school sometime during high school because the high school is too far away from home.  There are a few boarding schools but the conditions are appalling. Many schools are over-crowded and in these conditions it is a miracle that some children do succeed.

Add to this that one in five children is an orphan, and of these young ones, one in five lives in a child-headed home. There are not enough NGOs to go around to provide support. The more fortunate children receive help from the community and sometimes the challenge is just too much.  We had a school at one of our workshops the other day; of the 1800 children in the school 1200 are either orphans and/or vulnerable.  What do we do with this information? What can we do?

Think about it this way, if only one in almost thirty adults has a job, what are people living on? Usually social grants, and these may keep maize porridge on the table, but it doesn’t provide for much more than that.  For the vast majority of our children in this province the food that children receive as part of the National Schools Nutrition Programme (NSNP) is the only thing standing between them and severe malnourishment.  These children are already under-nourished. And there are no food gardens at home (in most cases).

One of the tell-tale signs of under-nourishment is when children’s hair turns a shade of rust to orange.  When we visit schools I am shocked to see just how many of the little ones in front of me are in dire straits.  Another telling factor is stunted growth – almost all the children I see are small for their ages.

When we visited a school in Klerksdorp just after Valentine’s Day I heard how the school had used this event as a fund-raising opportunity – and cancelled the NSNP meal of the day.  Great – it’s forward thinking! The school prepared food to sell, and a great number of children in this area could not afford to buy food.  They went hungry.
Valentine’s Day was on a Friday. Many of the children went home to empty larders for the weekend and returned to school on Monday, weak with hunger.  For some reason, that day the NSNP meal did not materialise.  Some of the children drank water to curb their hunger pangs – so much so that they were vomiting water.

These children are living on a knife-edge.  One small change in the wrong direction can lead to devastating consequences. Living on the edge of the desert is not for sissies; that people are surviving at all is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit. But I know there is only so much that we – people – can take.  There will come a time when the ravages of one too many harsh, dry summers will take their toll.  

So, climate change may be flavour of the month in boardrooms and a hot topic at the dinner tables around the cities, and around the world.  It might be really cool to be green, and to work hard at lowering our carbon footprints.  But, there’s more to it than that.Whilst I support such noble endeavours, I see a sea of faces in our rural areas.  I see homes without food gardens and I see children unable to learn because they are not eating, and if they are eating, it’s not enough of the right food.  And I see less and less rain.

We have to apply ways to maximise home and school food production – put the right food on the table every day.  We have to apply really good, smart ways to harvest the little bit of rainwater that there is. This will bring about the positive change to move people away from the edge.  In order to do that we have to plant trees to create micro-climates that makes it possible to turn desert margins into places of abundance. We need more people (like Jen) teaching people how to grow food in the drylands.

What I can tell you is that my heart is touched by the heart of the people of the North West. In all of these challenges there are good people doing good work, and I have met so many in this province. I see many people working hard to make things better, and to make the most of the few resources that are available.Many of the food gardens I have seen are there because someone took the time to teach others.

I am blessed to be here  –  I live among angels.  And together we will turn our semi-arid desert into an oasis of food!”

World Food Day

Grade R singing a song about planting.

October 16th is World Food Day, named to honor the foundation of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

Food has become a very big issue for me, or rather hunger has. My school has about 2 chubby kids, the rest or skinny or emaciated. And by chubby, I mean they look well-fed and healthy, and would be called normal in the States. I often stand at Assembly, looking at muscle-less legs and knobby knee, hollow cheeks and stick-thin arms. The kids in my village are hungry. Even those from well-off families may be painfully thin, and most are obviously stunted in growth. Kids talk about their “gold” hair, which is nearly as light as mine-on a black child. This is a sign of severe malnutrition.

Living amidst chronic hunger and malnutrition is hard. I can’t relay how torn I feel when I see obviously hungry children in my village. And the reality is that South African kids are better off than most in Sub-Saharan Africa. Every child at my school receives free lunch, every day. The government mandates that it is served by 10am because many kids go without breakfast, and you can’t effectively teach hungry children. So every child gets one meal a day, which consists of a complete protein and sometimes a fruit of vegetable. But for some kids, that is the only meal they get. And on school holidays?

One of the worst moments I had at school was when a gogo brought a child in to the school. The teachers started yelling at him, then he started to cry. Then the teachers calmed down and helped the boy to stop crying. When the boy left for class, I asked what had happened. The teachers showed me a container of grass and explained that the gogo had found the kids eating those grasses in the bushveld. I had no response, and sat there fighting tears until I had to go to class.

Food security is important to me, as I live in such a food insecure village. That is why I focus on the school garden and the development of home gardens. That is why I am working with learners to teach them how to garden. I want to give them a future where they know how to feed themselves, even if they are stuck in the cycle of poverty.

I found out about World Food Day on Sunday, and forgot to mention it to my garden counterpart on Monday. So I went to school today with a plan, and approached her about doing a tree planting demonstration with Grade R. She agreed, and we rounded the Grade R’s up before school let out and taught them about trees and how they can benefit the garden (mainly as shade and a windbreak) and how that means we can grow better food. Then the learners all planted Karee Boom seeds, and now we have about 75 seeds waiting to sprout, in addition to the 30 Moringa seeds we planted last week.

As you read this, consider where your food comes from. Be thankful that you live in a food secure society (if you’re my American friends) and remember that hunger is real, and deadly. It can be hard for those of us from developed societies to understand the importance of food because we typically don’t have to wonder if we are going to eat today. But remember that much of the developing world struggles to feed itself. Today, on World Food Day, more than 7,500 children under the age of 5 will die from hunger (World Vision).

That’s something we can’t ignore.
-Jen

Planting Karee Boom seeds.

Say TREES! That’s how we get them to smile.

Our newly planted Karee Boom seeds, and Moringa seeds behind.

The school lunch, and maybe the only meal of the day for some learners. split pea soup and bread.