It’s a Sunday afternoon and I am sitting here
in a hotel restaurant in a town called Maradi in Niger. The England
Germany football game is on and England have just scored a goal – so it is
now Germany 2. England 1. All the hotel staff are sitting around the TV
and I do not dare order anything to eat until the game is over. Here in Niger
everyone is very happy because Ghana won the match against USA yesterday.
So why am I here? I am working with a non
government organisation helping them set up a nutrition here in Maradi . |
| A village in Niger |
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| Farmer ploughing with a camel |
Every day at the health centre we are finding many malnourished children. I feel so happy to see that at least something is starting up for them. We have to do what is called an appetite test with the malnourished children. If we see that they are eating the Ready to Use Therapeutic Food which is the nutritional treatment for the child and they are medically not too bad then they do not need to be sent to hospital.The health centrecan give them the medications and a week's supply of Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods and tell then to return every week for follow up.Normally when we do he appetite test the child can sometimes start crying because f being in unfamiliar surroundings etc. But here the children are so hungry that it overomes their fear and they just gulp it down.
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| Child with severe acute malnutrition being treated at health centre |
We had one child who came back and when we did the
appetite test with him he screamed and screamed. I was trying to work out
whether he was screaming because he was afraid or because he was sick. We asked
the mother to go to a quiet corner and try to calm the child and feed him the Ready
to Use Therapeutic Food. I could hear him continuing to scream and scream and
suddenly I heard nothing.I was worried something had happened. So I raced
outside to see the child calmly eating the paste surrounded by the mother and
other mothers all laughing and giggling. Over in another corner some of the
elders of the village were in a huddle talking seriously. Then they gave a nod
to the mother and the mother and all the other mothers started to whoop with
joy waving their hands in the air. It turned out that the nurse had been giving
the child the packet of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food to eat with his right
hand. In fact the child was left handed and once they let him eat with his left
hand he was a happy as a sandboy. However in an Islamic country like Niger
,eating with your left hand is forbidden because that hand is used for going to
the toilet. So the elders had to gather in order to discuss and decide whether
in this instance the child could eat with his left hand. When they gave the nod
to the mother it was to say that they had agreed to let him eat with his left
hand.
However although we try as far as possible to let
the mothers bring the severely malnourished child home to give him the
medications and Ready to Use Therapeutic Food – there are some children who are
too sick and they have to go to the hospital. In this instance we try and make
sure her family are provided for during the time she is in hospital. The other
day we encountered a child almost comatose with dehydration at the health
centre. He had to have an emergency intravenous infusion (which can be very
risky in very malnourished children because it is easy to overload their little
bodies and send them into heart failure so you have to watch them like a hawk)
The child came round a bit and because of that the mother did not want to go to
the hospital. She had 5 others at home that she needed to provide for. Her
husband had migrated to find work in nearby Nigeria and was not around.
Eventually she agreed to go to the hospital and that the children could
stay with her sister The non government organisation would give
some grain,sugar and oil enough to feed the other children and also to
compensate her sister for looking after the children. ( Everyone is trying to
scrape a living together so the mother could not burden her sister with extra
mouths to feed without giving her sister something) So we zoomed the child to
hospital. On the way the mother was sick in the car all over yours truly. Heat
of 40 degrees centrigrade, sweat, dust from the desert and encrusted
vomit are not a good combination to be wallowing in! I am not sure if the child
was Ok or not. There are so many malnourished children it is
difficult to follow them all up.
At the hotel here there is a stork that has made himself at home in the grounds. He potters around and is delighted when it rains.
He hops gleefully about in the puddles with his long legs and
curved beak pecking and splashing around. I was told that these
birds which are called chamoix in the local language which is Hawsa are very
much loved and respected by the people here for two reasons. They only
arrive here if there is going to be good rain. People are happy if they arrive.
This means that they are able to plant the main crop which here in Niger
is millet which is more drought resistant and so have a good harvest in 3
months time. The second reason is that these birds leave the newly
planted millet alone and do not eat it. When the rains stop the birds go away
again.
Sometimes as I go along in the car I see flocks of
chamoix flying overhead and my heart lifts to see this good sign of rain.
I see the women tilling their newly planted millet crops in the
harsh,dry sand lift their heads, screening their eyes against the sun, calmly
looking at the chamoix swooping overhead. I cannot read minds but I wonder if
they are looking at them with relief – at these good luck
harbingers of rain and hope of a good harvest and so, of life. I wonder ,if
as they gaze at them, they are sighing with relief that this year unlike
the last famine in 2005 they may not have to make that awful choice –
of helplessly leaving their youngest malnourished child at
home to die, so that their other children may survive.
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| The hotel stork - fortuitious harbinger of rain |
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