Later, I wished I’d given them my chicken. I don’t need it. I still feel stuffed. And I haven’t eaten since lunch.
Tonight, also, I looked at the stash of food in the room that would soon go bad. I had noticed earlier how the stash of food on the fire in the courtyard was getting dolled out in thermal containers. One ended up in my room. I felt too full to eat even a bite. I noticed the women and girls gathered in the courtyard, all were speaking Housa but mostly I was hearing the scraping of the bottom of the large community pot. I sent out a salad to the courtyard with Baraka, my assigned personal assistant. He protested, I insisted. I followed him soon thereafter and found him with his hand in his mouth before the courtyard door. Traditionally people eat with their hands here. I began being suspicious of how close to home the hunger problem was.
In our traveling up and down and here and there in a car loaded with tag-alongs—food and getting it seemed to be a tedious process and a constant worry. At first I thought it was simply hospitality and routine. I ate despite not being hungry. Then I began to realize eating and finding food had a deeper almost psychological connection with the “hunger is the problem” declaration made often by those of us in the hunt for food. Those scads of children running through the streets with bowls often in the Muslim part of town, they were running and looking for food. Running to where? They didn’t even know yet. Those kids in the field, they are looking for food too. Those of us in a hunt for food were also once those children running through the streets, combing through the dirt in a field, whose brothers and sisters hadn’t survived, who were now in a position to buy themselves out of the food shortage/distribution situation.
The multiple wives per man situation exasperates the food shortage in my calculation and in the estimation of many of the more educated. Multiple wives often happens in the Muslim communities, where the more wives the greater a man’s status. This occurs especially among the most traditional Muslims. Yet others have more than one wife also. More than one wife means more hungry children. And traditionally the man is not held responsible for them. Traditions change as folks are educated but decent education is also a problem.
January 12
These are children in the field looking for food. I think they are finding the remaining ginger, since ginger is currently being harvested.
2 comments:
Very interesting post. After my own moments of low blood sugar induced anxiety, I've wondered how a person/community dealing with profound hunger/famine could be expected to make rational choices--especially in light of very messy political and social situations. I think of Barbara Kingsolver's novel,_The Poisonwood Bible_--when the American missionaries planted squash, the plants never reproduced because Africa had no bees for pollination. What do you see as the critical barriers to growing nutritious food crops? Climate? Social unrest? Lack of education/tools? Distribution?
I hope your trip was everything you were anticipating!
The Nigerians see the most critical barrier as corruption. Someone gets assigned/contracted to do something, he/she is given the money to do it and poof suddenly all the money is gone and nothing has been done and the person who has been contracted suddenly has a shiny new house etc.
I think a lot can be done despite social unrest. One factor you deal with though when you have the hunger factor is desperation. People are desperate and there is a better chance that they have nothing to loose.
When the church got up and asked me for 3 things for their village, the elders simply said, we don't want these things for ourselves, we are almost already dead, please provide them for our children.
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