Over 450,000 receives food aid in time for Rosebey’s urgent need

The soil looks too dry and dusty. For 10 months, Mpindimule village has been waiting for rains. On the peripheries of the village, Rosebey Samson, 76, is working in her garden. Temperatures have hit 32 degrees even when it is only 10 in the morning. Rosebey says this village is getting very hot. Rosebey struggles to walk. With a continuing deterioration in weight, her bones have become weak, brittle, and thin. Her back hunched forward with pain, Rosebey endures it all.

Managing a garden at this time of her life, Rosebey is not enjoying her old age. The community calls her ‘Akuledye’ in her native Yao language popular in this eastern Malawi region. This means ‘a loser’. Some of her Christian friends also call her Naomi, the Biblical Moabite woman who lost all her children when she escaped hunger to a new land.

Blessed with eight children, Rosebey lost all of them to diseases that included the deadly HIV/AIDS. Some died through various tragedies. “Life is tough,” she says and adds, “I miss my children”. Following her children’s deaths, Rosebey had to take care of her grandchildren, singlehandedly. She does not complain. This year’s lack of rains followed by hunger and need is proving to be difficult for many people. It was an arduous journey to bear.

“We harvested 100 kilograms from our two-acre maize garden,” she says. “I don’t know how we will make it to April if help doesn’t come in time,” she says as she helps her granddaughter Gloria get some water. Gloria has challenges with her legs. This is not the first famine for Rosebey as the villagers would recall. “I was a young girl in 1949," the 71-year-old village head says, "but this year's famine reminds me of that one."

"In 1949 we could walk to the forests to pick wild fruits," says the chief, who says children are getting malnourished as the famine intensifies, "while now there is nowhere to go as forests are depleted of the fruit trees." Bad rainfall and the El Nino weather halted production, leaving 6.5 million people, nearly 40 percent of the population, food insecure.

At the market close to Rosebey’s village, Namadidi, a 4kg pack of maize sells at 1,200 (USD 1.7). When she manages to buy, this only takes them one day. The country is 174 out of 187 countries in the 2013 Human Development Index that has stagnated for the last five years. Female-headed households experience higher poverty. With the majority of livelihoods dependent on agriculture, the population is highly vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters.

World Vision in partnership with World Food Program and the Government of Malawi will soon carry out food aid distributions in Zomba district where Rosebey has registered. “I can’t wait for the first distribution,” she says as she looks at the far end of the veranda where her grandchild, Madalo is sleeping.

In this district, 79 000 households will receive food aid, benefiting nearly 450,000 in total. From November, to March, each household will have 50kg bag of maize, 5kg of pulses and a litre of vegetable oil. Those with pregnant and lactating mothers as well as children under 24 months will get 5kg of corn soy blend (CSB). World Vision is also distributing food in Chikwawa, Mwanza and Neno districts to reach out to nearly 1.1 million people by March 2017.

Malawi is the worst hit in Southern Africa Region and World Vision is the largest partner of the United Nations’s World Food Programme, handling 17 percent of the entire response operation. Since August, World Vision has distributed 12, 416MT of food aid items. Response Manager Simbarashe Gava says the team expects tough times as the response reaches the lean period.