Lack of food...Children resort to playing a cooking game, using clay and water to make a muddy paste

Families in this World Vision-supported community – the Yehi Area Development Program - have been severely affected by last year’s lack of rain. And the consequences of this are starting to become more and more apparent. More and more dire.

Hamidou Goro, head of one of the families, has many worries. One is concerning his daughter Djidia’s education. She basically doesn’t go to school because her parents cannot afford it. In order for her to enroll in school she needs to have a birth certificate. In order to get a birth certificate she needs to travel 120 kms to Koro and pay 5 000cfa (equivalent to 10,4 US $). Instead Djidia pounds millet and washes the dishes and collects water from the borehole which is about 500 meters away from their house.

His biggest worry, however, is that the insufficient rain has left his family with little harvest.

“It usually takes us 4 months to harvest all our crops, but last year it took only one month”, said a worried Hamidou.  To make matters worse, much of their precious little harvest had to be thrown away. Due to the lack of rain much of the grain on the millet stalk did not mature therefore they cannot consume it.  Hamidou demonstrates this by talking a millet stalk. He grabs what is supposed to be the millet seed on the stalk and to our amazement it is just flakes. It is soon blown away by the wind.

Usually, families have enough food until the next harvest. But last year’s harvest only produced enough food for three months.

And time is running out.

If Djidia and her family do not receive food aid they will be forced to sell their only donkey and a bull to buy food. If that happens, Djidia and her family will only be able to plough a small piece of land by hand, resulting in a small harvest this year. Their life will become worse like a downward spiral deeper into poverty, making it more and more difficult for them to get out this situation.

Plus, the food prices now have doubled already compared to last year. So if they sell their animals, they will only be able to buy half as much food.

To cope, Hamidou has imposed strict food rations on his family. They eat “taw” a thick millet paste, 3 times a day now but the quantity per person is less. Further restrictions on their food consumption has been done by watering  down the “taw” into a watery porridge so that their food supply lasts longer.

But eating less food now has a detrimental effect on the health of Djidia and her sister. “My daughters have headaches  and  stomach aches,” said Hamidou. Djidia’s younger sister, Nassourou, is sick. Nassourou sleeps early, doesn’t  want to eat and doesn’t want to take medicine. Hamidou puts medicine in her food but she doesn’t want to eat it.

In a vain attempt to cheer themselves up, Djidia and her sister play a cooking game using clay and water to make a muddy paste. 

As the food and nutrition situation worsens, children in Mali and across West Africa try to cope the best way they can. Just as Djidia and her sister. The cooking game is one such way. Adults and young people in Mali and across the region try to cope by migrating to cities in search for work or resorting to selling the little they have.

1,700,000 people are affected by the crisis in Mali, including over 840,000 people living in World Vision-supported communities. Of the latter, 22,495 are registered children. Across the region, 13 million people are affected.

World Vision is working in Mali and the region, implementing:

• Short-term initiatives, responding to the immediate need, through Cash For Work (CFW) and Food For Work (FFW)  activities in partnership with WFP.
• Medium-to long term initiatives, including Disaster Risk Reduction interventions in form of Cereal Banking; Vegetable Gardening; Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition programs.

In the area where Hamidou’s family lives – the  Yehi ADP – World Vision is planning to build vegetable gardens so that families can grow and sell vegetables.