Ugly face of hunger

Life for Moses Goba of Malemia Village in Senior Chief Ngabu, Chikwawa District, has become unbearable as his family is surviving on boiled mangoes amid hunger that has reduced community members to almost beggars.

The 43-year-old, who provides for 11 other family members, described the situation as dire in an interview from his home on Friday.

Goba said: “Despite being lunchtime, we have nothing to eat. I don’t even know whether I will find food for my family soon. This is our third consecutive day without food.

“My children have been spending hours at a maize mill to collect leftover maize flour, but to no avail.”

With his huge responsibility, he walks 14 kilometres under the sweltering heat every day in search of piecework.

“But I cannot find any. This forces the family to go four days without food at times,” he said.

Goba’s wife, Mwaiwawo cannot, for the past three weeks, recall the day she prepared a proper meal for the family. There is simply no flour, no food and no fire in the kitchen. The hearth is empty and only ashes and dead embers lie in the solitary kitchen.

Goba’s family situation mirrors the plight of about 3.82 million people in the country who are projected to be food-insecure between November 2022 and March 2023, nationwide, according to the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (Mvac) report.

Speaking during Chiwanja cha Ayao celebrations in Mangochi on October 22, Senior Chief Mponda also said his subjects were surviving on boiled mangoes. He asked President Lazarus Chakwera, who graced the occasion, to start distributing relief maize urgently.

This year, hunger in the country, especially in the Southern Region, has been attributed to tropical storms Ana and Gombe-induced floods, which washed away about 115 388 hectares of crops.

Group village head Malemia of Chikwawa said in a separate interview on Friday that the situation is worse, saying most people are food-insecure.

Due to climate change, community members in Chikwawa face hunger almost every year as the district faces either dry spells or floods that make it difficult to grow crops.

Yet, the district is endowed with the perennial Shire River, whose waters just cascade down to its outlet, Zambezi in Mozambique without being used for irrigation, resources that the Chakwera administration now wants to exploit to get rid of hunger once and for all.

Tired of experiencing hunger every year because of depending on rain-fed farming, Malemia has asked authorities to speed up the Shire Valley Transformation Programme to enable community members to venture in irrigation farming.

Paramount Chief Lundu, whose subjects are also crying from the pangs of hunger, echoes Malemia’s sentiments to expedite the Shire Valley Transformation Project to increase food production.

To him, it is unforgivable for people in the district to starve while living close to the Shire River.

“But to achieve that, it needs hard working spirit from us farmers. So we are waiting patiently for this project,” he says.

The Paramount Chief’s call for people to embrace irrigation farming comes at a time the GreenBelt Authority is reconstructing Mwananjobvu and Nyamithambo irrigation schemes in the district which will be turned into mega farms that President Chakwera and the Tonse-led government is implementing to eradicate hunger in the country.

Once the mega farms are completed, it will give an opportunity to people like Goba to grow crops twice or thrice a year.

In a written response yesterday, Department of Disaster Management Affairs spokesperson Chipiliro Khamula said his institution is aware of the hunger situation in some parts of the country.

He said according to the Mvac report,the country’s 27 districts and four cities will be food-insecure.

Said Khamula: “The most affected include Chikwawa, Nsanje, Zomba City and Balaka which will require food assistance for five months from this month to  March 2023.

“Currently, the maize requirement for the implementation of the programme stands at 76  842 and may go down after getting additional support on cash transfers.”

In his national address last week, Chakwera said to address the hunger problem, his administration has secured $50 million or about K51 billion to redeem Agriculture Development and Marketing Corporation maize held as collateral by local banks.