Hunger Deepens in Benin

By Lane Hartill

Yarigo doesn't know what's wrong with her newborn twins.

The mother of seven cradles her 3-week-old twins—Kwakum and Naro—in her skirt. They are drowning in green and pink knitted stocking hats and matching mittens. They are pale and fragile and frighteningly thin. They don't move. In fact, they don't even look real, more like plastic dolls in the toy aisle. She stares at them with a blank expression, not sure what to do.

They have a cough, a smaller version of the throaty wheeze their mom has. When they cough, Yarigo says, they get tired. They're sleeping all the time now and aren't interested in nursing, which she's having trouble doing anyway. She has no milk, largely because she's only eating corn powder mixed with water once a day. The corn she's eating, the sack left over from last year's harvest, will run out in a few weeks. She doesn't know what to do about this either.

But she knows that she's going to have to solve this problem on her own. Since her husband died seven months ago, she's had to rely on herself. Her parents have also passed on. To make matters worse, she's living in a house that doesn't belong to her. When the owner returns, she and the kids will have to pack up and leave.

Leaving Gouande, a quiet village in northern Benin, is becoming increasingly common. The rolling green expanse of fields, perfectly dotted with trees, masks the misery that goes on in the mud huts. Droughts sucked the north of the country dry last year and farmers produced little corn, the staple food here. It's now scarce, causing prices to spike. In less than a year, a 110-pound sack of corn has jumped from $20 to about $43—an impossible sum for most families here. Salt has jumped from $4.20 for 55 pounds a year ago to $10.25.

A Helping Hand

In this corner of northern Benin, a place largely forgotten by aid groups, the people only have a few choices: Eat once a day—often corn mush with a sauce made from leaves—and ignore the hunger pangs; leave for the south and hope to find a relative with generosity and a full pantry; get a lift to Nigeria and look for work; or sit by the gates of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in hopes of a handout.

The sisters here provide what they can, but the need outstrips the demand. They pass out food— vegetable oil, rice, salt, dried fish—to the neediest 250 families. But supplies are dwindling; the last time they went to the main town to look for rice, there was none. Catholic Relief Services has provided the Missionaries of Charity here with $20,000 to buy rice, oil, sugar, corn, salt and tomato paste. CRS will also cover the costs to transport the food

"We are feeling so bad because we have nothing to give [the others]," says one sister. "God only knows what they eat."

God and Adolphe Sambieni, a CRS field officer who grew up in northern Benin and now works here. "If you're a villager and you have nothing to sell to buy a sack [of corn], eating is a problem," says Adolphe. "They are buying [cassava] in the market and eat it raw."

In addition to giving food to families, the Missionaries of Charity here are also feeding more than 50 malnourished children. Beninese caretakers wade through them, changing cloth diapers, cuddling and feeding. Many of the children arrive thin and listless, they say, and leave strong and alert only to show up a few weeks later in their original state. Parents can't afford food. Forget about nutritious food.

Families are getting out while they still have the energy. The crops aren't set to be harvested until September. That means it's only going to get worse. Many are heading east to Nigeria to find work in the fields. They are paid little, but at least they know they will eat, something that is happening less frequently at home.

"They have nothing to eat and then they have to go to the field to work," says the head sister at the Missionaries of Charity here. "How will they work?"

Moreover, the food price problem is exacerbated by a culture where forced marriage is common, as is polygamy. The older men the teenage girls are forced to marry often die when the girls are young, leaving them alone with children.

The sisters here have taken in 28 young girls who were involved in forced marriages. The sisters explain that the culture in the area dictates that if a woman's husband dies, her brother-in-law has the right to produce children with her, but often doesn't support them: The women are expected to.

But that's not what Yarigo, 40, is thinking about today. She just wants to know what's wrong with Kwakum and Naro. Why aren't they nursing? It's Tuesday, the day the sisters hand out medicine. She's hoping they have something for the twins.

"If they take the medicine and don't have the food, it will not help them," says one sister. "Everything depends on food."

Michel, a blind man in a stained red Nike shirt, speaks elegant textbook French and has been interpreting the local language, Biali, for the sisters for years.

"Thanks to [the Missionaries of Charity sisters], the people are alive," he says. "Without them, I don't know what we'd do."

Lane Hartill is the West Africa regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services. He has visited CRS programs in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. Lane is based in Dakar, Senegal.