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Starving villagers in Same survive on wild fruits
2006-02-27 09:39:48
By Patrick Kisembo, Ndungu, Same
Wild fruits and porridge for a few lucky villagers has become the basic food for hundreds of villagers in Ndungu Ward in Same District, Kilimanjaro Region, even after the government released relief food last week.
The distribution of the food by the local authorities has been slow, The Guardian has learnt.
’Most families in this ward survive on wild fruits. The lucky ones survive on porridge,’ said a local leader who did not want to be identified.
Kalemawe village is the worst hit, with more than 1,600 residents going without food for days, unless they walk to the nearby mountain forest to gather wild fruits.
Although no death has been reported, many people in the area are malnourished. In some families, children are not attending school.
At Msoloha Primary School for instance, about 142 pupils have not been attending school due to hunger.
A teacher at the school, Rukia Horera, appealed to Good Samaritans to come to the aid of the school with relief food.
’Unless we get help, more pupils will drop out of school,’ she said.
Kalemawe Village Chairman, Senkondo Ramadhani Bushiri said though they were given food on February 22 and 23, the quantity was too little to feed the people who have been facing hunger since last October.
’The area had already been hit by hunger even before the government declared hunger as a disaster. The little food we received therefore could not meet our requirements,’ Bushiri said.
He said, according to the government food distribution exercise, each person is supposed to get 12 kilogrammes of maize.
But due to the critical hunger situation in this village, and the ward at large, we decided that at least each family should get 12 kilogrammes, which is not enough for a family of six people, Bushiri said.
The Kalemawe Village started experiencing hunger, last October after staying for a long time without rain.
’We only got two tonnes of maize for 1,525, people, so we decided to give 12 kilogrammes of maize to 42 families in each of the villages surrounding us.
Actually the people who benefited from the food handout in the village are about 1660,’ said Kalemawe Village Executive Officer, Salimu Salimu.
He said all villagers needed assistance as the area has been hit by drought for three years in a row.
’People here do not grow crops. They depend on fishing from Kalemawe dam and selling firewood for their survival,’ he said.
’Now, it has taken too long without rain and all the means for survival are finished. No more fish in the dam, not enough firewood in the bushes, and even if the bushes had plenty of wood, there are no people to buy since no body has money anyway,’ he said.
One kilogramme of flour is selling at between 450/- and 550/- up from 150/- to 200/- in the area.
There are no beans at the market places and maize can only be found at Ndungu township, over 10 kilometres from other villages.
Salimu told this paper that people prefer porridge to ugali because it takes little flour to prepare.
’Ugali takes a lot of flour. So people are living on porridge to save flour,’ he said.
Christine Isaya, a mother of six children from Dimbwi village admitted that she got 12 kilogrammes of maize but it did not last for a week.
’We are eight in my family. We eat two kilogrammes of maize flour daily. You can therefore see how little the ration was,’ she said.
She said her children were not attending school as they are too weak.
’One day I forced them to go to school but they returned claiming that they were too hungry,’ she said.
Zawadi Mhina a Standard IV pupil at Kalemawe Primary School, and a daughter to Isaya told The Guardian she had not gone to school since she had not eaten for two days.
’I have just been surviving on porridge,’ she said.
The Ndungu Ward Executive Officer, Juma Kassimu Haji, said the food handout given by the government was too little.
’Hunger situation is so serious here. Although we received relief food, it is too little for more than 14,000 people in the whole ward’, he said.
Haji said the ward, which has five villages, received only 13 tonnes.
’Villagers here don’t have a single coin to buy food,’ he said.
The government promised that nobody would die of hunger and has directed regional and district authorities to give food to the needy.
More than three million people countrywide need relief food. President Jakaya Kikwete has vowed to spare no local authorities that will let people starve to death.
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