By Rick Hampson
KONSO, Ethiopia — Once, the farmers walked for hours to bring their sorghum and maize here to market. These days they trod the same paths, parched grass crunching under foot, to carry their starving children to a feeding clinic.
Like crops, the children are weighed (in a nylon harness seat attached to a scale) and measured (with a tape to record arm circumference). The most severely malnourished are kept overnight for up to a month; the rest go home with a week’s supply of Plumpy’nut, a nutritional paste.
The clinic, part of a system that didn’t exist five years ago, will save almost all the children from starvation. But it can’t sate the hunger that has shattered their families’ livelihoods — forcing them to sell skeletal cows for a few dollars, to eat this year’s food reserve and next year’s seed, to keep children out of school, to flee the land itself.
“We give birth to the children,” says Urmale Kasaso, whose listless 4-year-old son’s cheeks are puffed up like apples from malnutrition, “but we can’t grow them.” Read More.
Above photo: bloggingcanadians.ca
This is beyond heart breaking to me. This makes me outraged, sad and also ashamed. I have a little girl, imagining her without her milk is painful to me. I share and feel the tears of the parents and the starvation of kids is like a knife in my chest.
I voiced my concern about the lack of attention from the diaspora towards the poor and neglected. This is not a time to blame government, ( even if everyone here, the govt, the world economy, mother nature and our always unstable country, is to blame) blames are self fulfilling to say i am not the one to blame, but they don’t save he life of a dying baby.
the report clearly states the reason for the drought,
“Its ingredients: drought that in some places killed the entire spring crop; global inflation that has doubled the price of food; armed rebellion in the Somali region that has disrupted food delivery; and assorted plagues, from insects to hailstone”
LET US DO SOMETHING.
here is what i propose,
Find a charity that is active in Ethiopia right now.
Read what they are doing, find out how much of your dollar go to help people.
Send what you can. $5, $10…..whatever you can.
encourage others.
I will send $25 to oxfam today. I know it is not much but i feel comfort in knowing may be, just may be A baby will be fed because of my contribution.
Love you all.
Begudu
Seattle
I feel shame. The famine is caused by ignorance of our people. Please tell us how to raise funds and mobilized the diaspora.
God be with us.
Israel
I feel sorry about this terrible famine. I will send $10.
I know it is not much, but that’s all I can do. Hope it helps.
Where can I send it to?