After more than an hour’s drive on a bumpy track through the fields, the two MSF trucks finally get to Shasha Goyke, a small village of farmers located in Siraro district, Oromyia region. This convoy is long awaited here. The people of Shasha Goyke know the trucks are full of food: corn and soya blend as well as oil, which will be distributed today.
Patients wait at a feeding centre run by MSF in Mudulla, SNNP region, Ethiopia. August 2008.
Photo by Fastxmsf
Shasha Goyke is one of 12 locations, in Siraro district, where MSF has launched two rounds of food distribution. In previous weeks, the team conducted a general screening of children aged less than five years and measured their mid-upper arm circumference. About 12,500 children were identified as suffering from acute malnutrition – either severe or moderate – or at risk of malnutrition. They will be receiving twice 25 kg of food rations with oil to be distributed in mid-July and again in early August.
Surrounded by a growing crowd in Shasha Goyke, the two MSF trucks are being unloaded. In an amazingly calm and orderly process, about a thousand children with their mothers or fathers are getting their bag of food.
Bandire has come with Keneritu, her one-year old moderately malnourished child. They have gone through the whole process: the waiting area; then the ‘classroom’ where they get basic education about hygiene and how to cook the food rations; then the medical consultation and finally – what they came for – the food.
Bandire’s husband is trying to carry the 25 kg bag but cannot make it the whole way home, so he has to ask for his daughter’s help. At home, the family has several square meters fields of maize and other crops. ‘It is growing now but we will have to wait two more months before getting any food from it,’ complains Bandire. ‘We used to eat twice a day but now we are just trying to cope with cabbage leaves. We even had to sell one of our two cows to buy some food. We have received four kg wheat from the government but this is just not enough, even for one day.’
Yet, Bandire and her family are probably not in the most desperate situation. They possess some fields and in a couple of months, around the end of September, they know the harvest will bring some improvement, at least for a while.