Mary's Meals, a simple solution to world hunger

Looking down past the wing, it gets drier and drier as we fly north from Nairobi to Lodwar, the biggest city in Turkana, the region of Kenya where drought has brought thousands of nomadic pastoralists to the brink of survival.  Farmland gives way to a parched rocky landscape where withering temperatures, lack of water and a scorching sun have wiped out the herds of cattle that the Turkana people depend on. Their traditional lifestyle of leading their herds to find pastures and water holes is becoming close to impossible. Malnutrition is widespread across the region.

During this emergency, Mary’s Meals, working with the Diocese of Lodwar, is reaching almost 4,000 children in the most isolated and remote parts of Turkana, providing a daily nutritious meal of maize, beans, rice and vegetable oil in 35 community based nurseries. A further 6000 children have been receiving Mary’s Meals over the last 6 weeks as a response to the humanitarian emergency that is affecting many parts of East Africa.  For most of these children, this is the only meal that they are eating each day.

Early the next day we begin the journey to the north of the region, where we will visit communities on the Ethiopian and Sudanese borders. Peter is moving north with his family to be the new teacher at one of the most remote nurseries, Nakinomet. As there is no public transport, our visit to the north offers a welcome opportunity to bring their belongings. As we cross the first dry river bed, Peter tells me that unexpected rains had fallen last week, but these were a false hope as they petered out after three days. Before this, there has been no rain since last November. Climate change here means longer and more severe droughts, higher temperatures and the unpredictability of the seasons.

A small child stands on the horizon watching over a herd of goats. Turkana children also traditionally follow the herds with their parents, collecting wild fruits to eat and occasionally eating the meat, blood and milk of the family’s animals. As the herds have perished, thousands of Turkana children have succumbed to malnutrition as their families scoured the dry scrub-land looking in vain for water and pastures. Over the next three days we will see no cattle, only a few goats and camels.

We visit 8 nurseries as we travel north and in each community we meet with the children attending the nurseries, their parents and the village elders. Peter translates from Turkana. The communities are closely involved in the running of the nurseries and we see that they have built classrooms, store rooms and shelters using local materials. Mary’s Meals’ programme is meeting immediate needs by providing enough food to prevent malnutrition but is also enabling children to receive an education and the teachers work hard to prepare them for entry into primary school.

Most of the communities tell me that Mary’s Meals is the only daily meal that the children will receive.  In some of the nurseries, over the prolonged drought period, the numbers of children has quadrupled. In Kotopia Nursery which opened in June, Alice, a mother of 8 tells me  – ‘Before, the children were not eating anything for days. We would give the weak ones milk but we have no cattle left now. Even the wild fruit trees had stopped bearing. We had absolutely nothing. Our children’s lives have been saved by the nursery. Before they could only sleep, they were dizzy, weak and sometimes fainted. Their skin was coming out in sores, and their hair was turning brown; they had all the signs of starving. We had to look for help and walked here.  Now we see all of our children getting better. They get enough to eat and finish nursery happy, and ready to play and help us gather firewood and get water’.

Peter explains that drought has not been the only reason for the loss of herds. Neighbouring tribes from Sudan and Ethiopia regularly cross the border in armed groups of more than a hundred men to raid the Turkana herds. As we approach Nakinomet, we see a group of armed Turkana men patrolling the area.

Recently a series of violent raids took place and as people fleeing the violence added to those who had already lost their herds to hunger and thirst, the numbers of children attending the nursery increased from 260 to 870.

The Turkana people are praying for rain in October and hope that they can gradually recover their herds. They know that climate change is making their traditional livelihoods more and more difficult and they are beginning to adapt with the support of the Diocese by beginning to plant crops. They are also encouraging their children to gain an education so that they will be better prepared for the challenging future that faces them. In the meantime, the children in the Diocesan nurseries depend on Mary’s Meals for their survival.

Chris MacLullich, Programmes Officer for Mary’s Meals

The gargantuan cargo plane sat contentedly on the runway at Kamuzu International Airport, Malawi’s international airport, it’s enormous belly filled with 20 tonnes of porridge. Know in Malawi as Likuni Phala, this very nutritious porridge is what we use to provide children in Malawi with daily school meals. Normally Mary’s Meals buys food from within the country in which we are working so that we support the local economy, and that food can be transported in all sorts of ways. Trucks, donkeys, small boats and dugout canoes are amongst the forms of transport I have seen employed to move our food to the schools where it is eaten by hungry children. This though, is the first time I have seen our food loaded onto a cargo plane. But this time, the Likuni Phala, whose ingredients are grown here in Malawi is not destined for children in this country, but instead for those starving thousands of miles to the north, in famine ravished Somalia.

As we fly towards Mogadishu I read the latest depressing UN bulletin stating that 4 million people in Somalia are now at risk of starvation, 750,000 of them imminently. Tens of thousands have already died, around half of them children. Our plane touches down in Mogadishu beside white beaches and a blue sea but as we descend the steps from the plane, the brief illusion of holiday resort evaporates as we are confronted by a broken plane, shot down some years previously as it took off. Our party, consisting of doctors and journalists, is transported by convoy away from airport. Our security, provided by the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, is reassuringly robust. Pick-up trucks full of young soldiers brandishing AK47s , take up the front and rear and move us quickly through streets scarred by 21 years of civil war. A few days previously a Malaysian cameraman had been shot dead on this same route.

The recent retreat of al Shabaab from some areas of the city it used to rule has left a power vacuum resulting in a return to local power struggles and less predictable violence. The crowded pavements teem with armed men in various uniforms or civilian clothing. Later that evening as we unpack in our makeshift accommodation a loud and uncomfortably close explosion makes me start. One of our gently spoken Somalia hosts turns to me and, as if soothing a small child says. ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It was just a bomb.’

Mary's Meals reaches Somalia

Our partners here are a South African based organisation called Gift of the Givers. They have been friends of ours for some time in Malawi where they have supported our work by sinking water wells at some of the schools where we provide Mary’s Meals. They have become the biggest African based emergency response organisation in Africa and in recent months have set up an effective organisation in Mogadishu, relying on a mixture of local knowledge, courage and huge public support from South Africa. They are working to encourage ‘African aid for Africa’ across the continent and while so far amounts donated are modest they believe they believe they are helping to create a new attitude and sense of responsibility. Their success in distributing food effectively and safely in Somalia and the fact that they have been sourcing food in Malawi, where we feed nearly 500,000 children every day and have a good relationship with food suppliers, led us to realise we could help the starving people of Somalia simply by buying food for transport directly into Mogadishu.

At Howadaq camp, in an area of Mogadishu recently vacated by all Shabaab, hundreds of women, many holding emaciated children queue for food the food parcels that are keeping them and their families alive. I am delighted to see a large pile of our Likuni Phala, last seen in Malawi three days earlier already being distributed and some of it nearby being by cooked in huge pots and served to children. This is one of four feeding centres where our food is being distributed by Gift of the Givers and these centres serve a population of 20,000 people who have fled to Mogadishu leaving behind their land and their dead cattle. Fatima is one of those standing patiently in the queue with two small children. She explains to me that Samson is her son but that Howa dressed in a brown dusty shawl is an orphan whose parents died in the famine. She has seven children at ‘home’, a small hut she built of sticks, cardboard, discarded plastic and rags. She had to leave Bay – the latest region to be categorised by the UN as suffering from famine – after all ten of her precious cattle died. She was left with no option but to make the same journey, that at least 100,000 others have made in recent months from rural farms to war weary Mogadishu.

Standing next to Fatima in the queue is Fartune who is holding her very sick child. Pinte’s head is far too big for his little body and his swollen eyes can no longer see. He is three years old and has been sick for one and a half months. Fartuna has never had the chance to take Pinte to a doctor or receive any medical help for her child. She tells me she has another three children at home, with whom she walked 165km to get here. I ask her how her other children at home are. ‘Yes, they are fine,’ she smiles sadly. ‘Apart, from the malnutrition. We never have enough to eat. ’ And now that know that we can do it, this becomes our task, these next few months. To continue sending food from Malawi to feed people who will otherwise starve, knowing that every bag of Likuni Phala we can send from Malawi will save lives.

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow
Founder and CEO of Mary’s Meals

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, founder and CEO of Mary’s Meals, has arrived back in Scotland having helped to deliver over 20 tonnes of food aid to the thousands of starving people filling makeshift refugee camps in and around the Somalian capital, Mogadishu.

“The trip went well and was without major incident, for which we have much to thank our partners in this relief effort, the African based relief agency Gift of the Givers,“ said Magnus. “ They have proven themselves capable of establishing safe entry and exit for aid workers and aid, thereby allowing much needed food supplies to get to the many people so urgently in need of it.

“Valuable though this first batch of aid has been, much much more is needed if we are to avert a humanitarian disaster. We currently have another 80 tonnes of aid in transit, which we estimate along with the first shipment will allow for the provision of some 900,000 meals.

“None of this is possible without the continuing generosity of so many people in the UK and beyond, but I hope that they will be reassured that we have the means to deliver this aid in a country where it can be difficult and dangerous to work.”