Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Niamey, Niger
We were entering a country that had recently been in the news for a wide-spread famine. "The most wretched place on earth" was just one of the descriptions that had catapulted Niger into the Western audience's collective consciousness. Listening to the BBC and Voice of America, we were prepared for the worst. We suspected that what we were going to see would challenge our understandings of humanity. The news media had haunted us with images of starving children and dying crops, but nothing could have prepared us for what we encountered in Niamey.
As we entered Niamey, we saw beggar children dancing happily at one intersection, beckoning passersby to join into their chants and tin can drumming. As we crawled past the central market in our car, the eyes of the Nigerans I met were kinder and more passionate than those of any other people we have visited thus far. As we stopped for dinner, a woman stirred an incredible meal of couscous by mixing about eight different leaves, spices, magic and oils with her hand. There is something intense about the desert. But the intensity isn't daunting, it is intimate and captivating. This was my first impression of Niger.
Our first week in Niger was a respite. We were welcomed to Niamey by Peace Corps volunteers Drew, Kate and Seth, who kindly opened their house to us upon hearing of the work that we were doing. Talking with them and other aid workers in Niamey challenged common understandings of the food crisis, as a catastrophic and rare phenomenon. We were asked to compare the hungry season here to hungry seasons all across Africa. The reality in Niger is that the Sahel environment is harsh; many children here die each year of malnutrition and disease. This year, a combination of locusts and low rain had significantly diminished the grazing land of the nomadic herders, who were forced to sell off large portions of their cattle before the cattle starved to death. Because of the excess meat on the market, there was a significant plunge in market prices. While a large part of their cattle were lost, the herders were left with little money and dwindling savings. Children died. But was this more catastrophic than past years?
It makes me upset to hear about how aid organizations jumped on the bandwagon of famine to profiteer. The Western audience was shown that what Niger needed was food aid and indeed, heartstrings were pulled and millions of dollars poured in. Non-governmental organizations streamed into Niamey. Even concerned individuals flew to Niamey to "try to help." New offices were built. New 4 x 4 trucks were imported for aid workers. An entire hangar for food aid at the airport. Bags of rice were dropped in villages within the affected regions. But what is the result?
While I do not doubt that many aid organizations are doing important work in the area of development in Niger, a certain amount of suspicion about the goals of food aid is healthy. Critics claim that food aid is like a Trojan horse. Consider the bag of rice that was dropped in the village. One bag of rice feeds a small compound, most of them children, for one week. While this rice is welcomed by the village as a generous gift from strangers, the contribution is a drop in the bucket. However, the local person who sells locally grown rice at the market will see a drop in customers that week and his profits will diminish. Multiply this phenomenon by thousands of bags of rice... and witness the effect on the local economy. If a food aid program is allowed to operate for several years in a country, it actually discourages local farmers from growing crops because the prices of the crop are pushed lower and lower by the "free" crop. Magnify this on a global scale and one can see that food aid is a good investment for Western grain companies who wish to expand their markets in the developing world.
But these are just some thoughts. These thoughts are an opinion. I guess part of our mission here is to highlight those groups and individuals whose work we can agree with on an individual level.
We were entering a country that had recently been in the news for a wide-spread famine. "The most wretched place on earth" was just one of the descriptions that had catapulted Niger into the Western audience's collective consciousness. Listening to the BBC and Voice of America, we were prepared for the worst. We suspected that what we were going to see would challenge our understandings of humanity. The news media had haunted us with images of starving children and dying crops, but nothing could have prepared us for what we encountered in Niamey.
As we entered Niamey, we saw beggar children dancing happily at one intersection, beckoning passersby to join into their chants and tin can drumming. As we crawled past the central market in our car, the eyes of the Nigerans I met were kinder and more passionate than those of any other people we have visited thus far. As we stopped for dinner, a woman stirred an incredible meal of couscous by mixing about eight different leaves, spices, magic and oils with her hand. There is something intense about the desert. But the intensity isn't daunting, it is intimate and captivating. This was my first impression of Niger.
Our first week in Niger was a respite. We were welcomed to Niamey by Peace Corps volunteers Drew, Kate and Seth, who kindly opened their house to us upon hearing of the work that we were doing. Talking with them and other aid workers in Niamey challenged common understandings of the food crisis, as a catastrophic and rare phenomenon. We were asked to compare the hungry season here to hungry seasons all across Africa. The reality in Niger is that the Sahel environment is harsh; many children here die each year of malnutrition and disease. This year, a combination of locusts and low rain had significantly diminished the grazing land of the nomadic herders, who were forced to sell off large portions of their cattle before the cattle starved to death. Because of the excess meat on the market, there was a significant plunge in market prices. While a large part of their cattle were lost, the herders were left with little money and dwindling savings. Children died. But was this more catastrophic than past years?
It makes me upset to hear about how aid organizations jumped on the bandwagon of famine to profiteer. The Western audience was shown that what Niger needed was food aid and indeed, heartstrings were pulled and millions of dollars poured in. Non-governmental organizations streamed into Niamey. Even concerned individuals flew to Niamey to "try to help." New offices were built. New 4 x 4 trucks were imported for aid workers. An entire hangar for food aid at the airport. Bags of rice were dropped in villages within the affected regions. But what is the result?
While I do not doubt that many aid organizations are doing important work in the area of development in Niger, a certain amount of suspicion about the goals of food aid is healthy. Critics claim that food aid is like a Trojan horse. Consider the bag of rice that was dropped in the village. One bag of rice feeds a small compound, most of them children, for one week. While this rice is welcomed by the village as a generous gift from strangers, the contribution is a drop in the bucket. However, the local person who sells locally grown rice at the market will see a drop in customers that week and his profits will diminish. Multiply this phenomenon by thousands of bags of rice... and witness the effect on the local economy. If a food aid program is allowed to operate for several years in a country, it actually discourages local farmers from growing crops because the prices of the crop are pushed lower and lower by the "free" crop. Magnify this on a global scale and one can see that food aid is a good investment for Western grain companies who wish to expand their markets in the developing world.
But these are just some thoughts. These thoughts are an opinion. I guess part of our mission here is to highlight those groups and individuals whose work we can agree with on an individual level.
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