To live in the 8th poorest nation on earth is to try to survive while sitting next to malnutrition, starvation, disease and death. Statistics indicate that half the population of this South-Central African nation is below the poverty line, but if this truth be told life in remote villages is poverty on a perpetual scale not seen in most countries in the world. Even in the best times a family will struggle 12 – 14 hours a day just to till the soil enough to eke out enough food to survive another season.
Then the unexpected takes place. Rains end too soon. Crops dry up. Tilling for weeks produces nothing. The planting has no value. Weeding stops well before the harvest that never comes. Hoe blades wasted. Hands callased. Grain bins empty. Or some years the exact opposite takes place. Rains turn to torrents. Fields flood. Crops die. Houses disappear in cyclonic winds that rush in from the east. Everything is lost. Death approaches and brings its season of greed.
The latter is what happened to the Chaya family of Southern Malawi this past season. Mrs. Malita Chaya has 3 children, and they live in the tiny remote village of Maluwa under the leadership of Chief Ngabu in Chikwawa district. They are the 4th generation of their family from this area. Malita is a widow and as though that were not enough she is also physically challenged.
During the planting time of 2014-15 Mrs. Chaya took her children to the fields. They toiled hour after hour to prepare the land. They live in a mud-thatched village far away from the main road. They have little access to the city, and even if they could go there they have no money with which to make purchases. The government offers little or no services to their remote village, and there is no insurance against the loss of their crops. Their neighbors suffer the same plight, so no one near them can give them assistance. It is the same in villages all around them. Only aid organizations have the resources and contributors to help them survive until the next season.
At the beginning of the season it had looked good. Then as the crops were maturing came the rains. Heavy, intense, torrents of water. Wilson Tembo, Distribution Officer for aid from the Malawi Project for the past 11 years picks up the story.
“Torrential rains swept in from the east without warning or mercy. Those who toiled fields near the rivers were first to suffer. Rivers rose above their banks and the crops disappeared in the rush of muddy torrent of dirty brown water. As the waters continued to rise entire villages disappeared along with trading centers that had stood their ground against the rivers for decades. The meager amount of food that survived the winds and foods started being reduced to zero, long before the days of the new harvest. The next planting will be in September-October, but will Malita Chaya and children have enough food to sustain them to work in the fields? The next harvest will not come until March-April. Will the family be intact at that time or will some of the children die from starvation before the grain ripens on another season?”
For more than 200,000 families the news headlines are now behind them. The world helped for the first few weeks or months. But now it has changed its focus to other problems, other locations, other places to put their funds. But for food ravished families in Malawi the worst is now coming down on them. As food stores from the shortened harvest begin to run low there is no time and no way to suppliment the short harvest.
Your help is needed. The most serious time in Malawi will be between now and the harvest next March or April. Food stores will go down and down between now and then. Only outside help can overcome the shortage.
Send your contributions to:
Malawi Project
3314 Van Tassel Drive
Indianapolis, IN 46240
Or program weekly, monthly or one-time contributions on the web at:
www.malawiproject.com/donate
