MAROANSETRA, Madagascar — Exploiting a political crisis, Malagasy timber barons are robbing this island nation of its sylvan heritage, illegally cutting down scarce species of rosewood trees in poorly protected national parks and exporting most of the valuable logs to China.
Author: WHES
A recipe for extreme hunger: How a Kenyan woman feeds her family of ten when she has 40 shillings (50 cents)
(Kiberia, Kenya. May 14, 2010) Widowed 16 years ago, Wilbroda Aoko Wandera, 48, has had to become creative with the little she has, at times spending just 40 shillings (US$0.50) to feed her family of 10. She has no steady job and sells spinach, plaits hair and washes clothes for a fee. She spoke to IRIN on 13 May:
“My husband had been sick for a long time, but his relatives chased me away with my children and demolished our house upcountry when he died, saying I had something to do with his death. Since then life has been one long struggle.
“My mother sent me bus fare when she learnt I had been chased away and I returned to Nairobi where we had been living before my husband died.
“I have tried many things to feed my family and to put the children into school; right now two boys are in secondary school.
“I have sold [donuts] and worked as a cleaner at the Catholic Church nearby. One time I got lucky when the local chief allowed me to build a kiosk near the road; I used the front part as a salon where I plaited people’s hair and lived in the back with my children. However, this was demolished in 2007 to pave way for the Kibera slum upgrading programme. Now I live near the river, where I have built a mud structure.
“We mostly live on one meal a day. This is hard, especially on the children. I have learnt to make meals for the whole family even when I have only 40 shillings [$0.50]. With this, I buy maize flour for 20 shillings, sugar for five, paraffin for 10, a lemon for two and water for three. This will make a [pot] of porridge and everybody can get a cup. That takes us to the next day.
“When I have 50 shillings, I buy sukuma wiki [kales] for 10 shillings, maize flour for 30, cooking oil for five and paraffin for five. With this, I cook ugali and the sukuma wiki and everyone will at least have a hot meal.
“On a good day, when I make at least 100 shillings, the diet is better; I buy maize flour for 45, omena [sardines] for 20, tomatoes for 10, paraffin for 10 and cooking oil for 10. This is enough for two meals for the whole family. But the days I make 100 are rare. Besides, when I make more than 100, I put away some money for school fees and rent.
“I feel blessed that I have the support of other widows. We formed a self-help group in 2007. We are there for each other, we skip meals together, we help each other in merry-go-round donations of 20 shillings a week and struggle to bring up our children. Life in Kibera is hard but it is 10 times harder for a widow with children.”
World Hunger Education Service. For more information about world hunger, see https://www.worldhunger.org This article was first published by IRIN News and can be viewed at http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=89132
Analysis: What is a famine?
Aid agencies and donors have warned of the possibility of a famine in Niger, evoking images of the last food crisis in the Sahelian country in 2005. Some media organizations have already pronounced the current crisis a famine. So, what exactly is a famine?
The wavering war on AIDS (opinion)
The global war on AIDS has racked up enormous successes over the past decade, most notably by providing drugs for millions of infected people in developing countries who would be doomed without this life-prolonging treatment. Now the campaign is faltering.
Thai general linked to protests is shot
BANGKOK — A renegade major general who allied himself with the protesters who have paralyzed Bangkok for weeks was shot in the head and critically wounded here on Thursday as the military began sealing off a barricaded encampment of antigovernment protesters.
In Uganda, AIDS war is falling apart–prevention is failing and there is no new money for anti-retroviral drugs
KAMPALA, Uganda — On the grounds of Uganda’s biggest AIDS clinic, Dinavance Kamukama sits under a tree and weeps.
Her disease is probably quite advanced: her kidneys are failing and she is so weak she can barely walk. Leaving her young daughter with family, she rode a bus four hours to the hospital where her cousin Allen Bamurekye, born infected, both works and gets the drugs that keep her alive.
White House is being pressed to reverse course and join landmine ban
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, under intense political pressure from Capitol Hill and elsewhere, is engaged in a vigorous debate over whether to reverse course and join an international treaty banning land mines, administration officials said this week.
Waking from the nightmare: towards a mine-free Mozambique
See Report
Global: The worst places to be a mother
Eight of the bottom 10-ranked countries in Save the Children’s annual Mothers Index, which ranks the best and worst places to be a mother, are in sub-Saharan Africa, says the NGO.
Families struggle as 6 million Indonesian women work abroad
The number of women leaving the archipelago, legally or illegally, has been steadily climbing over the past decade, according to the National Authority for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers.
