Save The Children - Niger Diary

In the course of Paul Hetherington's work with Save the Children's media unit he has witnessed famines in Ethiopia, Angola, Malawi, Somaliland and Sudan. He recently travelled to Niger with a selection of journalists to report back on the food crisis there. Click read more (below) to read his blog from the ten day trip....

Day 1
Fly out from London Heathrow at 6pm via Casablanca to Niamy, the capital of Niger. Meet up with a group of journalists in Casablanca airport. I would say ‘of all of the gin joints in all the …’. but the stiffest drink available is beer so it wouldn’t ring very true.
Plane touches downs in Niamy at 5.10am (there is no time difference) and we make it to the Save the Children residence in time to shower before breakfast.

Day 2
After breakfast there is a briefing from Malik, the Programme Director, on our operations and then it’s straight into logistics for the aid flight which arrives tonight. Secure transport to Tessaoua where the supplies will be heading tomorrow and sort out local currency.

Niamy is a well appointed city with courteous population and little sign of litter or squalor - not at all what you would expect in the world’s second poorest nation. It puts Nairobi to shame.

Grab a couple of hours sleep in the afternoon - it is incredibly hot and airless during the height of the day so sleeping seems a good option. In the afternoon I interview all the staff in Niamy to help pull together a report on our activities.

The Aid arrives and is stored overnight

It is clear that the slow donor response has greatly delayed our ability to become operational on the ground. Until tonight we will have nothing to distribute. Interview with BBC Manchester and then dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Head to airport at 11.30pm and am interviewed on the phone by BBC News 24. The plane finally arrives at 1am and offloads 41 tonnes of food and 2 journalists. I return to the accommodation and spend night with head down the toilet.

Day 3
We aim to be on the road at 7.30am but find we are a vehicle short so finally leave at 11am. Am still feeling a little rough. We have three 4x4s to accommodate a satellite broadcast system. Load up with water at the market which has everything including brand new sealed Sega mega drives - retro antique or what?!

The drive takes 11 hours including petrol stops and dinner is over by the time we arrive in Maradi. The journey is very like a ride through Chad, except Niamy lacks the opulent buildings of N’Djamena, the roads are made up and the villages, though of mud brick construction, are better appointed.

Somebody must be doing something right as there appears to be much more equality of wealth despite the overall poverty. All along the route it is green following the rains and it seems hard to believe that behind the façade is a food crisis. It is more like the green food crisis of Malawi than the famine of Ethiopia.

We check into our rooms. My door is very stiff, I hope it works in the morning. At least there is air conditioning - much needed after 11 hours of simmering in the full heat of the day.

Day 4
7am start; straight to the MSF therapeutic feeding centre. This is where the worst cases of malnourished children in the whole region end up. The mortality rate here is 5%. That number seems high, but is outstanding for an African feeding centre where there is one nurse to over 20 needy children. In the UK there would be 2 nurses and half a doctor per child. Each day there are around 30 new admissions and a new centre will open soon to relieve the pressure on beds.

One of the clinics

Many children as well as being starving show classic symptoms of micronutrient deficiency (distended bellies) and there is one full blown case of Kwashikoa. Now it is obvious that despite the green fields here is a food crisis in Niger. The feeding regime is based on plumpy’Nut, the same as the supplies we flew in yesterday morning. ITN broadcast a live piece that evening and a pre-record from the visit to the centre. In the evening I chat with the Telegraph reporter and media officers from two other NGOs.

Day 5 Our trucks are due in this afternoon so we head out towards the new Save the Children office in Tessaoua. Stopping in villages along the tarmac road, looking for signs of food crisis, there are none, although in places the new harvest due for August looks poor.

Arrive at Save the Children’s new office just ahead of the first aid truck and watch plumpy’Nut and unimix (nutritional food base) unloaded and stocked away for imminent distribution.

Meanwhile Hassan from the office is in on the second of three consecutive days of interviews to staff the relief operation. We are directed to a village 4 kilometres from the office, where there are devastating signs of malnutrition, reminiscent of Huambo in Angola at the height of the conflict.

The village chief brings out 20 children suffering from various degrees of oedema - one his grandson. The village granaries are empty and each child gets just two spoons of flour and water (‘wallpaper paste’) a day for food. Five children have died in the last week and we visit the graveyard to see the fresh dug graves.

Here, a short distance from the main road is a different world. The local market is full of produce but no one buys anything because no one can afford to. Next year’s crop stands tall in the field and depending on the rains should be good, but hunger may cause a green harvest’ - when the crop is consumed unripe, cutting yield and adding to a further food crisis next year. We return to Maradi in the dark under a thunderstorm.

Unloading the lorry

Day 6 The final trucks are unloaded at 6am. Today we are heading north towards Dakoro to see how the Tuareg Nomads are coping. Livestock has been decimated by the drought with many nomads losing almost three quarters of their stock and carcasses litter the road side. It is like Shinille Ethiopia in 2003 except now it is green. This is good as the surviving livestock should at least recover but for now the nomads are reduced to meals of boiled weeds and tree leaves.

Their children have red hair and some distended bellies - a sure sign of an unbalanced diet. It will be a long time before their stock replenishes enough to afford a decent livelihood and many are reduced to competing as farm labourers with the local arable population. Again hidden from the main road are real signs of hardship and poverty. With food support and a good harvest the farmers will recover in six months, the nomads will take much longer to restock.

Day 7
Back to the therapeutic feeding centre where we learn the young boy with Kwashikoa has died during the night, one of many who will not see if the promise of G8 is fulfilled.

10 minutes from the centre is the Maradi market bustling with food and other goods. A bag of flour in the market sufficient to feed a family of 8 for one day costs a mere 40p but no one can afford to buy today.

This is a crisis caused by poverty as one local put it to me ‘we are born into poverty, live in poverty and die from poverty’. How will G8 help these people?

I spend most of the rest of the day doing TV interviews around the world. ITN claim my ‘bag of flour moment’ was the star of the news bulletin. Note; need to buy a bigger sun hat.

Day 8
On a media role today spending the entire day on camera or on the phone to media outlets around the world until 5pm when they decide I’m over exposed and thus yesterday’s man.

Finally managed to get the mosquito net to stay up for one whole night - a record I think. The new staff have completed their second day of training and I have made arrangements for a media/information function to remain in the field. The day is interrupted by a 5 hour power cut so the laptop becomes flat, the room boils and the drinks become decidedly warm. This is little to the hardship faced by the local farmers.

Day 9
It is the final full day in the field, so I complete the information for journalists, pack, and check out the last day of staff training. Tomorrow as I drive to Niamy the first food assessments and distributions will begin in the field - from nothing to delivering aid in under two weeks. Now all we need is continued international support.

We return to the village with ITN for evening broadcast but it’s cancelled by London 5 minutes before we go on air.

One of the villages we passed

The villagers are pleased to see us again. The chief returns from the field and adorns his smart clothes. Tomorrow we will begin to bring food aid to these people; it will be an amazing sight and hopefully answer the chief’s prayers.

If only the Brandt report had led to action today we would not have to witness such scenes. Not seeing them in the future would be a true testimony to a successful G8.

Day 10
Off at 7.30am on the way back to Niamy with a Newsweek reporter. The car body says BMW but the engine is more Heath Robinson. We manage the journey in a record 7 hours and spot a new road sign for the highway code - ‘slow giraffes crossing’ - , didn’t see any though, just livestock, birds and one goat that nearly ended under our wheels.

Meanwhile back in Maradi we manage a successful first day of food intervention at two rural clinics. The amazing things about long hot journeys are the issues you consider en route. I think about the two children who died in the MSF clinic and the 5 buried in the village. Then as the heat of the day builds, my thoughts turn to more frivolous things such as writing a book ‘101 ways to avoid aid workers arm’.

I can’t help thinking the countryside is similar to Somaliland as we leave the agricultural belt. Spend the afternoon in the new Niamy office, completing paper work and on the phone then off to the airport for the 1am Royal Air Maroc shuttle flight to Casablanca, calling at virtually all countries West African, before a six hour break in Casablanca airport spent hoping the internet café will be open when I arrive in London.


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