|
Sowing Seeds of Hunger
Across Southern Africa, rain doesn't always fall where or when it should. And cycles of drought and crop failure, aggravated by poverty and ineffective government policies, have contributed to occasional food shortages. But now, with the number of HIV infections rising daily, there is a new and different food crisis on the horizon.
Mary and Barnabas
|
Mary Chalaba and her husband Barnabas were once among the more prosperous farmers of their village in northern Zambia. Today, they're destitute - too sick to farm their own land, and dependent on their children and neighbours for food to survive. Like 30 million other sufferers in sub-Saharan Africa, Barnabas and Mary are infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. They once grew enough food to feed a household of ten people - now, they can't even produce the food they need for themselves.
In Southern Africa, one person is dying every four or five minutes from AIDS. The highest rates of HIV infection in the region are among young adults - the same 15-49 year old age group who, as agricultural workers and small farmers, are responsible for feeding families, villages, and so effectively entire countries.
According to Karel Callens, FAO nutrition officer, "In a country like Zambia nearly 80 percent of the population is involved in agriculture, very small-scale agriculture. So when you have these high prevalence rates of HIV, up to 20 percent and in some areas higher, of course it affects immediately the very food supply of these very people who are producing."
But the fallout from the pandemic isn't limited to agriculture and food security. It's endangering the lives of rapidly growing numbers of widows and AIDS orphans, and so undermining development across the entire region. In the Chalaba family, the responsibility for growing food now rests with Mary's 11-year-old son, Wisdom, and his young cousins orphaned by the AIDS pandemic. More than ever before, children are left to bear the weight of agriculture and, as a result, when a parent dies from AIDS, yields fall by up to 50 percent.
Mary's son working in fields
|
As Mary and Barnabas become weaker, they farm less and the amount they eat dwindles further, and this accelerates the progression of the disease. Malnutrition is a serious danger for people living with HIV/AIDS. Even at the early stages of HIV infection when no symptoms are apparent, HIV makes demands on the body's nutritional status.
As Karel Callens explains: "When people are malnourished they don't have the strength to withstand infection, so through that the disease develops much easier, opportunistic infections come much faster, people can't recover easily so through that the full-blown AIDS is accelerated."
In Zambia, as elsewhere in Africa, anti-retroviral drugs, which slow down the progression of HIV/AIDS, are not available to any but the very rich. The basic primary health care service, 20 kilometres from where the Chalabas live, can only supply oral rehydration salts when Mary takes a turn for the worse.
Karel Callens stresses: "Food is the first medicine for people living with HIV/AIDS." When people have good nutrition, they can live longer, live better and can also sustain their family much longer.
As food shortages increase, many migrate in search of jobs. And the virus spreads. There are cultural factors too, as Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa, explains: "Southern Africa is just a vortex of shifting people, - and on top of that, you have the cultural reality of gender inequality. Women have no capacity to say no to sexual overtures. They can't tell a man to wear a condom. They are subject to predatory male sexual behaviour, inter-generational sex..."
When a man dies, his widow - or widows - are often left in a desperate situation. Pauline and Gladys are two of five women who were married to the same man. Of his five widows, one has died and two others have moved away, leaving Pauline and Gladys responsible for 15 children. All they have to eat are the foods they can grow. But in this part of Zambia, women can't inherit property - so the only way a widow can stay on the land is if she is inherited by a male member of her dead husband's family.
Green Munkombwe is the dead man's nephew, and he would normally be expected to marry the widows or at least take part in 'sexual cleansing', a practice involving sexual intercourse that is believed to break the bond between a widow and her dead spouse's spirit. HIV/AIDS is changing attitudes on these old customs, and Green has decided not to go ahead with remarriage. He will do his best to support the family, though.
An overlooked aspect of AIDS is the loss of food security it brings - especially for women. Many have to turn to commercial sex to support their families - and this in turn helps spread the disease. Since her parents' death, 19-year-old Macy has worked as a prostitute to support two younger brothers. "If I'm offered enough money, I won't use condoms, because what I need most is money," she says.
As Marcela Villarreal, Chief of FAO's Population and Development Programme, explains: "People who have access to food don't need to go out and sell their bodies to be able to eat. So, if women, if widows, if orphans have possibilities of getting food, possibilities of producing their own food or buying their own food, then they are not in the situation of having to engage in risky behaviour just to be able to eat. Food security in itself is a means of prevention."
|
Sole washing his brother |
In neighbouring Mozambique, 14-year-old Sole has been responsible for his sister and two brothers. One of them, Elias, is just six years old. Chimoio, the town where he and 200,000 other people live, has one of the highest HIV infection rates in Mozambique, and every day, approximately 15 children are left orphaned. The streets of Chimoio overflow with orphans. Some survive in small gangs, others are exploited as a cheap source of labour.
Sole's parents died before they could pass on generations of knowledge about farming, crop varieties and tools. Orphans that are being left behind don't have enough agricultural knowledge to be able to continue agricultural work and to produce food. At the Mansa orphanage in Zambia, volunteers are working to change the future, to avert mass starvation by teaching orphans the skills their parents can't: how to grow food, the importance of working together, a sense of hope.
Many believe the real crisis is yet to come, when millions of children orphaned by AIDS take up their responsibilities as adults. With forecasts predicting 20 million AIDS orphans in Africa by the end of this decade, the challenges are daunting.
TRANSCRIPT
Read the full transcript of Sowing Seeds of Hunger
|
