Dateline ACT

Niger 0206

'It’s impossible to work when you’re hungry'

By Willie Doyle, ACT International

Tchintchiya, Niger, May 4, 2006--Tchintchiya is a village of about 1,500 people in Niger’s Dakoro region. When we visited in April, hot winds swept dust and dirt across the land. Community members were hard at work - pounding millet, drawing water from the well, and tending to their animals - but we were quickly welcomed by the village head and gladly took refuge under a small thatch shelter to escape the scorching sun. As bashful children smiled and looked on, a group of women sat with us to discuss their situation.

One woman’s story in particular characterized the community’s resilience in the face of seemingly overwhelming hardship. Last year, Fatima’s supply of millet ran out months before her family could harvest the new crop. Community members were doing all they could to survive – selling what little livestock they had for cash to buy expensive millet, cutting and selling wood from the depleted Sahel, and eating leaves from the anza tree. Because they had no food, Fatima and her nine children traveled to Nigeria, where they pounded millet and swept another family’s compound. After seven months, Fatima got word that relief was coming in the form of a food distribution by Action by Churches Together (ACT) International through its member, Lutheran World Relief (LWR).

She returned home with some of her children to work on the family’s farm, leaving four children behind in Nigeria to continue working to supplement the family’s income. Thanks to the LWR-ACT food distributions, Fatima and other members of the community have energy to plant the next season’s crop. As one community member put it, "we were able to farm again, because we had something to eat. It’s impossible to work when you’re hungry."

Like Fatima, others in Tchintchiya struggle to find ways to meet essential needs. The community’s single well is used day and night, and each month it’s necessary to dig out sand to reach the water table.

Looking toward the community’s long-term needs, the LWR-ACT program not only provides the village with initial food distributions, but helps establish cereal banks that will allow the villagers to buy food when it is at a lower price and store it for the ‘hungry season’ when they have depleted their own harvest and the new harvest is not yet ready.

This village is not hopelessly waiting for help. It is mobilizing its own resources and assets – for example, the village has collected money and is prepared to provide labor to build a second well. And that cereal bank that LWR-ACT provided? Villagers are supplementing it with contributions from those who are able to spare millet from their dwindling supplies.

The people of Tchintchiya were able to see each other through last year’s food crisis, but the hungry season is close by again. The village is hoping the cereal bank will see them through it. But some men and women have already journeyed to distant towns to look for work, and Fatima is uncertain whether her family will be forced to follow them.

Willie Doyle is Project Coordinator for Organizational Effectiveness for Lutheran World Relief, a U.S.-based member of Action by Churches Together. LWR and Swiss Interchurch Aid (HEKS) are implementing ACT appeal AFNG51 for food assistance in Niger.

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