Monday, November 13, 2006

Food Distribution

Two days ago I had my first up-close experience with food distribution, which happens around the seventh of every month. I've heard quite a bit about food distribution, but never experienced it myself. In Meheba, people are supposed to get food rations, provided by the World Food Program (WFP) for the first two years that they are here. After that, they are supposed to be able to make it on their own, and they are taken off rations unless they qualify as a vulnerable person or household. Vulnerables consist of orphans, elderly, chronically ill, disabled (which they call "lame" here), and women headed households (i.e. single mothers).
 
The building that they use to distribute food in Zone F is the same building that I use to store the materials for my workshops. I was arriving around noon, so the sun was beating down and it was fairly hot, as usual. The building has two small closed rooms that lock, which open to a large covered open area. That was where they were distributing the food. There is usually no one at the building but a couple bored kids climbing all over the chest-high walls that enclose the open area of the building. It is almost silent, so you can hear the various sounds of the village.
 
This day there were about two hundred people standing around, sitting on the walls, standing near the walls, and standing and sitting outside - all waiting for their names to be read. Two shiny UNHCR vehicles sat a few yards from the building. Women sat under nearby trees selling snacks to the people waiting. I stood and observed for a second before pushing my way into the crowd so that I could get into the room where my supplies were stored. As usually happens in large crowds, I attracted some stares. I saw quite a few people I recognized, some who waved or came over to shake my hand. Inside the open, covered area it was loud. The constant din of the crowd was punctuated by shouts and intense arguing. There was so much going on from all directions and so much echoing off the walls that it was really hard to locate the source of the noise. I finally found the people making the noise. One man was waving his arms wildly and shouting into the faces of a couple others who were almost to the point of restraining him - each one with one hand on him, apparently trying to calm him or reason with him. Everyone else seemed to be completely ignoring the scene, which told me that it was nothing out of the ordinary.
 
I'd heard stories about how crazy, tense, and sometimes out-of-control food distribution can get. It makes sense when you think about it. These people are relying on this food to feed themselves and their families for the next month. People tell me that even a "full ration" is really only enough to get each person a little more than half way through the month, even when they only eat two meals a day. (When UNHCR or WFP is really strapped for cash, they sometimes downgrade to "half rations".) Only the basics are given out - sorghum, corn, and cooking oil, although I only saw sorghum and corn. No vegetables, fruits, or meats. Nothing most Americans would consider part of a balanced diet. There's nothing "balanced" about poor families' diets. If someone feels like they are not getting the food they are supposed to, they don't take it silently. If they do, their family may starve. With so much confusion about who's getting what and who's on what list and how many people they are supposed to get rations for, shouting is inevitable.
 
UNHCR in conjunction with refugee leaders of the zone oversee the distribution. They read names from the huge list of people who receive rations. This starts at 8:00 in the morning and continues until it is finished sometime in the evening. If it doesn't finish in one day, they continue the next day, which is fairly common. No one has any idea when his name will be read, so everyone shows up at 8:00 and stays until his name is read. I'm not sure what happens if you aren't there when your name is read. I don't think any refugees would let that happen. Refugees universally report having a lot of trouble getting any officials in charge of things in the camp to look into their problems or complaints. Often they are given the run-around for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years. Often they give up. The most persistent sometimes spend two to four hours walking to the UNHCR offices in hopes that someone will give them the time of day to hear their problem and help them, only to find that the person they need to speak with is too busy or is not available today.
 
I stood around watching and trying to understand what I was seeing before I left fifteen minutes later. Some of the people in my workshops did not come, presumably because their names had not yet been read. The next day (yesterday) I came by again around noon. There were no vehicles and no food being handed out, but there were still a couple dozen people waiting near the distribution center. Two of them were women in my workshops. I greeted them and asked why they were there. There had been problems with their ration cards and they were told that the UNHCR people might come sometime the next day to fix the problems. If the no one came to help them that day, they were told to walk to the offices two and a half hours away the next Tuesday. They were not told what time the officials might come, so they were waiting from 9:00 in the morning to around 2:00 in the afternoon, by which time they would go home if no one had come.
 
One woman in my workshops told me that her husband had died five months ago while being operated on and left her with eight children to take care of. She has no family in the camp to help, so she relies on rations to feed her family, but for the past few months she has only been getting rations for five people instead of nine. She brought the problem up to an official. He took her card and told her he would try to fix it. It could work out for her. But she is very worried. He has the only document that allows her to feed her family. If she doesn't have that card, she can't get any food. And there's no system of accountability or place to direct complaints, so if for some reason she doesn't get her card back, she is in a terrible situation. You can see why she is nervous. Her ability to feed her family is in the hands of someone who is stretched thin, doesn't know her, and will pay no consequences if he does not choose to help her.

1 Comments:

Blogger Cat Club Member said...

My friend Laura went to Malawi in 2002 with a Christian group distributing food and holding open-air evangelical meetings. She said the food distributions were NUTS with people getting kind of rough. One of their food trucks backed over a little girl and killed her. Some of Laura's group prayed over the girl, hoping for her to be raised from the dead but she wasn't. Laura felt sick.

3:48 PM  

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