Food Security?

Saturday morning and there's an insistent tapping at the gate. Upon opening it, it's no surprise to find "The Farmer" standing there in his suit which has seen better days. We've mentioned him before, he comes to work in our garden from time to time and is especially useful in the rainy seasons when things go wild. Outside the rainy seasons there's not much to be done, but he seems to have become one of our charity cases (yes, yes we know this does not represent the sustainable part of what we're doing here) and so we give him money, bread and bananas from time to time. Today he shows up with a broad nearly-toothless grin as usual and explains in a mixture of Italian and Tigrinya that there's just no work around in Asmara at the moment. Is it my imagination or does he look even more hollow cheeked than usual? Is his dark leathery skin stretched even tighter over his facial bones? Perhaps it's that we had been talking about hunger in the countryside just the previous evening. He apologetically takes the money on offer and leaves.

Food is never far away from the top of the list as a topic of conversation in Eritrea, even amongst the small group of diplomats we now seem to know, it's just that it's difficult to take complaints about having to use powdered milk seriously from them when the food situation is worsening for the country as a whole and powdered milk is way too expensive for the vast majority of the people.

Increasingly we seem to be seeing more people begging on the streets and there are some examples of very thin older women amongst them. They really don't look all that much more healthy than some of those featured in images from past famine campaigns. As for the rest there are very few overweight Eritreans and those that are we always suspect of being here on a visit from a developed country.

Volunteers as well almost all lose weight during their time here (once again I'm not suggesting that we have a hard life in comparison to the locals, it has to do with a switch to a mainly vegetarian diet and the odd bout of sickness) and I've started to see this in myself, though Caroline and I are virtually the only volunteers who haven't really been ill yet. I even have ribs emerging once again after years buried under layers of blubber; I should be used to it really as I was really very thin at school ... Biafran, match-stick man and carcass were just some of the (kinder) names I was called.

Back to the point, though, the food situation never seems to get better so we really don't know where this one is heading particularly combined with the ongoing lack of fuel and, in the meantime, we'll just have to keep our charity cases going as long as we can.

P