the barrister
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The real ‘hunger games’ By Kent Alexander, General Counsel for CARE hit are Niger’s women and children, always the most vulnerable to poverty. Conflicts simmer on three bordering countries. And among many other challenges facing Niger, a catastrophic drought is underway.
D
riving from Niger’s capital Niamey to the town of Konni for five hours through the sand-swept, arid Sahel region, I listened to the audio book The Hunger Games. The novel opens with a scene of bleak poverty in a postapocalyptic town called District 12. Dirt, grime, threadbare clothing, scarce food. Looking out the window at the mudand-thatch structures and the gaunt, colorfully dressed women floating by my window, I couldn’t help but think Niger was District 12 on steroids. Here, people are experiencing ‘the hungry season’, and it is certainly neither a novel nor a movie. It’s very real.
According to a recent report over 10 million of Niger’s 16 million citizens will run out of food stocks well before the next harvest, expected around October. All families have cut back on their food consumption. Most who I met are down to one meal a day.
The country is on the proverbial brink. Without help, many will suffer irreparable physical harm; many will lose their lives. How economically poor are the villages we visited in western Niger? Mind bogglingly poor.
Still, I couldn’t help but smile about the difference people here are making in partnership with CARE. Having joined CARE as General Counsel just last April, this is my first trip to a region deep in the throes of crisis. This is poverty as I’ve never seen. The facts? Niger ranks 186th out of 187 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index, putting it in a dead heat with the Democratic Republic of Congo as the least developed country on earth. Most adults over 25 have precious little formal education, and an overwhelming majority are illiterate. Particularly hard
When we arrived at Ayyawane hundreds of people gathered for a welcoming ceremony. During the program, young children presented formal requests in envelopes to the group of visitors from CARE. Their number one request? Not toys, not new clothes, and certainly not a trip to Disney World. Drinking water. Water! This was especially striking because Ayyawane was by far the most ‘affluent’ of the villages we visited.
teristically pushing and shoving each other. The tail gate was open, and the driver stood beside our cooler containing a few leftover cold drinks from lunch earlier in the day. Philippe Leveque, the National Director of CARE France said, “Kent, this is the face of poverty.” Frankly, I thought he was overreacting a bit and said as much. After all, the day was broiling – over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course the kids were elbowing in for a shot at a cold drink. Then I took a closer look.
The cooler was shut tight, and the driver was not handing out drinks at all. He was handing out a few of our empty cans and plastic bottles. The cans were fodder for tin toy planes and cars to use or sell. The bottles were to be used as receptacles for months down the road when the rains finally come. The throng of children only dispersed after a man swatted at them with a stick. Our trash was their treasure. So the uplifting parts of the visits? There were certainly many.
Then, at the end of our visit, I saw something that gave me a small but jolting idea of what poverty is like.
While in Ayyawane, we visited a garden made possible by five wells that CARE had dug through the years. Outside the garden stood a huge grove of trees, greenery rarely seen in most of Niger. The mayor told us they planted all those trees with support from CARE more than thirty years ago, when he was just 11. The grove now serves as a ready source of wood for energy and construction, which villagers maintain, planting new trees as they log.
As we headed to the car for our departure, dozens of young children crowded behind the Toyota and were uncharac-
In another village, Bangoukoirey (please don’t ask me to pronounce it!), I saw one of CARE’s savings p.38
We toured Ayyawane and spoke with the mayor and other people about their lives and their very modest dreams.