20MILLION FACE STARVATION IN NEW AFRICAN TRAGEDY




From Anton Antonowicz In Malawi


LUKE Piri stands alone in "the warm heart of Africa" - the tourist brochure description of Malawi, the sixth poorest country on earth.

The emaciated body of the three-year-old in our front-page picture is covered in scabies. His belly is distended. His ribs racked. His suffering a symbol of famine stalking his tiny, landlocked nation.

For months, charities have sounded the alarm on an impending tragedy in Malawi and its neighbours Zambia and Zimbabwe.

As many as 20 million are suffering hunger and malnutrition. It is the worst food shortage in nearly 60 years. Unless direct action is taken quickly, officials warn, the region will see a disaster greater than that of Ethiopia 20 years ago.

In Malawi alone, at least two million of its 11 million population will die. But, as ever, help comes too little, too late.

Of the £46million relief workers say is needed, donors have pledged only around £1.5million.

"Famine - what famine?" It is a question to which donor nations, international aid chiefs and Malawi's own government have stubbornly clung as people lie dying.

We travelled more than 1,000 miles across Malawi to unearth the answer. We visited a score of villages. We found many who reflected the truth. And the image of Luke is perhaps the simplest. The most resounding of those answers.

In his parish area 550 people have died in three months. His mother died last week. His father has gone insane. A grandmother tends to him and his five brothers and sisters. Yet he is one of "the lucky ones".

This is the phrase Sister Agnes Eneyasicio, a nun from the Sisters of Charity, uses to describe him and the 600 other orphans she feeds daily. Just a single plastic cup or chipped plate or grimy bowl of high-protein porridge. This is Luke's first meal-day here in Ludzi, on Malawi's border with Zambia. Given time and regular supplies, he will survive. But for how long? Unless the country receives huge stocks of food in the next three months, he will be dead.

"Without food, all these kids will be six feet under," Sister Agnes admits. It is hard to pierce the depth of this tragedy. The lush greenery of this sub-tropical paradise hides its secret well. So, until recently, did its government and those who should know, and do know, better.

It was left to organisations such as Save The Children UK to try to prise open that secret. And, when it did, to be confronted by accusations of treachery.

This week, two SCUK workers were accosted by government officials in Lilongwe, the capital, and asked why they were trying to draw world attention to the country's plight. "Can't you see how you are damaging tourism?" they were told.

Such is the gap in humanity in a nation where the disparity between rich and poor is the second highest in the world. Where not until two months after people began dying at the rate of 130 a day did the President Bakili Muluzi declare a state of emergency.

Excessive rains and prolonged drought depleted the maize harvest. But that is only part of the picture.

Three years ago, the International Monetary Fund ordered Malawi to sell off its grain stocks. It held nearly 170,000 tonnes in huge silos and warehouses.

By "liberalising" grain policy, the IMF argued, farmers would be encouraged to grow more. The agriculturally-based economy would be opened up. It was a policy designed for disaster. A field day for a corrupt government. It sold off its grain stocks, but to unregulated private traders, many with close links to the ruling party. No one is sure where the money went.

Then the famine arrived and the government asked donor countries for help. They refused. So did the IMF, which helped cause the crisis.

The government was forced to take a £24million foreign bank loan to import 135,000 tonnes of maize, of which less than half has arrived. The price of maize has rocketed by 500 per cent. For the vast majority earning less than 75p a day, it is a death warrant.

The IMF has refused debt relief, saying any money for food must come from further budget cuts. And the EU has refused to offer more than a £32million relief package, arguing - despite the evidence - that there is enough food to feed the people... for the moment.

Both the President and the IMF said they were "too busy" to speak with us this week. But others were only too willing. An old woman holds out her hand. It contains nothing but parched grass.

"This", she tells me, "is what we have been eating. This and banana roots, pumpkin leaves and worms."

SHE is from one of the villages in the Salima district rimming Lake Malawi. Its fields are dominated by rotting maize stalks.

Farmers could not afford fertiliser. The wrong weather spelled a 35 per cent shortfall in the crop. Many, facing starvation, harvested when the plant was still green.

And everyone now acknowledges that Malawi will need 600,000-700,000 tonnes of food this year. The UN World Food Programme is preparing to buy large consignments. The US is expected to send 100,000 tonnes of maize. Britain has given £5million to groups such as SaveThe Children, whose Ludzi feeding project keeps Luke alive.

Only governments have the cash to provide enough food and seeds for the huge numbers of starving. But it will take months.

As Save The Children says: "Every day that passes without a response is a death sentence to hundreds." And though it admits the country's very rich have callously exploited its very poor, it says the only humanitarian response is to give generously. And give fast.

We visit tiny Kapiri Mission Health Centre, in the north west. Gift Zichepe is three and weighs 20lbs. He has pneumonia, the swollen stomach and matchstick arms of malnutrition. He is too weak to stand. His skin is peeling as a result of protein deficiency.

Janet Piri, 21 months, has diarrhoea and malaria, her immune system shot to pieces by starvation. Her brother Saidi died three months ago. Her mother offers a milkless breast to try to stop her screaming.

Elen Tom stares with dulled eyes. Her protein-robbed hair is sandy blonde, her lovely face torn by scabies, her stomach distended. She is six. Her mother, too, is dead. There are 25 children in this tiny room. A few die each week.

"Maybe Elen will recover," her exhausted grandmother says, "but then we return toa village without food and then what shall happen?"

Dinas Espodal stands before the grave of her four-year-old daughter Tiyanjane, who died in her arms two weeks ago. Here in Chazima, we are told that 82 people have died in the past three months. There are 930 villages in the district. And there are 24,000 villages in Malawi.

"This is the worst it has ever been," Dinas says. "We have only a little food now. When that runs out, it will be time for me and my four other kids to lie beside my daughter."

Steve Sambani and his friend Stafford Chiguduli are making coffins. Their roadside sign claims 24-hour service. The two 22-year- olds set up the business eight years ago, seeing Aids claiming so many lives. Life expectancy will drop to 30 in Malawi by 2010.

YET, despite the famine deaths, business is bad. "They can't afford the £3.50 for a child's coffin or the £15 for an adult one," Steve says.

"So they bury the dead straight into the ground." His friend adds: "They put two or three bodies in the same grave because they are too weak to dig more."

"Six of us have already died here," says Precious Tombi, sitting in front of a locked store in Salima town. He is a "scavenger" -one of 30 who have moved into town because their village is destitute.

If they can, they take casual labour. Otherwise, they steal. And the risk is horrifying. Each district hospital we visit has stories of people arriving with ears, hands, legs sliced off. "I have seen six patients here who were caught in the fields taking maize," says Sister Agnes.

"It is horrible. It is mob justice. Just cut, cut, cut with machetes. People aren't going to funerals or weddings in case their fields are robbed. That is what you get when you are living in poverty."

Dr Hardon Njikho of Mchinji District Hospital says: "I had to perform four post-mortems in one day. Heads cut off. Limbs severed.

"And then there are the other things. The woman who was brought a pail of maize with her husband's head in it. The woman whose family was poisoned because other villagers thought she was hoarding food. The family who nearly died because the maize they bought was mixed with sawdust."

His hospital is crammed with malnourished kids. He has no antibiotic solution, few malaria drugs. A sign in the pharmacy reads: "Due to financial constraints the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off."

"Switched off" while Save The Children struggles to feed children such as Luke with funds provided by the UK government. "Switched off" while the headman in the village of Mandowa points to the graves of 46 children, all under five.

"Switched off" while President Muluzi's Cabinet tour the country in S-Class Mercedes and 4WDs and talk about the need to change the constitution so the great man can serve a third lucrative term.

"Switched off" when world organisations, despite overseeing Malawi's economy for the past 20 years, have totally failed to help its poorest.

"Switched off", unless action is taken now and past lessons learned. Now - while Luke Piri still has a breath of life within him.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Send donations to Save the Children Credit Card Hotline, 020 7701 8916, online via www.savethechildren.org.uk or by cheque to Save the Children MFC (Malawi Food Campaign) at Save the Children MFC, Freepost, LON 15747, London SE5 8YX.