Hungry mob, angry mob
Today Ramadan ends in Benin. It finished yesterday in Togo and I believe the day before in Nigeria. My colleague Halima, a Muslim herself, has been eating for the last days, she has her period and she does not need to fast or pray. “I am on religious vacation”, she says with a smile from ear to ear.
Northern Benin is more Muslim than the south. It is also drier and poorer. It has also been heavily impacted by the food crisis during the last year. Price of basic food and fuel increased, the weather did not help, micro-farmers sold almost everything they had to neighboring Nigeria, women stocked as much as they could so to sell corn at a higher price during the non-productive season…an accumulation of causes and consequences that called for Gadaffi’s intervention, who generously shipped some tonnes of rice.
But rice did not last long. Charity is a good temporary medicine, for both giver and receiver. Rice is now gone and some areas of Benin lack food. More data courtesy of GTZ, Hugo's employer:
- The price of oil has quadrupled from 2003 ($30 to $115 the barrel), which has increased also the price of oil-based fertilizers.
- From now till 2025 rainfall is forecasted to fall by 15% (friends and ex-colleagues residing in Brussels gladly inform me that climate change is making the bureaucratic life even better!)
- Drops in cereal production from 2007 till 2008 by 8.14%. Sorgho’s production, a basic ingredient of Beninese diet, fell by more than 14%.
Bluntly, the World Food Program calculates that human beings should eat around 21kg of animal protein per year. In Benin they eat around 8kg and this is not a vegetarian-prone area.
The locals tell me that some women in Benin light the fire, put the saucepan to boil…plain water. Many days there is nothing else to add to water. However, the lighted fire is an indication of normalcy, an apparent normalcy so the neighbors will not suspect that your children are hungry.
Northern Benin is more Muslim than the south. It is also drier and poorer. It has also been heavily impacted by the food crisis during the last year. Price of basic food and fuel increased, the weather did not help, micro-farmers sold almost everything they had to neighboring Nigeria, women stocked as much as they could so to sell corn at a higher price during the non-productive season…an accumulation of causes and consequences that called for Gadaffi’s intervention, who generously shipped some tonnes of rice.
But rice did not last long. Charity is a good temporary medicine, for both giver and receiver. Rice is now gone and some areas of Benin lack food. More data courtesy of GTZ, Hugo's employer:
- The price of oil has quadrupled from 2003 ($30 to $115 the barrel), which has increased also the price of oil-based fertilizers.
- From now till 2025 rainfall is forecasted to fall by 15% (friends and ex-colleagues residing in Brussels gladly inform me that climate change is making the bureaucratic life even better!)
- Drops in cereal production from 2007 till 2008 by 8.14%. Sorgho’s production, a basic ingredient of Beninese diet, fell by more than 14%.
Bluntly, the World Food Program calculates that human beings should eat around 21kg of animal protein per year. In Benin they eat around 8kg and this is not a vegetarian-prone area.
The locals tell me that some women in Benin light the fire, put the saucepan to boil…plain water. Many days there is nothing else to add to water. However, the lighted fire is an indication of normalcy, an apparent normalcy so the neighbors will not suspect that your children are hungry.
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