Malawi food crisis hits women hardest

The twin disasters of HIV/AIDS and famine have pushed Malawian women, particularly rural women to unprecedented levels of desperation, forcing them to engage in unconventional methods of survival. The situation is compounded by the country’s economic hardships which, because of their role and position in society, have hit women hardest.

Malawi is facing serious food shortages due erratic rains during the last growing season. Up to 4.2 million Malawians will require food aid. However the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the figure could rise to 5 million people in the upcoming months. According to a Gender Officer in the Ministry of Gender, Child Welfare and Community Services, female headed households are the worst hit by this crisis.

 

The typical rural Malawian woman is illiterate or semiliterate and therefore cannot engage in meaningful economic activity or employment save for casual labour and peasant farming. According to the National Statistics Office approximately 65 percent of the female population in Malawi is illiterate.

 

As providers of food for their families, women in Malawi are spending up to four nights at the state controlled grain marketing organiation, the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) markets in order to buy a mere 25kgs of maize. Due to the scarcity of the commodity the government has been forced to ration to 25kgs for every buyer. This rationing is forcing women to spend most of their time making trips to ADMARC markets to buy maize as the 25 kgs is hopelessly inadequate for most families.

 

Women at the ADMARC market are at risk of attack as they often leave home at around 1 am in the hope of making it to the queue in good time. Even leaving at this hour does not guarantee them maize because often they find others who have been on the queue long before them. There have also been many reports of women fainting on the queues due to hunger.  

 

When the women fail to find maize at ADMARC markets, or when they don’t have the money to buy the maize they resort to looking for alternatives such as wild tubers, roots and leaves. In Nsanje, Phalombe, Chikwawa, Blantyre and Mulanje in the southern region women are reported to be digging up water lily tubers, boil them thoroughly before feeding them to their families. In Nsanje women have to risk crocodile attacks in the Shire River as they look for water lily tubers locally known as Nyika. The other alternatives that women have resorted to collecting for their families are green mangoes which are cooked before eating, green paw paws, bamboo seeds pounded until they look like rice, and termites which are fried with a little salt in them.

 

A traditional leader in Salima district in the central region where people are eating bamboo seeds was quoted in the local media saying that he has been a leader for 26 years but he has never seen people eating bamboo seeds for survival. According to the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee Survey most households started experiencing food shortages from April 2005. However media reports say that between January and September 2005, 29 children in Nsanje district alone died of hunger related illnesses.

 

Desperate women are making desperate decisions. When things like wild tubers, roots, and termites have failed to sustain the families they have found themselves joining the sex trade just to get a little money to buy maize. They argue that it is better to die five or 10 years later from AIDS than to die now from hunger. Desperate rural women and girls as young as 15, are indulging in commercial sex for survival thereby exposing themselves to HIV infection.  According to Youthnet and Counselling, an NGO working to rehabilitate sex workers, there are indications that sex work is increasing because of the food crisis.

 

As more and more women and young girls join sex work there is great competition amongst themselves to get clients and the rate can be negotiated to as low as K100 (81 US cents or 5 rand). Although sex work is illegal in Malawi, the sex workers said before the food crisis they used to charge K1000 (8 US dollars) for unprotected sex and K200 for sex with a condom. Due to the food crisis, worsening economic conditions, and competition for few clients their rates have plummeted to as a low as K100.

 

Perhaps the most worrying development due to the food crisis is that some parents are reported to be forcing their daughters to be married in exchange for food. The Malawi Human Rights Commission told local media that there have been cases of parents selling their daughters to strangers in exchange for food. Given the high HIV infection rate in Malawi – 15 percent of the adult population – many girl children are likely to contract the virus. Girls are being forced to drop out of school thereby perpetuating the vicious circle of illiteracy, poverty, and HIV/AIDS among women.

 

Malawians are this year starving because the country largely depends on rain fed agriculture which failed last year. It is now that there is hunger that irrigation farming is being talked about seriously. For the lot of the Malawian women folk to improve, whatever technologies of irrigation that the government wants to implement it should ensure that they are suitable for women. Treadle pumps which the government is currently promoting require a lot of energy therefore could not be the ideal for women especially in this famine year. Since women are the hardest hit in this crisis they should be given priority where food and farm inputs are being distributed.