Agricultural & Nutritional Transformation

While traveling through Nyankunde around noon, I consistently see groups of children, hunched over in a circle sharing bars of sugarcane. The first time I observed this, I brushed it off as an anomaly. However, after seeing the fourth or fifth large group of children eating their lunch of this tropical grass, I noted to an educated individual standing next to me, “Lots of children are eating sugarcane...” Thinking I was making a positive observation, he immediately replied, “Yes, it gives them strength!” Surprised by his response, I didn’t say anything. This is probably the first thing most of these kids have eaten today. There isn’t much else in sugarcane besides sugar and water.* I am not a nutrition expert, but I am pretty confident that most American parents would not justify giving their child a candy bar in place of breakfast and lunch because it would made them hyper and “give them strength.”

But it would be incredibly naïve to hold anyone here to American standards. This is not Chicago.* This is Nyankunde, a large village in northeast DRC that was completely devastated by the Second Congolese War. Nyankunde was once home to a large interdenominational mission base with a hospital, printing press, bible school, and airstrip. During the war, militia groups came in and began slaughtering innocent people and burning down homes. It even came to the point that the militants entered into the hospital wards and slaughtered everyone they came across, physicians and patients alike. Though these events happened over ten years ago, the hollow brick buildings seen throughout parts of the village serve as a reminder of the atrocities, and downright evil, that occurred.



Buildings like these were homes to staff at the mission station before the war.

As one could imagine, every type of social service structure (medical, educational, etc.) was undermined during the violence. It is therefore understandable why parents would feed their kids sugarcane: they lack nutritional knowledge and don’t have much of a choice. Sugarcane grows in many of their yards and is simply the most accessible food to give their kids.
 

There is very much a need for improved nutrition in areas like Nyankunde. Most of the residents here were displaced during the civil war and have returned within the last few years. During their time of displacement, families were unable to farm. As a result, parents were unable to teach their children farming techniques, and rates of malnutrition increased. According to Lindsey Cooper, a pediatrician at Nyankunde Hospital, about half of the pediatric inpatients suffer from illnesses caused by malnutrition.

Samaritan’s Purse has been involved in Nyankunde since before the violence, and has helped to reconstruct sections of the missionary hospital. In addition, Two of the programs I am working with: NAMED (see blog post entitled “Settling In and Project NAMED”) and ANT are based in Nyankunde. I recently had the privilege of visiting our team in Nyankunde with the purpose of learning more about Project ANT.

Project ANT (Agricultural & Nutritional Transformation) is an agricultural training program for families with children suffering from severe malnutrition. Each month, the Nyankunde Hospital refers to us families of children who were hospitalized with the worse cases of severe acute malnutrition. The local government also occasionally refers to us families of children who live too far away from the hospital to receive treatment. Once enrolled in the ANT program, Samaritan’s Purse allocates a plot of land in one of our community gardens to for the families to use. Project ANT staff supervise the enrolled families, lead regular training sessions on nutrition and agricultural techniques, and provide seeds and tools.** As with Project NAMED, the training sessions are often accompanied by a Bible lesson.




The vastness of the ANT gardens. Beneficiaries grow cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, soy, eggplant, leeks, green peppers, onions, and corn in gardens such as these.

While visiting many of the different gardens, one thing I was struck by was the genuine gratitude displayed by the beneficiaries. Consistent employment is rare here, and I got the impression while talking with the beneficiaries that they are proud to provide food for their families. However, the impact of Project ANT goes beyond access to vegetables as beneficiaries can sell their excess crops, providing money to buy other foods and even school fees for their children.

Esdras, one of the ANT staff, with some beneficiaries. The cabbages pictured, not even ready to be harvested, demonstrate the large size of the crops.

The Project ANT team is involved in a plethora of activities outside of agricultural and nutritional training for our beneficiaries. Our staff members give nutritional training to outpatients receiving Plumpy’nut, a therapeutic paste made of peanuts and soy, from the hospital. Also, in order to assist new beneficiaries as they wait for their crops to grow, Project ANT distributes food on a monthly basis for families during their first three months of enrollment (the average length of time before a harvest). Lastly, Project ANT, like Project NAMED, gives a weekly radio broadcast to educate the public on nutrition and provide reminders to our beneficiaries. Considering how much the team does, I joked with the staff members after our radio interview that the program should change its name from Project ANT to Project Éléphant.



In what was my probably my most difficult linguistic challenge so far, I was interviewed live on my thoughts about the ANT program via radio. The radio station broadcasts in Swahili, but my responses were translated from French.


Below is a picture of me with the supervisor and assistant supervisor of Project ANT. Our prayer is that, little by little, the program will empower the residents of Nyankunde to have healthy diets, therefore preventing unnecessary illnesses and deaths.

Notes 

*http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/custom/2089335/2?quantity=31.2

 **While I don’t encourage comparing levels of poverty between countries, I don’t want to be ignorant of the nutrition problem in Chicago. Many low-income neighborhoods lack grocery stores, prohibiting many from being able to eat fruits and vegetables. Also, I know several kids who live off a bag of chips or a box of cereal (if anything at all) during their days off of school. It is a shame that this occurs in the wealthiest nation in the world.

***Unlike the training sessions, the tools and seeds are only distributed to the beneficiaries during their first year of enrollment. The beneficiaries are trained on the need to save money for seeds so that they can be independent after the program finishes.