Five a Day: Getting the Balance Right

Today’s Daily Prompt, ‘Five a Day‘, says:

You’ve being exiled to a private island, and your captors will only supply you with five foods. What do you pick?

I guess in my travels I’ve had a chance to figure out what I do and don’t like, and what my body does and does not cope well with and without. I’ve certainly gone through stints where I’ve had to get by on pretty poor diet- certain deployments, for example, where both food choice and food quality were pretty low. They were good times to go through from a learning perspective- but certainly not fun. I don’t enjoy being hungry- especially not when you’ve got a demanding job to do, under difficult circumstances.

I can’t pretend to be the world’s healthiest eater. MIO and I are constantly fasting things from our diet (generally, sugar and alcohol) in order to kick-start some healthier habits- and general fitness. So I suppose if I’m going to be marooned on a desert island, this is also going to play a part.

Of course, the real question is, what type of island is this? Does it have coconut palms? Can I catch fish? I should be able to get salt from the sea, and maybe some other goodies as well. And what herbs might be growing to add a little flavour, and could I talk my captors into bringing me a few seeds from time to time…? But maybe that’s all cheating.

I reckon my five foods would be as follows:

1. Bread. And I’m going to request fresh bread. Every culture has a staple. I can’t deny my northern European genetic heritage. So it’s either going to be bread, or potatoes. But I do love my daily bread. Growing up in France, I got spoiled having boulangeries on every corner, and cheap, warm, soft bread pretty much on tap. Of course, over the years I’ve found I love breads from most parts of the world- so long as it’s fresh, usually soft, and ideally warm. Flat-breads from the Middle East, or naan from south Asia, or a nice Turkish bread, really, I’m open to variety. In fact, while you’re at it, by all means vary said bread on a daily basis, just to keep in interesting. I don’t mind a weekly rotation.

From a dietary perspective, of course, bread is a nice source of carbohydrates, an appetite-killer and a stomach-filler. If I’m stuck on a private island someplace, then I don’t want to be thinking about my hungry stomach all the time. I thought about rice, but rice can be a bit starchy, and doesn’t have the variety that bread does. So, bread it is.

2. Beans. When I lived in northern Papua New Guinea, my housemate and I would shop for all our food needs at the local market. It was a grubby but vibrant place, with a beautiful range of fresh- and I mean fresh- fruit and vegetables. We’d stock up once a week for about $20, and would generally cook curries for ourselves, with lashings of hot sauce, curry powder and other spices and flavours in there. I’m no vegetarian, but we’d generally only have meat once a week, sometimes less, and I’d say that that period was one of the healthiest, from a dietary perspective, I’ve ever enjoyed.

I’ve never really been a fan of beans. But in PNG we’d buy great bunches of snake beans for a pittance, and they’d become a mainstay of the curry. Beans are greens (again, never been big on greens) so chocked full of nutritional goodness, and I reckon they’d be a good option in terms of maintaining the healthy side of things. Not my favourite foodstuff, but if I’m stuck on an island, I don’t want to be getting sick or scurvied.

3. Lentils. I love Indian food. Again, I enjoy a blend of international cuisine, and done well, Thai blows me away for the subtle aromatic nature of it. But the sheer variety and tastiness of Indian cuisine delights me non-stop. Hence I’ve garnered a love for lentils (encouraged by my wife, who also loves them and cooks some very tasty lentil dishes). As a pulse, lentils are full of protein (seeing as I’m not asking for meat)- and another good one for filling you up, but filling you up with stuff that’s really healthy. While I realise that my captors may not be providing me with a spice rack (if they did, we’re home and dry), at least if I’ve got to eat blandly, let’s get the right building-blocks into the system.

4. Tomatoes. Another mainstay of stews and curries, tomatoes in cooking add so much flavour. As a fruit they’ve got some good nutritional value (sure, I want to limit my risk of prostate cancer). But I reckon, cooked with beans and lentils, you’ve actually started to get yourself a stew with some flavour and nutritional goodness. Now, I’m not about to tell you that’s all I want to eat for the next 50 years. But, look, I reckon if I did, I wouldn’t come away too unhealthy. At least that’d be my hope.

5. Cheese. I nearly put Vegemite here. After all, I have to stay true to my Kiwi roots (okay, fine, Sanitarium Marmite, but Vegemite would still be my choice). It’s a little spread of home, that nice salty blast really wakes up the mouth, and you could even use it as a food additive to bring some additional flavour. To this day I travel with a tub of Vegemite on longer assignments- one of my comfort foods. And it helps make even stale bread taste a little better (yes, learned from experience). I also tossed around peanut butter for similar reasons- and also because it would help the sugar cravings.

However. Cheese. There are few things I enjoy more than cheese, in pretty much any of its forms. I love the variety (again, I hope my captors will be acquiescent here)- from nice bitey mature hard cheeses to rich soft stinky gooey ones, I’m pretty open to a gamut of them things. Dairy’s a nice balance to the above smattering of food groups- gotta keep my bones strong. It’s a total comfort food for me. And, it’s one of those universal savoury foods- meaning, it goes with pretty much anything.

Also, if I played my cards right, with bread and cheese I’ve got the starting of a cheese fondue. Just got to bargain my way to a little garlic and a sloosh of kirsch. And that is something I could eat from here to eternity.

Photos:

1. Island in Madang Harbour, PNG

2. Sweetlips, aka Lunch, also PNG

5 Things to See and Do in Amhara Region

It’s hard to overstate Ethiopia as a travel destination. It has fascinating and unique history and culture, sites to visit and activities to do, a combination of anthropological and wild natural beauty- in short, all the things you would look for, from a range of travel backgrounds. In addition, Ethiopian Airlines has a safe, wide-reaching and very economical domestic network making it easy to get from place to place. The cost of food, accomodation and activities are all very low, the country is safe and stable (with the exception of some border regions), and the Ethiopian peoples are, as a rule, gentle and friendly. And finally, while there is a significant tourism business here, the place is not overrun by ferengi, so you don’t need to feel like you’re part of a giant guided tour.

If that doesn’t entice you to come for a visit, let me give you a short and very non-exhaustive list of things you can do in Amhara Region, one of the more popular travel destinations.

Note: I’ve generally quoted prices in Birr. The exchange rate is roughly USD 1: ETB 18.

1. Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela

The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, UNESCO World Heritage listed, are possibly Ethiopia’s most famous tourist draw- and unsurprisingly-so. While the most famous of these- the cross-shaped Bete Giorgis (St George’s Church), sometimes refered to as the 8^th Wonder of the World- features prominently in photographs, there are in fact a constellation of structure scattered around this small mountain village. The main dozen-or-so churches are clustered in three groups, all within easy walk of one another, carved into trenches out of the solid rock itself rather than constructed using bricks or blocks. They are connected by tunnels and passageways, worn by centuries of use (the churches are active to this day).

The churches themselves- St. Lalibela is said to have built the town and its icons around his memories of Jerusalem from time spent there in his youth- are tall and blocky, I suspect reminiscent of the Jewish Temple/Tarbernacle. In the Orthodox style, they have an outer area for the congregation, and then an inner sanctuary like the Holy Place, concealed behind a thick curtain, into which only priests can enter. Flash photography is forbidden, and shoes must be removed at the door. The insides are furnished with rugs and icons, dimly lit, some distinctly cavernous in mood.

The Lalibela churches, built in the 12^th & 13^th centuries, rate right up there with the most interesting and enjoyable archeological sites I’ve ever visited- right on a par with somewhere like Angkor Wat. Exploring the churches and passageways is a hoot, and in style true to the continent, there are no ropes or overly-cautious shepherding of visitors through set passageways. If you want to plunge to your death over a 50-foot rocky ledge, that’s your own dumb fault. We spent an afternoon and saw perhaps half the churches, but it was a rush job. I’d recommend you block out two days to take your time, explore the nooks and crannies, and really soak in the otherworldly atmosphere of this interesting place.

Lalibela village is probably the most touristed of Ethiopian locales, and because of its small size and big draw, it’s the one place in Ethiopia where you’re likely to trip over other foreigners. The kids will strike up conversation in any of the major tourist languages- I tried English, French and Spanish, and I suspect Italian and Russian are on the menu too- and will try the usual ways to get you to give them money- ask for foreign coins (we’re collecting coins for a school project), ask for footballs (we had a football team but the ball burst so now we can’t play), invite you home for coffee, or offer to guide you into the hills to see another church. They are harmless, and if you politely tell them to leave you alone (assuming you don’t want the banter, which can be entertaining), they generally will.

You can reach Lalibela by road, but most people fly in- there are a couple of flights daily to and from Addis, doing a loop via Gondar and Aksum. Shared minivans cost a set 70 Birr one-way for the 30-minute ride between the airport and the village, which is perched on a shoulder at around 2,500m above the valley. The ride is visually spectacular, as are the views from the village. A pass to visit all the churches costs 350 Birr and lasts for several days- you buy it at the tourist booth as you head into the first of the church complexes. You will be asked for it regularly, and if you get a pass with several friends, you’ll need to stay together (as I found out to my frustration). Guides are on offer and are entirely up to personal preference. The complex is self-explanatory and fun to explore alone, and we didn’t bother. There is plenty of material available online on the history of the churches, but if you want somebody to take you round and tell you stuff, that works too. Note that guides are of varying quality- and may spin things that aren’t true.

The Seven Olives Hotel, on the main road, has pleasant leafy gardens and a terrace overlooking the valley, and makes a lovely spot to have lunch. The Mountain View and the newer Cliff Edge Hotels have dramatic views from their exposed locations, the former with one of the towns better options for dinner. Consider booking, as it can get full during peak times.

2. Fasilides Castle, Gondar

When King Fasilides made Gondar the seat of his empire in the 1600s, he constructed a palace that would eventually sprawl into a large complex, as children and grandchildren added their own buildings to the compound. Set in the heart of what is now one of Ethiopia’s largest cities (still fairly small at around a quarter of a million people), the palace complex is a mixture of beautifully-preserved period architecture with European and Moorish influences, and rambling ruins.

Interestingly, Fasilides’ Castle itself is the best-preserved, and you can wander through its lower halls and explore its nooks and pockets. Elsewhere are reservoirs and steam-baths, the remains of kitchens and stables, even the enclosures for leopards and lions that used to grace the grounds. The place has a ramshackle feel in many ways, the buildings a little haphazard in their placing, but it makes for a great afternoon’s exploring.

As with Lalibela, guides are on offer (for a fee) but entirely optional. It’s fun and freeing just to explore by yourself, although again, if getting historical explanation is part and parcel of the experience for you, go for it. Entrance costs 100 Birr for a tourist, and will also give access to Fasilides’ baths, a ceremonial complex a five minute bajaj (tuk-tuk) ride away. The Castle sits by the Town Centre, where buses and taxis both drop off, and is hard to miss.

The Goha Hotel sits on top of a hill overlooking the town itself, and is a grand place to enjoy dinner and a drink (ideally a Daschen Beer, as their Brewery is in Gondar, so the stuff is fresh). I can’t comment on the rooms, but it looks like one of the town’s better hotels. There are plenty of cheaper options.

3. Blue Nile Falls

The Blue Nile- the shorter but higher-volume tributary of the Nile River vis-a-vis its chromatic counterpart, the White Nile- flows out of Lake Tana just a few kilometres north of Amhara’s administrative capital Bahir Dar. From there it flows thirty or forty kilometres eastward, and tumbles over a precipice. Its flow split between a hydro-electric power-station and the falls themselves, the flow over the falls can vary depending on season and the functioning of the power station, from not much more than a trickle, to a thundering wall of water 400m wide and up to 45m high.

I’ve seen the falls twice- once with the power-station turned off and water diverted over the waterfall, and once with lower flow. Both times were visually dramatic. The water spouts over and throws up a steady mist, creating swirling winds that gust over the little plateau at the falls’ base. A winding canyon is carved into the hillscape below the falls, and another narrow stream joins as well, over which is hung a suspension footbridge. It’s possible to walk almost to the base of the falls (although the mist makes it hard to take photos without spotting your lens), and it’s also possible to walk around to the very top of the falls (see earlier comment about lack of ropes and plunging to death). The view leaning out over the rock ledge above the cascading brown water is quite spectacular. When the water level is low, it’s also kind of fun walking in the ‘bed’ of the Nile to check out the falls.

It’s about a 45 minute picturesque car journey through open farmland from Bahir Dar to the falls- known locally as Tis Abay (Abay being the Amharic name for the Blue Nile). There is public transport (minivans), or alternatively, you can negotiate a hotel shuttle- we were quoted 800 Birr. Bajajs would struggle with the gravel road, and would probably take about 3 hours each way for the journey, so don’t try that option. In the small village of Tissisat, you pay an entrance fee (around 70 Birr, if I remember), then walk or drive to the river crossing about 500m upstream. A motor launch shuttles you across the channel for 10 Birr each way per person, and then it’s a 15 minute walk through gentle countryside to the site of the falls themselves. Children sell scarves and drinks at the top, but are generally good-natured and easily dissuaded.

There’s a second approach to the falls which involves a four-hour walk through local villages, coming up on the cascade from the other direction, which sounds like an enjoyable trip to make. I’d love to see the falls in flood, as I suspect it would be an awesome sight. None the less, the Blue Nile Falls should be a must-see on any Amharic agenda if you’re in Bahir Dar.

4. Lake Tana Monasteries

There are some sixty-odd Orthodox monasteries, apparently, scattered around Lake Tana. The Lake is Ethiopia’s biggest, source of the Blue Nile, and stretches northwards from Bahir Dar. The monasteries are situated around the lake’s edge, and on a number of small islets that dot the waters. And they’re open for business.

Checking out Lake Tana’s monasteries is one of the more unique things you can do in Ethiopia. I guess the idea behind any real monastery is an element of isolation or seclusion, but short of the needle-top monasteries of Meteora, in Greece, these guys really seem to be ahead of the curve. Started seven hundred years ago, these isolated little pockets of meditation are really worth checking out.

We visited three monasteries (all we had time for in a single afternoon). The first was at the mouth of the Nile, on what was said to be an island (though could also have been a little peninsula), surrounded by papyrus reeds, with a small village and an assortment of fruit trees to keep it company. The church at the heart of the complex was typical Orthodox style, a round shell with roof made from bamboo and leather strapping. The other two we visited were far more isolated, out in the centre of the shallow lake (Tana never gets deeper than 9m) on hilly little islets a couple of hundred metres across, if that. The sense of isolation was tangible, the natural beauty striking. It’d be hard to come up with a more idyllic place to spend ten years of your life meditating on scripture, if that’s your thing.

Getting out to the monasteries, you can hire a launch and driver from the lake’s edge in Bahir Dar. Rates vary by number of passengers, number of monasteries, and time. Three pax, three monastaries, and a good four hours or more on the water cost us about 700 Birr for the boat and driver. I’m sure that rate could be brought down with some good bargaining. Once you reach the islands, there is also an entry fee of 100 Birr per monastery. We hired a guide at the first stop (not knowing the protocol) for about 150 Birr, found him to be useless and factually vague, and also noted that after that first stop, there were no more guides available, so really, I wouldn’t recommend getting a guide. The two things worth noting: First, take your shoes off before entering the churches, and second, the inner sanctuary is holy, and non-Priests cannot enter, so don’t.

All up, factoring in driver, boat and entry fees, by Ethiopian standards, it’s a pretty pricey day. As much as the islands themselves, the journey is a big part of the fun, and we enjoyed lounging on our little boat in the choppy afternoon winds, chatting, dozing and enjoying the sunshine. It’s a relaxed, slow-paced and memorable half-day trip, highly recommended.

5. Flying Gondar-Aksum-Lalibela

Ethiopia’s domestic airways can be a bit of a shuttle-run, with short hops between multiple towns en route to your destination, and I was initially disappointed to find that our jump from Gondar to Lalibela- a very short flight in a straight line- first went via Aksum, almost on the Eritrean border. Each leg of the flight in the 80-seater Bombardier Q400 lasted just over 30 minutes. And the scenery was epic.

The flight takes you over the top of the Simien Mountains, to the north of Gondar. The mountains are sheer, craggy, riven by improbably deep valleys and split by rock walls that rise giddyingly out of the shadows. They’re a breathtaking view, and I spent the flight with my face glued to the window.

Approaching Aksum, the scenery is a dry patchwork of terraces and smallholdings set against a jagged horizon, also eye-popping. The leg from there South-East towards Lalibella skirts further to the east of the Simiens (still very visible as you fly past), and then the terrain breaks into a vast jumble of flat-topped hills and steep gullies, almost uninhabited and truly some of the wildest, most inaccessible landscape you can picture. Once clearly an upland plateau and now eroded by eons of flowing water, it’s a scene that leaves itself burned on your memory.

The plane flies at around 20,000 feet, but given that the landscape is already up at around 8-10,000 feet in places, it means you’re not so far off the ground, and at this time of year, the sky is cloudless. Sitting on the right-hand side of the plane (seat L) and far forward or far back gives the best view. I recommend 11L, which is right at the front on the right, and by good fortune was what I was given without realising the treat that was in store. None the less, despite being just a part of the travel process, the two flight legs became one of the strongest memories of that particular trip.

From a cost perspective, the itinerary Addis Ababa-Bahir Dar, then Gondar-Lalibela-Addis Ababa, came to a total of $160.

5 Quick Travel Tips

1. Public transportation has a fixed price. While taxis and bajajs will try and fleece you (and, given how cheap everything else is in Ethiopia, boy are they pricey), there’s usually a fixed cost for minivans that doesn’t require bartering, and doesn’t change between locals and ferengi. It’s worth finding out this price ahead of time, on the offchance that you do meet an unscrupulous tout on a minivan or some-such. The prices are generally pretty cheap for intercity travel. The 3-hour journey from Bahir Dar to Gondar costs 65 Birr ($3.60). The van from Lalibela airport to Lalibela town, by contrast, was 70 Birr for a half-hour trip- captive market. As a footnote, do bear in mind that the intercity minivans are a fairly unsafe form of travel- they roll and crash regularly, with high fatality rates.

2. Bring toilet paper. This one’s a no-brainer for anybody who’s travelled in the third world. But trust me, Ethiopia’s one of the worst offenders when it comes to disgruntled bowels- some combination of a relatively poor country, and high altitude (meaning water doesn’t necessarily sterilized when boiled due to the fact that water boils at a lower temperature at altitude; it’s the same reason so many people get sick in Nepal). I haven’t yet met anyone who’s spent any significant time out here and not had a bout of gastro of one form or another (myself included), and some of it’s nasty. While higher quality hotels will probably have toilet paper, cheaper places won’t (and practice your squat for the latrines). Of course, at the risk of going the TMI route, it should be pointed out that if you find yourself on round six or seven for the night cleaning yourself, some water and your left hand is far more soothing to tender areas than another scrape of dry paper. Just wash well.

Also, bring antibiotics.

3. Local ID gets cheaper rates. Often. Not always. But if you’re lucky enough to be in posession of a residency permit, even a temporary one, hotels will often discount room-rates (not as much as for an Ethiopian, but it’s a start), and you can also enter some tourist facilities at a reduced rate too.

4. Beware the cultural restaurant. Ethiopian dancing is pretty amazing stuff. And the music is interesting too. I really do recommend checking out one of the high-quality cultural restaurants in Addis Ababa- some place like Yod Abyssinia just off TeleBole Rd, for example. The dancers are energetic and skillful, and though the music is about 40dB too loud, it’s an unforgettable experience.

Once.

Unfortunately, there is an assumption that a tourist in Ethiopia must want to be serenaded in this fashion every time they eat. At restaurants frequented by ferengi, expect to find traditional performers, many of whom can be quite lacklustre, and whose musical escapades will leave your ears ringing. It makes conversation very difficult. They usually hit around the 6.30-8pm mark, so eating early or late can mitigate this particular travel hassle which, I’d have to say, our little posse found far more intrusive to our holiday pleasure than the kids approaching us for conversation and money.

5. Warm clothes/layers. At this time of year (December), Ethiopia’s pretty chilly. And by that I mean cold. At night time anyway. Days can be deceptively warm. The air is still and the sun bright, and you’ll want to be in short sleeves (with sunscreen) or thinly covered (as dress standards may dictate in places like monastaries). But within half an hour of sunset, you can expect the air to have a real bite. Most of these places are well above 2,000m (6,000ft) and this might be Africa, and not far off the equator, but it’s downright frigid at night time.

Budget

As I mentioned at the start of this post, Ethiopia is pretty cheap, especially compared to the rest of Africa. To give you an idea, if you eat at western-style restaurants, unless you’re staying in a spa resort, you can expect to pay well less than 100 Birr ($5.50) for a main, and no more than 30 Birr ($1.65) for a beer or soft-drink (imported wine is more expensive- 400-800 Birr ($22-44) for a bottle of South African, for example). Eating at restaurant targeting local Ethiopians, you can get away with a total meal cost of less than 40 Birr ($2.20), including soft drink (though you do need to watch food hygeine if your constitution isn’t bomb-proof). Three of us regularly ate at nice hotel-restaurants and generally paid less than 300 Birr ($16.65) for the full tab- and we weren’t trying to keep the cost down in the slightest.

Hotels vary with quality. Staying at a local pension, a small room with a toilet might go for under 200 Birr ($11) a night, a room without a toilet 150 Birr ($8.30) or less (I have paid 70 Birr- $3.80- for one such). At the better end, you can get a decent, clean and moderately-well appointed room (3-star standard in a good location) for 6-800 Birr ($33-44) in one of the better quality hotels in any of these places.

5 More Things to See and Do in Amhara Region

I’m hoping to have the chance to do more travel in the area, as there are still plenty of things I haven’t had a chance to check out yet. Among them:

1. Hike the Simien Mountains. From what people say, this is the thing to do in Ethiopia- possibly alongside the Lalibela churches. The scenery is apparently breathtaking (I can believe it, from what I saw from the air), and everybody who has done it has raved about it.

2. Hike the Lalibela area. There are apparently walks in the hills, as well as churches away from the town itself. The landscape around Lalibela is rugged and beautiful, and they say it also greens up during the rainy season. I’m keen to try this out.

3. Aksum. This isn’t technically Amhara- it’s in Tigray Region- but it’s easily accessible from Gondar and the Simiens find themselves halfway between Gondar and Aksum. There’s supposedly more UNESCO World Heritage goodness with the remnants of the ancient Aksumite Kingdom, and the landscape makes me want to check it out.

4. Gondar Area Castles. As well as Fasilides and his mob, I understand there are more old castles, forts and/or churches in the Gondar area. The terrain is just beautiful round there as well, so it would be well worth an explore over a couple of days.

5. Explore the Southern Hinterlands. South of Bahir Dar, there’s not much by way of tourist infrastructure, but I was lucky enough to drive through it on field visits. The landscape is lush and dramatic, and it would be a fantastic place to spend several days idling through, taking photos, and soaking in the slow pace.

Capsifun

Yeah, you just read that.

Took a break from preparing a rack of shish kebabs to enjoy the colour and geometry of fresh food. Shot on my Canon EOS 400D using EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro, natural light.

Why Aid Agencies Fail to Stop Famine

I’m starting to get a little ratty with all the media right now talking about the Horn of Africa.

Articles are starting to look like a fill-the-blanks template that the reporters are all sharing around: Quote some stats about the famine; talk about the complicating factor of al Shabbab making life difficult in Somalia; drop in some pithy quotations about the fact that short-term aid is repetitive and doesn’t solve the underlying problems (always with a nod to the fact that, well, of course it saves lives now); then end on the dark yet hopeful twist that while aid agencies clearly don’t have it right, clearly what’s needed is ‘long-term solutions’.

Yeah, cool, thanks.

Interestingly, the reporting, which feels cookie-cuttered from every other cyclical emergency that pops up around the African continent (alternate Somalia with Niger, Sudan, Kenya…) is exactly the sort of thing that the reports slam aid agencies for doing in their emergency appeals: Template emergency request, paste photo of child in malnutrition centre top-right, insert country emergency name here.

But what I’m really ratty about is not that what the media are saying is wrong per se. My problem is, they’re making noise but missing the point.

Two of them, actually.

By rabbiting on about long-term solutions (I’m sorry, what solutions did you suggest, exactly?), they make it sound like nobody’s ever come up with that idea before.

[Cue professional aid workers the world over beneath newly-illuminated lightbulbs slapping foreheads, exclaiming “Long-term solutions! Of course! Why didn’t we think of that?]

The point is, aid agencies know about this. They speak this language. They can ream ideas out ad nauseum, et cetera, et cetera.

This is not new.

It’s just that, they suck at implementing them.

That’s point one.

Point two is, these solutions aren’t simple in the real-world. But we’ll come back to point two later.

***

Aid agencies have a presence in pretty much all these places that suffer cyclical emergencies. Long-term presence. And presence that isn’t just based on emergencies, either. Long-term community development, empowerment programs, child sponsorship, infrastructure development, food security projects, governance, microenterprise development… In short, kitchen sink included.

So, shouldn’t the presence of aid agencies stop famines from happening?

In principle, yes.

In practice, a woeful no.

Why not?

Well, it would be unfair, but only partly inaccurate, to say because ‘aid agencies aren’t doing their job’.

There are other factors, of course, the most significant being that macro-level factors (global economy, environmental trends) do in fact overwhelm the relatively small investment that NGOs make by comparison. But, it’s not only that.

Most aid programs, however much they might claim the opposite, are not geared to manage pending emergencies. Their activities are not built to context. Their funding sources are restrictive, their monitoring and analysis is not geared around mitigating risk, and their management systems are too rigid to adapt.

Each in turn.

Needs Context

Most aid agencies have their way of doing things. Although they will all claim that their interventions are based on need, most of the time their interventions are based on an assumption of need. Their assessments are often facipulative or partipulative. Their approach is dictated by their organizational ethos, the way they’ve done things in other places. Very rare indeed is the [large- and read, able to make a significant and multisectoral difference over an area sufficient to mitigate against the effects of famine] aid agency for whom each project is truly designed from scratch. Most have to fit a donor funding model, match up with existing organizational skills and experience, fit into standard monitoring and evaluation frameworks, and are lifted from projects and programs that have been run elsewhere.

Most agencies don’t realise that they are a solution looking for a problem. And their ‘solution’ may not be what’s needed.

What is needed?

Context analysis.

Let me say it again: Context analysis.

And I don’t just mean context awareness. All the gathered knowledge in the world won’t save us if it’s not applied. I mean a critical appreciation of the various factors that influence trends, patterns, norms and change, taken and re-applied in an intelligent way to what action is planned.

Agencies have to learn to go in there and fit their interventions to the reality on the ground. Not the reality they assume is there because it looks similar to some other place, or because sweeping the eye over the landscape makes it clear that they lack a particular resource which the agency knows it can provide.

Macro-level. Micro-level. Understand relationships. Understand the need, and the reasons for that need, and the reasons why those reasons exist. Make the communities you’re targeting a part of your analysis process so that you can learn their perspective and, if they’re interested, they can learn yours. Then figure out not what services you can deliver, but what changes need to happen to the situation to change the need that has been identified.

And that is already way too oversimplified.

Easy? Of course not. It involves time, flexibility, intent, relationships.

The frustrating part? Aid agencies have already had time. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty years of it. And if you go into some of these places and talk with the field staff, or the community members, when you drill down into it, they do in fact know a lot of this stuff. But the projects aren’t built around that context. They’re still matched to organizational norms, easily summed up in a donor report and an implementation table.

This has to change.

Funding Patterns

Agencies have their sources for funding long-term programs. Sometimes they’re long-standing cooperation agreements with institutional donors, where five years’ worth of funding is guaranteed for a particular community and sector. Sometimes it’s child sponsorship, where donors provide funds to the agency on the basis of a link with a child in the community in which the agency provides support. Sometimes it’s from general donations sourced from a faithful donor base.

Too often, these funding sources are restricted- either by the donor, or by the agency. If an agency has promised a donor a particular type of activity- providing clean water, or providing education- the agency may not be able to use those funds in other sectors. In some agencies, donors and not the agency have the strongest say in what sectors, approaches or activities are used (guaranteeing that we miss the context). In other cases, the funds may be more malleable, but still tend to be geared towards a suite of perceived acceptable activities.

Of course, these funds are often the agency’s bread and butter, providing the bulk of what keeps the agency in business, so making changes to how those funds are spent is a risky proposition.

When dealing with a context, like the Horn of Africa, which routinely slips into a crisis, we see a pattern. Existing funds continue to be pumped into the agreed sectors because there’s no donor flexibility to jump to other, more needy sectors. Activities continue to be geared towards the long-term development context without taking the emergency context into account, because this is what the organization has promised to deliver with the funding.

It sounds basic, but this is essentially what happens.

And if we’re also seeing a situation where the project has been cookie-cuttered into place, rather than built to context, then this is only going to be compounded.

What’s needed? Well, der, flexibility. On behalf of both donors and the agency. The agreement that, when a crisis emerges in a long-term program area, the agency can switch its donor funding into what ever activities it needs to to meet the needs. Not an unreasonable request, you’d think, for a donor who wants to help communities. So long as the donor trusts the agency.

And, of course, the organizational will and apparatus to do-so.

Thus avoiding the need to launch a fresh appeal every time a new emergency cycle appears in a place we always knew it was going to.

Monitoring and Accountability

And that’s the thing. We know. We often know. We knew about the Horn of Africa drought months ago. Many agencies began responding, in their own small way, long before this was a media circus. Mostly by tagging a few auxiliary activities onto their existing programs with a bit of extra funding. This was in part, to be fair, restricted by the lack of donor interest in the burgeoning crisis. It wasn’t until the media started making a fuss about it a few weeks ago that the public and governments sat up and started taking notice- making them equally complicit in this debacle.

Subject of another discussion.

Where aid agencies struggle though, and this is closely linked to the funding issue, is their indicators for success. When a block of money is granted to a project, there are almost always guidelines around how that money can be used. Hit the agreed targets and indicators, and the project is deemed a success (even if impact is negligible, uncertain or not measured).

And these targets- generally based around what can be produced by the project activities themselves- are most commonly concrete deliverables. (Some, granted, are vaguer, but these are both harder to measure and harder to get funding for.)

What long-term development projects are almost never measured against is their success at reducing the likelihood or impact of known crises in the area.

A malnutrition project may measure the number of children treated (in this case, a crisis that produces lots of malnourished kids actually makes the project look good!). A food security project, the increase in yield produced or the increase to household income- if the agency is really doing its job. Very rare is a project held to account for averting- or failing to avert- a crisis like a famine.

Despite the lip-service that agencies pay to having a positive long-term impact on a community’s context, very few of them can demonstrate this empirically, and even fewer actually hold themselves accountable to this principle in tangible terms.

They need to.

In fact, this should be the very raison d’etre of any long-term development project in an area known to be vulnerable to a particular disaster. Before we start launching into a wide array of obscure assistance packages that are au fait with our donor audience, let’s first make sure that our communities have food, water, shelter, and that we’re greatly improving their chances of hanging on to these things when the known and quantifiable threats this community faces materialise.

And, let’s actually hold them accountable with our measures of success and failure.

It’s called Disaster Risk Reduction. But like so many other technical terms that get touted in the industry, this one lost its currency almost before it had any. It’s another tick-the-box theme that pops up on proposal templates. “Explain how this project will reduce the impact of known disaster risks.” A paragraph of blurb, donor nods and signs the cheque.

Why does such a basic, logical and common-sense principle get sidelined? Partly staff knowledge, partly organizational will.

Internal Systems

Many agencies have a firm divide between what is ‘development’ and what is ‘aid’. Long-term presence in communities is generally to acheive development outcomes. Emergency situations require short-term aid interventions, after which the aid cowboys can bugger off and leave the development professionals to their job of transforming communities.

Staff are not trained to live in both camps. Either they are aid workers, or they are development workers. It is not uncommon to find development workers resentful of having to change their activities because an emergency operation has been mobilized and their manpower is required. And by the same token, assessing long-term development projects for their suitability to the risk context bores a lot of aid junkies.

So staff lack the training, and often the knowledge. But they also lack the motivation. Because they’re held accountable to different outcomes. While aid workers might be expected to meet indicators around services provided in an emergency, long-term development workers will be expected to deliver on achieving their project targets. Getting the organizational systems- including operations management and staffing- to shift from one mode to another without completely shifting the operational and staffing structure- is very hard.

What am I saying? I’m saying that we need to train our long-term development workers to be short-term emergency workers as well. A staff member working on a water infrastructure development project needs to, at the drop of a flag, be ready to become a staff member working on an emergency water project. Staff managing a program to reduce chronic malnutrition must, when the indicators are reached, start managing acute malnutrition instead.

They need to be supported by flexible systems and management, and an organization that is ready to react when thresholds are reached.

***

In summary, a major reason why aid agency presence has not translated into reduced vulnerability to, for example, famine, is due to aid agencies not being geared to do just that:

• Aid agencies do not build their programs around context, but are influenced by donor interest, assumptions, internal capacity and their own models of approach.
• Aid agencies don’t have resources that can be quickly tasked from one mode of operation (development) to another (emergency response).
• Aid agencies’ internal measuring systems do not hold them accountable to how well they reduce the risk of a disaster happening, only on how well they acheive project deliverables.
• And aid agencies own internal systems and staffing do not allow a seamless transition from a long-term development presence to an emergency response.

As such, aid agencies condemn themselves, much like the context they are in, to an endless cycle of superimposing an externally-funded, externally-managed and externally-staffed emergency response program, when in fact they have plenty of funding, management and staff capacity in-place. It’s just not being directed properly.

***

All that said, for correspondents to sit in their air-conditioned offices and take pot-shots at aid agencies for their inability to come up with ‘long-term solutions’ without offering any themselves; to criticise media circuses in refugee camps without ever acknowledging that this is exactly where their story comes from; to slam hyped-up emergency funding appeals while their own publications feed off the drama created by images of dying Africans; and to condemn aid agencies’ slow response to the emergency when the attention which agencies require to raise resources is so largely crippled by the media’s short attention-span with chronic disasters; makes these journalists run the risk of being obtuse, hypocritical, or simply missing the point entirely.

Want to be part of the solution? Get to grips with the complexity of long-term crises and find ways to engage your audience so that donor funding is more forthcoming, understanding more sympathetic, targeting both more flexible and more intelligent. And where aid agencies aren’t doing their job right, don’t just regurgitate pithy soundbites. Take time to find where the holes are, then hold these agencies to uncomfortable account in the public light and show them where change is actually needed.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s about logic and common sense. Let’s be honest about these gaps and encourage change among agencies, donors and the public alike.

It’s not that aid agencies don’t think about long-term solutions. They have the language coming out of their ears. It’s that those solutions don’t match the context and aren’t backed by an operational reality that supports that sort of change. And until they’re forced to change because their survival depends on it, they may not.

***

Complexity coming up in a subsequent post.

Je m’excuse for the plethora of Francophone cliches. I was ranting.

Blue Lagoon Beach Resort: The Real Slice of Paradise

The last time I wrote about Paradise, I was being more than a little ironic. PNG was far from my idea of a good time- however pretty the pictures look. The post was hard, I struggled with the culture and the professional isolation, and for all the good diving and some of the good folks I spent time out there with, it was still a relief to move on to a different stage in my personal and professional life.

I went to Fiji in July. It was my fourth trip to the little island nation. I went once for a family holiday in 2001, followed by a couple of work trips in 2008 and earlier this year, and this latest trip was a combination work-play. The first two weeks were to be spent helping manage an interagency disaster simulation for NGO staff in the Pacific across half a dozen agencies, as well as Fijian government representatives. The third week I was to be joined by my [now] fiancee for a bit of relaxation on a small island.

I’ve always figured Fiji for a nice enough place, without being really special. It’s a bit synonymous with package holidays and honeymoons, a sort of upmarket Bali with fancy hotels belying a fragile national economy. We booked into a resort hotel based on input from TripAdvisor, and despite the glowing reviews I was a little dubious. The idea of packaged meals and a resort-style trip (something I’m not at all familiar with) left me a little uneasy.

Besides, I’ve been to a lot of places. Over 50 countries worldwide. A whole bunch of beautiful beaches and coastal holiday areas- Cairns, Noosa and Sydney in Australia, dozens of places in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Hawaii, Tahiti and Mombasa- to name an incomplete list. I’ve snorkelled or dived in most of those places, swum and relaxed or sunbathed (to some extent) in all.

So when I say that the Blue Lagoon Resort in Nacula is as close to beach paradise as I’ve come across, I know what I’m talking about.

Overview

Where to start? I’m a bit overwhelmed really.

Well, first off, an overview. A brand-new resort, Blue Lagoon pitches itself as a mid-range option to independent travelers that suits budgets of better-off backpackers and flashpackers and young families. It’s quite boutiquey- probably around sixty guests at any one time- and it’s a ways out there too- some four and a half hours’ boat ride from Nadi, and at the top end of the Yasawa group of Islands off Vitu Levu’s west coast.

Nacula is a decent-sized island about 10km long and maybe 2-3 wide at its widest. The resort is situated on a beach shared with one other low-key resort on the west side of the island, giving it stunning views at dusk as the sun sets over the Pacific.

And the beach is the one you’d create if you had a drawing board and 10 million years of geological time at your disposal.

It’s an arc of white sand sloping from a green verge into a turquoise lagoon of calm warm sea. The lagoon itself slides away on a shallow gradient where a natural channel has formed through the coral reef, while small waves lick quietly at the shoreline.

More on the reef presently.

I’d heard nice things about the resort, but had a feeling that, based on the slightly backpacker-ish pitch of some of the material I’d read (they have a backpackers dorm as an accomodation option) I was concerned that maybe the rooms would be a little pokey. I’d settled myself with the thought that even if the rooms were a bit small and/or run-down, the main attraction was being out and about on the beach, so I steeled myself for the worst.

Unnecessary.

The Place

The rooms are delightful. We booked a Delux Garden View room, set back a row from the beach among lush and flowery growth, riddled by sandy footpaths. Stepping inside, the bure was large and spacious, with a high open ceiling, fan, wooden slat-blinds that allowed free-flow of air, and an open-air bathroom with magnificent shower. It was clean, new, well-built, and smacked of simple quality.  It was light. It was airy. And sitting on the foot of the bed, you could look straight out of the front door and (despite not being an sea-view room) see the irridescent aqua of the lagoon itself.

Really, once you hit location and accomodation, you don’t need too much more than that to go right to have a good time. None the less, there was more.

I’m not a fan of Pacific cuisine (sorry to any of my island readers out there). A year in Melanesia didn’t overwhelm me with vibrant culinary experiences, so I was a little suspect at having to package all our meals in with the accomodation, and face the prospect of not getting to choose off a menu. But again, this was completely unnecessary.

The food is great. A wide variety of styles- curries, fish, western, asian and Pacific- is on offer, with meals varying each night of the week, and a limited a-la-blackboard menu option at lunch time as well. The dishes themselves were nearly universally tasty, and the variety and volume left nothing to be desired. You do need to plan ahead a little, as meal-times are set and there aren’t stacks of between-meal options, but we had a little heap of biscuits with us that we never made it through, testament to being well fed. Communal eating didn’t really appeal at first (dinner takes place at shared tables- gasp!), but the barefoot vibe of the place (and the travellers frequenting it) facilitates a really chilled-out opportunity to get to know people.

The Experience

Never a package-holiday traveller, I wasn’t particularly interested in the daily activities that the hotel lays on, but in fact they had some fantastic little trips available, of which we partook several. Snorkelling trips to explore other nearby reefs, sunset and drinks on the sandbar (we missed this one, sigh), a hike up to the island’s highest peak (beautiful views), and a handful of cultural visits as well were all on the menu. A must-do trip is to the Nacula Caves, which involves a series of swim-throughs of saltwater limestone caves at the top end of the island- not for the claustrophobic, but otherwise a unique and fantastic morning which everybody enjoyed.

An aspect of the resort which we really appreciated was the attitude of the management. Run by Australasian expats, the management are accessible, friendly and helpful, and mingle easily with the guests. The local Fijian staff are warm, welcoming and hospitable, as well as being very professional. It’s the sort of place where you get to know the staff by name- and they you.

More to the point, the resort prides itself on its links to the local communities on the island- something that we found especially important in terms of our own values in this area. As well as trips which incorporate, employ and interact with villagers, the resort runs a scholarship fund for students on the island to which cover costs of fees, uniforms and school supplies, as well as contribute to the maintainence of the school facilities. Guests are invited to contribute to the fund, and the resort will match dollar-for-dollar whatever is donated. There is a sense of respect and interaction between the resort and the village, which I hope the management will be able to maintain as the resort ages.

I would be wrong not to return to the lovely reef. Quite aside from the access to a number of dive-sites in the area via the on-site dive-shop (do the shark dive), the snorkelling is, well, unlike any other beach snorkelling I’ve done. While I’ve seen a handful of reefs that are more vibrantly coloured close in to shore (but only a handful), the diversity and volume of fish-life was a delight, and never this accessible, anywhere. If I reel off a bunch from memory, there were Triggerfish, Moorish Idols, Parrotfish, Chromis, Anthias, Unicornfish, Sweetlips, Jackfish, Dascyllus, and a host of other reef favourites. The more special visitors included a shoal of Reef Squid, Stingrays, a huge Octopus and a metre-long Barracuda- all within 10 metres of the beach itself! The reef is accessible at high- and low-tide (and in fact the reef life differs at the two extremes, worth checking out), and more to the point it’s a joy to swim along; the channel provides a shallow sandy-floored passage that drops to a couple of metres in depth for a long way out into the lagoon and which is very comfortable to swim along, and the reef raises a wall along the southern edge of that passage where most of the action is. It’s a safe, enjoyable way to investigate the sea life, and we did it every day, and loved it.  For sheer accessibility to a really exciting reef, this can’t be emphasised strongly enough.

As I referenced in an earlier post, I proposed out at Blue Lagoon (and would have been hard-pressed to chose a better location for it). Before heading out, I dropped Kylie (one of the managers) a note letting her know my intentions and asking if there was anything a little special I could arrange with the hotel’s help. She was most supportive and immediately gave me a list of options, including a lobster dinner for two on the beach (away from the horde), and the option of having a picnic on a secluded private island nearby- both of which I seized upon and both of which were thoroughly enjoyed.

Some Balance, Please?

Words of moderation? Well, a couple probably. First up, once you’re on the island, you can get away without paying much more, but the temptation will always be to do things and have drinks, and these will add up. You don’t use cash out there, everything gets recorded in a book and you pay up at the end, so if you’re not keeping track you could be in for a bit of a surprise- nothing (except some of the activities) is particularly cheap- although it’s not extortionate by resort standards either. That said, having food taken out of the equation is a pretty good thing, and we managed just fine with our bill.

My biggest fear for Blue Lagoon is that as word gets out, the place will get a little overrun. The reviews on Trip Advisor are pretty rave, and with good reason- this is a very special place right now, and somewhere that we will never ever forget (not just because we got engaged out here). It’s been open less than a year. I’d love to think that the management will be able to maintain the relaxed vibe several years into operating with high demand and through-flow, but it’s not impossible to imagine it getting a bit worn-out, so I’d recommend getting in sooner rather than later.

And, well, the cocktail list could probably be improved on. But really, when you’re four and a half hours from the mainland and everything has to come by boat, you can understand why these things might be a little lacking, if that’s your thing.

All up, this was probably my best single hotel/resort experience, mixing a lovely blend of quality, relaxation, activities and experience, all at a very reasonable price. My hat goes off to the team running the place as they’ve created a really special location with a perfect unpretencious vibe. Great for travellers, flashpackers and families with a reasonable budget, this goes right to the top of my list of ‘places you should visit in the Pacific’.

Verdict

Accomodation- 5/5 Light, fresh, new and spacious. The open-air shower has to be experienced to be understood. A range of really pleasant options from budget through laid-back comfort, this isn’t the Denerau Hilton, but why would you want it to be? Ask for Garden Villa 11 and get sea views thrown in for free.

Food- 4/5 Great taste, decent lunch options and a good range of evening meals, despite not having any control over the dinner menu. This would be a total win if there were more between-meal snack options and a wider range of drinks at the bar, but really, I’m just looking for things to quibble about because there’s really not much else to add balance.

Location- 6/5 Amazing reef, gorgeous beach, sunsets and tropical vibe- this has to be one of the best-located resorts in the Pacific. What can I say to the Blue Lagoon’s detractors? Would you like the hotel moved a little to the left?

Activities- 5/5 Relaxation is key here, and relaxation and swimming are free, but the creative options for daily activities mean that for those unable to entertain themselves still have an option to keep busy. Do the cave trip. Not for adrenaline junkies- but hey, this is Fiji. If buzz is what you’re after, Queenstown is to the south. And there’s always the shark dive.

Vibe- 5/5 Just brilliant. Beanbags in front of the open-front bar, barefoot dresscode, bonfires on the beach, and a general emphasis on chill-out throughout. And small enough to keep it personal. Really, really lovely.

Management- 5/5 Friendly, accessible, helpful, flexible and professional. What more would you ask for?

Ethics- 4/5 It’s refreshing to see a resort pay more than just lip-service to supporting local communities. It’s hard to know what impact a throughflow of western travellers will have on the island’s economy and environment, but the fact that they invest in local education is a great thing, and the friendly disposition of both local staff and local villagers we interacted with suggested that the attitude is more than just a marketing ploy for the time being.

Value- 5/5 Value is an entirely subjective term. I appreciate every dollar we spent at Blue Lagoon and don’t have any regrets, as we came away with a set of beautiful memories and a great time. It’s not the cheapest option out there, but my word do you get what you pay for in terms of location and vibe.

Blue Lagoon also gets an extra 5 points from me for that little extra something for laying on a really special time for us as we got engaged. Just fantastic.

Thanks guys for an amazing stay.

Details

You can check the Blue Lagoon website here for tarrifs.

Room rates start from FJD 40 per night for a dorm bed, through lodge rooms at FJD 140, and villas ranging from FJD 209 through to the delux ocean-front villa at FJD 449. Food packages are included at FJD 70 per person per day, and return transfers to the mainland, FJD 276. (FJD 1 = AUD 0.57; FJD 1 = USD 0.51)

All up, it means a mid-range stay option for two adults for a week comes in at around FJD 2,000, so if you couple that with a good flight deal from Australia, it can be quite accessible- though is by no means at the bottom end of the price scale. Worth every penny, in my opinion, but everyone values different things.

Of course for a different extreme in the travel stakes, check out a couple of my tales from West Africa. Now there’s a cheap way to have a travel adventure…

Back in the Headlines: Niger

I spent a year living in Niger from mid-2005, courtesy of a media-labelled ‘famine’ that put about a third of the county’s population at risk of acute food shortages, and during which time tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of children died. From time to time I run into former Nigerien colleagues, and they always tell me, ‘you must come and visit us again’. Of course, they don’t really mean it. Given my role in emergency response, the only time I visit a country is when it’s in a really, really bad way. Nobody wants that.

The title of this post is, unfortunately, a total misnomer. Niger isn’t in the headlines. It’s barely ever been in the headlines. It got a couple of weeks of coverage in mid-2005, courtesy of a BBC camera crew who visited an MSF feeding centre in the east of the country and snapped some shots of a few skeletal children, thus propelling the story of a famine into the headlines. It also made a blip a couple of months ago when a low-level military coup deplaced Mahmoud Tanja as President of the country, all in the name of a more streamlined democratic process. Maybe 2 days’ worth.

Most people outside France confuse the country with Nigeria, can’t prononce its name, and wouldn’t know the proper noun for its inhabitants (Nigerien, versus Nigerian). I remember doing media interviews with Australian press when I was in the field. Standing on some street corner with a Thuriya Satellite telephone against one ear, the conversations always started the same way: “We’re joined now by an aid worker in Niger. Tell us, where exactly is Niger?”

Niger is facing another food crisis. At this point in time, failed rains have precipitated a state whereby 7.8 million people, more than half the population of the country, are facing food shortages. The government and aid agencies in Niger have all sounded the alert, far earlier than in 2005 (when it wasn’t until mid-year, as the country approached the height of the traditional ‘hardship season’ that the media, and by inference the world, finally started to pay the emergency any attention), and the implications are that 2010 will be a worse year for Niger than 2005 was.

Of course, nobody outside NGO circles is talking about Niger at all.

It Just Ain’t Sexy

There are all sorts of reasons why countries like Niger don’t get press coverage, fitting neatly into the category we in the industry refer to as ‘forgotten emergencies’. That Niger is a geographically obscure former French colony doesn’t help. But beyond that, there’s the dynamic of the emergency itself. Complex.

The media labelled the 2005 crisis as a ‘famine’. The word ‘famine’ makes for a great headline. It has an emotional hit with it. We get images in our head like Ken Carter’s infamous pullitzer-prize winning image of a vulture stalking an emaciated toddler in Sudan. We think of Ethiopia in 1984 and Band Aid; of the Biafra famine and airlift of the late sixties; of the great famines of the Victorian period in India which cost millions and millions of lives.

What happened in Niger, of course, was not a famine. Which was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, no country wants a genuine famine. On the other, it meant that as soon as people started to delve into the root causes of what was happening in Niger, they lost interest. It was too complex to stay on the front pages. Not sexy enough.

It’s the old challenge we’ve faced for years in the aid industry. Natural disasters are fast, shocking and simple to explain. From a media perspective, they are attractive. People eat them up. Disasters like the Haiti earthquake, or the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, jolt themselves into the public conciousness and hold headlines- and attention- for weeks. Sympathy- and cash- flows.

By contrast, complex emergencies such as famines, wars, refugee crises and political emergencies are slow-moving, complex, and distinctly lacking in hope. They take far too long to explain to an audience used to the sort of oversaturated ADD-pandering stimulation provided by MTV, Jerry Bruckheimer and Fox News (complete with soundtrack). People lose interest. If they bother to learn even the slightest bit about the crisis, they feel their money will be wasted there. If it’s a war, then anything they give will just get blown up. If it’s a political crisis, then it’ll get eaten by a corrupt system. If a famine, then the children whose lives they save this year will just die in the next hunger season.

There’s more than a grain of truth in this prejudice.

A Beginner’s Guide to Famine

Famine is already a complex proposition. Hunger and starvation are pretty straight forward, but in fact famine is invariably a symphony of contributing elements. It’s food shortages, distribution systems, politics, purchasing power, economics, growing practices, feeding practices, health systems, soil mechanics, climate patterns, and many other things all wrapped up together. Famine deaths are rarely (though occasionally, in acute circumstances) due to actual lack of food, but usually a vicious interplay between nutrient deficiency and disease.

This downward spiral is in itself multipronged and complex- if quite easily explainable if you’re willing to take the time.

We eat food because our body needs certain inputs to maintain healthy life. Energy in the form of sugars, carbohydrates and fats. Building-blocks in the form of proteins. Specific functions supported through the intake of vitamins and minerals- micronutrients. Reduce the intake of any of these things, and the body doesn’t work so well. Reduce them enough over the long-term (chronic malnutrition), and the body doesn’t develop properly- it becomes smaller (stunting) and brain function is reduced. Reduce them enough over the short-term (acute malnutrition), and the body starts to consume itself (wasting), ultimately leading to death if not checked.

In both instances (but particularly situations of acute malnutrition), the lack of essential supplies means that the body is more succeptible to disease. The inbuilt defence mechanisms to fight bacteria and viruses are weaker. At the same time, many diseases also inhibit the correct absorbtion of different nutrients- resulting in a downward spiral, where poor nutrient intake results in disease, which in turn slows nutrient intake. The alternative cycle is equally true where certain diseases (such as malaria, or diarrhoeal diseases) are endemic in a population- disease inhibiting nutrient intake, leading to higher succeptibility to disease.

In both cases, high mortality results. Usually among the most vulnerable members of a population- young children.

There are additional complicating factors. The biggest is hygeine, which contributes to the prevelance and spread of diarrhoeal disease. This in turn is driven both by mechanical factors (is there a sufficient supply of clean water for drinking, washing and cooking?) and behavioural factors (do people wash their hands after going to the toilet and before handling food? Do they boil water?).

A nation’s public health system is the next tier. Is there a network of hospitals, clinics, doctors and nurses to support a population and treat illness? Are there campaigns to reduce endemic and epidemic diseases (such as vaccinations, or mosquito net distributions)? Are there public health messages reaching remote communities to reduce risky behaviour?

Yet another driver that contributes to mortality cycles is population displacement- and particularly, relief camps. Cramming large numbers of people together puts huge stress on food and water production and distribution systems, and existing health care systems. People quickly become under-nourished. Hygeine systems and fecal waste management become difficult. The physical proximity of people to one another vastly accelerate disease transmission rates. The chances of an outbreak of diarrhoeal or viral disease increases by orders of magnitude, and the rapidity with which it can take hold can have catastrophic impacts on existing support networks, and ultimately on mortality.  In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, tens of thousands of ethnic Hutus died in a matter of weeks after diarrhoeal disease ravished displacement camps on the Congolese border.

In short, camps kill.

Malnutrition

The term famine, in the international public health context, relates to a state of excess mortality driven by food shortages- both acute and chronic- across an entire population. In other words, if we call it a famine, we should be expecting to see a rise in the number of people dying in multiple age cohorts, attributable directly to these physiological effects of limited food intake.

In Niger, this was not the case. In fact, during the 2005 hunger season, there wasn’t a single case of a recorded adult death directly attributed to food shortage. The mortality and morbidity was almost exclusively confined to the cohort of children and infants under the age of 5. A nutrition crisis, certainly, but not a famine.

Is this just semantics? Famine, nutrition crisis, surely it’s all pretty much the same thing. People need food, right?

Well, no, actually not right.

Famine, as we’ve already discussed, is a highly emotive word with which we immediately attach baggage. Drought, crop failure, rake-thin Africans and starving babies. People need food, and need it fast. We think famine, we think problem. We think solution, and we think food distribution. Trucks and airplanes loaded with sacks of grain, long queues of colourfully-clad black women with plastic bowls beneath a World Food Program logo. Donors expect it. And, sadly, aid agencies often jump to it as well.

But we’ve already talked about what famine is. It’s so much more complex than this. If we use simple, loaded language to describe the problem, we run the risk of failing to pause and fully understand it. We’ll be easily pressured into jumping into a knee-jerk response. We won’t tackle the problem where it needs to be tackled. And people- children- will die.

Complexities of the Context

Over the last couple of decades, Niger has been consistently ranked at the very bottom of the UNDP’s Human Development Index- somewhere among the poorest three countries in the world, as a rule. This is more than simple economics. It relates, yes, to the fact that the nation produces virtually nothing for the export market except a few crumbly chunks of Yellow-Cake Uranium, but also to the low adult literacy rate, the extremely high birth rate, or the catastrophic infant mortality rate.

Niger exists on the border between Sahel and Sahara- the former being that vast semi-arid band of mixed grass and woodland that stretches from east to west across the African continent and marking the gradual transition from the true-desert of the enormous Sahara to the moist tropical jungles that seethe around the Congo River. The Sahel is characterized by short, intermittent and unpredictable rains, high temperatures, and a current trend towards increasing aridity and desertification. A third of Niger- the southern region- is Sahel. The other two thirds are desert. The vast majority of the country’s population of 15 million live in this southern band, and it is here that the nation attempts to provide enough food to feed itself. 82% of the population are involved in agricultural or livestock production, much of it subsistence. Just 15% of the land area is actually arable.

Niger’s staple is millet, supplemented by sorghum, and small quantities of market vegetables. Millet is a hardy crop which grows well in drought conditions, but which is low in nutrients and hard to digest, particularly by children, and by people who are unwell. It is generally ground into powder and turned into a paste or porridge- something which takes a lot of physical work and energy. Children are typically fed millet from an early age- the traditional weaning age is two, disregarding the health status of the child or the potential benefits of remaining on breast-milk.

Adult males in the family are likely to be fed before children, as they are economically productive and need to be kept healthy to continue bringing resources into the family. Superstitious beliefs in many parts mean that children are not fed eggs (there is a fear that they will grow up to be thieves)- the best and most easily accessible form of protein in most villages. Strong conservative and male-centric values mean that men take the largest and tastiest portions of food, and children and women are fed only after men are satisfied. (There were many reports during our feeding programs of men taking the nutrient paste we had provided to infants and eating it themselves because they liked the sweet taste).

A large portion of the country’s agriculture is subsistence, with any surplus production usually sold on local markets for cash income. Families are large- Niger has a fertility rate of 7.1 children per woman, and it’s common for men to have more than one wife. Water in this arid country is in short supply- 3- 600mm per year, or around a quarter of that of continental Europe. Resource production is spread thin.

In rural areas, all kinds of traditions prevail in child-care. Generations of high infant mortality has resulted in a certain detachment by mothers towards newborn children. In places, mothers will not care for children until they are weaned (when it’s clear that they are not going to die as babies) and the task falls to other women. Colostrum- the thick, nutrient-rich substance that womens’ breasts produce during the first few days following childbirth and which provide newborns with a huge kick-start for life- is considered unclean, and infants are fed water until the mother’s milk becomes ‘normal’. This is a double-whammy, as it means that not only are children denied that boost they need to start life off, but they are often given unclean water, which makes them sick straight off the bat. Assuming they survive (almost 80 in every 1,000 children born in Niger die before they reach the age of 1), they start life off sick, and poorly able to absorb what nutrients come their way, paving the way for high vulnerability to malnutrition.

Roll all of this together, and nearly 170 out of every 1,000 children born in Niger die before they reach the age of five. That’s almost 17%, or more than 1 in 6. Given that the average woman gives birth to 7 children, that means that on average, every woman in Niger will lose at least one child.

In perspective, the infant mortality rate in Australia is 5 per 1,000 live births. The under-5 mortality rate is 6 (in other words, just one out of every 1,000 children born in Australia will die between the ages of one and five, compared to 90 in Niger).

I hope you’re getting the picture.

All this context mumbo-jumbo (that most readers have probably stopped perousing by now) really means that Niger’s population- and specifically, it’s children, are in any given year extremely vulnerable to anything that might reduce their food intake. If, in a normal year, these are the background statistics, and this is the difficulty people have in simply not dying, it means that when the resources available go down, large numbers of people are very rapidly pushed into a place where they will be at risk of death. Which is how, this year, 7.8 million Nigeriens now find themselves at risk of ‘starvation’.

The crisis, as we can see, is not so much an immediate, short-term issue, but rather it’s couched in this long-term situation.

Anatomy of a Crisis

Short-term factors still play a part however, layered into all this complexity. In 2005, the causes were manifold. First off, there were the combination of failed rains across the southern part of the country in the 2004/5 growing season, and a locust invasion which finished off the rest of the crops. So, acute food production shortages.

Merchants with significant purchasing power- many from Nigeria- foresaw that there would be a food shortage, and as soon as the harvests came in, they bought as much as they could from farmers. Many farmers even mortgaged off their coming season’s harvest before it was in- pushing themselves into debt and annihilating their own production and purchasing power to cover short-term needs. Many men left the land and moved to urban areas or out of the country to find waged labour.

As the year progressed and demand for food on the market spiked, it was trickled back onto the market by merchants who were hoarding it- but at hugely increased prices- a simple supply/demand effect. The merchants made a killing. Literally.

This layering of natural and man-made factors pushed a chronically food-insecure context into a critical emergency. Food shortages across the country meant that households simply didn’t have enough to eat. Children- already chronically underfed with low physical tolerance or resistance to nutrient deficiency and disease, bore the brunt of this. They started to waste away by the hundreds of thousands. Many died.

The politics of a male-dominated conservative society compounded things. It was commonplace for men to leave food and seeds locked away in their storehouses. They would take the key with them and forbid the women from touching the food supplies. They would be gone for months at a time without being in contact. We heard of many instances where women refused to take their dying child to a nutrition centre or hospital, because to leave the village they needed their husband’s permission, and he was travelling looking for work.

Into this mix came a government fearful of the implications of an emergency on its population. The last time there had been a major food emergency in the country the government had collapsed as an indirect result. Frightened the same might happen, they became aggressively defensive. Journalists who threw about the word ‘famine’ were kicked out of the country, accused of embarrassing the government which supposedly had everything under control. NGOs had to tiptoe around government sensitivities. Authorities were slow to admit anything was wrong, reluctant to ask for international assistance.

NGOs sent in their emergency teams, loaded with the ‘F’ word and all the professional expectations that carries. Fundraising campaigns were run, small amounts of money raised. We ran food distributions and set up feeding centres. Tens of thousands of metric tons of food aid flowed into the country. Tens of thousands of families received food. Tens of thousands of children were admitted to nutrition programs.

We undoubtedly saved lives.

We undoubtedly failed to prevent some deaths.

Lessons Learned?

Aid reached Niger too little, too late. NGOs rushed in expecting to find an acute famine based on food shortages (failed rains and locusts) but failed to understand the broader context for several months- everything from cultural practices to the ecnomics of supply and demand to a fragile and defensive state structure. While bits and pieces of the long-term situation in Niger certainly began filtering through in the early days, the complexity of setting up a time-critical emergency response and all the operational demands that such a program demands meant that precious little time was dedicated to reflection and understanding. Spurned on by the emotional sense of urgency, key clues were missed.

It took months to re-orient the response to focus on the structural issues. Food distributions- particularly the network of nutrition centres for young children- certainly kept many alive while the process was reshaped. Had the government been more proactive and had the international community (including donors and the international media) pulled their act together in a more timely fashion, that band-aid measure could have prevented far more deaths, and allowed that re-orientation to take place earlier in the journey. As it happened, by the time the context had been analysed and fully understood, donor and media interest had moved on, and there was little additional funding to run essential programs.

But dealing with these big-picture changes is not easy. How does an NGO change the child-care or hygeine practices of a nation? How do they influence government expenditure on health-care networks or vaccination programs? How do they transform the agrarian sector of an entire economy?

The fact is, they can’t. They can tackle the practical issues on a local (village) level. They can advocate to regional and national government officials. But the potential for this big-picture, long-term impact is limited. And sadly, small, short-term changes in a locale which is couched in a much bigger and more complex context tend to be easily undermined.

The Now and the Not Yet

Niger is again on the brink of a food emergency. It remains a severely impoverished country with political upheaval, and a long-standing set of cultural practices, beliefs and dynamics that are unlikely to have changed much over the past 5 years. Programs have been running to tackle chronic malnutrition and food insecurity, but I can’t comment on their efficacy. To the best of my knowledge, millions of children have once again been placed at risk of acute malnutrition, and by all accounts, the lead-in to the current crisis is worse than the lead-in we saw in 2004/5.

Once again, there is no media interest. Once again the year ticks on, and NGOs and the UN have all put out their early-warning reports, and nobody seems to care. Once again, other emergencies overshadow the crisis in Niger- such as the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and China.

Niger’s hunger season traditionally runs from May to September. That is, the period after the seeds have been planted in the ground and last year’s harvest has been mostly consumed, but before the next harvest is brought in. Every year, rural Nigeriens have to struggle to find a way to keep food on the table- either ration their own dwindling supplies, cut back on the number of meals a day, scrounge for bush fodder, or look for waged labour in urban areas. The longer the hunger period, the harder it is to make these coping mechanisms meet the needs of families. It’s April, and we’ve been seeing signs of food stress for months. The hunger season has already been underway for some time.

If the world intervenes now, lives will be spared. If the media can raise public awareness, and governments and individuals give money and resources to respond to those needs, and NGOs can mobilize response programs early enough, fewer children need to die there this year.

If, as generally happens, we wait to see photographs of emaciated children in feeding centres on BBC and CNN, then lives will have already been lost. The time it takes to ramp up response programs will cost even more lives. This is the practical reality of the aid sector.

The government, at least, appears to be picking up on the mistakes of the past, and is already sounding alarm-bells at its level, accepting that there is a problem. NGOs too have been engaged since early 2006 with the structural issues in-country and are far more aware of the context than they were in 2005. Programs would be run differently. Best practice in the management of child malnutrition has come a long way even over the last 5 years. The UN and interagency partnerships are far better established than they were before, and long-term nutritional programs aimed at structural issues have been running. You can read more about how 2010 differs from 2005 in this analysis by IRIN here. But resource needs remain, without which programs can’t be run.

Sitting as I do in an aid and development charity, knowing full well that we can’t create resources out of thin air, I’m frustrated to know what to do. I have no power over what stories the media runs. I can’t swing government policy. I don’t have the ability to tell the Australian public where to give their [generously donated] funding. All I have is the memory of the faces I saw when I was there five years ago. The barren landscape and the fields dotted with sorry-looking stalks of millet. Skinny children with piano-key ribcages and oversized round skulls. Fierce heat. Looking at the statistics sheets on our feeding centres: The number of new children admitted; the number of those recovered; the number of defaulters; the number of dead.

I’m unlikely to be the guy on the ground this time round. My role doesn’t have me travelling quite so much at the moment, and that’s not likely to change into the near future. I have mixed feelings about this. I don’t particularly want to get embroiled in what is a complex, slow-moving and at times seemingly hopeless context like Niger’s. On the other hand, you don’t get involved with a country in a situation like that without leaving a bit of your soul there, and taking a little of its soul with you.

I sincerely and with all my heart hope that people can get their act together and choose to do something to prevent people dying needlessly in Niger this year.

Photos:

1. Niger River at Sunset: The sun sets over the Niger River as viewed from the Grand Hotel in central Niamey.

2. Feeding Centre Mother and Child: A woman and her malnourished child await registration at an NGO-run feeding centre in central Niger.

3. New Admission: A malnourished infant awaits registration at an NGO-run feeding centre in central Niger.

4. Maria: 2-year old Maria exhibits signs of acute malnutrition. NGO staff talking with her mother try and convince her to take her daughter to hospital.

5. Food Queue: Women queue at an NGO-run food distribution in rural Niger.

6. Warehouse: An NGO warehouse stacked with WFP food aid in rural Niger.

7. Millet Stalks: Staple crop of Niger.

8. La Nutrition: An NGO staff member registers an acutely malnourished child into a feeding program.

9. Recovery: A child who has been in an NGO-run feeding program for some time exhibits signs of improvement.

10: Split Peas and Mais: At an NGO-run food distribution, a man demonstrates the food being distributed.

11: Traditional Coping Mechanisms: An elderly woman sells a plate of baked leaves which she has foraged from the bush as a food source.

12: Hilltop Sunset: The sun goes down over the hills beyond the Niger River near Niamey.