Press Release: WFP REACHES BENEFICIARIES DESPITE LOGISTICAL OBSTACLES

LILONGWE – Due to generous donor support, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is confident that it will be able to successfully scale up its operations and deliver vital food aid supplies during this lean season to 1.3 million Malawians (including pupils benefiting from the school feeding programme) in need of assistance in the coming months despite the deteriorating state of much of the country’s infrastructure.

Recent heavy rains have damaged numerous roads and bridges, leaving many vulnerable communities in danger of being completely cut off. However, thanks to substantial contributions from a number of donors and a remarkable logistics effort, WFP believes that it will still be able to reach all of its targeted beneficiaries.

“While the heavy rains are welcome in terms of the forthcoming harvest, they have made WFP’s life much harder by hampering access to many rural communities that urgently need our help,” said Dom Scalpelli, WFP Country Director in Malawi. “But WFP’s logistics unit is working non-stop to overcome all the infrastructure problems to ensure that all those in need of our assistance receive sufficient food supplies.”

During the lean season between January and March, WFP intends to distribute an average of 14,000 tons of food per month to around 1.3 million beneficiaries, including families affected by drought, floods and HIV/AIDS. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to transport food aid to some parts of the country due to the devastating impact of recent downpours.

WFP road and bridge assessments indicate that parts of Chikwawa, Ntcheu, Nsanje, Phalombe, Salima and Thyolo are now extremely difficult to reach. In addition, an average of 10 trucks per day are currently getting stuck in the mud, forcing transporters to hire tractors to pull their vehicles out of the mud.

While these obstacles are certainly hindering operations, WFP is continuing to deliver food to people across the country, even in the most remote areas. Along with pre-positioning food supplies in temporary storage facilities in some of the worst-affected districts like Nsanje and Chikwawa, WFP has also been relying on a fleet of small powerful 6 ton trucks donated by the Norwegian government.




“We knew that some areas would be inaccessible after the rains so we stockpiled food aid in these districts before the rains intensified so that vulnerable people would still get aid,” said Scapelli. “We have also managed to reach many people in other areas thanks to our own fleet of trucks. We are very grateful to the Norwegians because without these tough trucks, many of our beneficiaries would have been left with little or no hope of assistance.”

WFP is also extremely thankful for the contributions from other donors, including Denmark, DFID, the European Union, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, TNT (a multinational logistics company) and the United States. In addition, the government of Malawi recently donated 10,000 tons from the country’s Strategic Grain Reserves.

“Millions of Malawians have received food assistance over the past few years – and will continue to receive food assistance until the end of 2007 – thanks to the ongoing support of our donors,” said Scapelli. “Donors seldom get the credit they deserve but without their contributions, large numbers of Malawians would be facing an even harsher lean season.”

Most donations are used to procure food in Malawi so boosting the local economy and strengthening local markets. Since 2001, WFP has bought 140,000 tons of cereals, pulses, Likuni Phala and sugar in Malawi, ploughing over US$33 million into the economy.

Nevertheless, WFP Malawi still requires additional contributions to fund its operations, with another US$24 million needed until the end of the year to meet its current shortfall for the regional protracted relief and recovery operation activities.

FAO/WFP Flood Impact Assessment, Lower Shire

Two women assessing their replanted maize crop, Nsanje District.

Legend has it that God intended Malawians to live on the plateau of Malawi, but to work and harvest from the rich soils of the Lower Shire (pronounced Shir-ee). Of course, fast forward a few thousand years and things haven’t quite worked out as God intended: a large number of unfortunate souls live in a basin well below the rest of Malawi in intense humidity and horrendous average daily temperatures of 42 degrees. Oh yes, God was certainly right about one thing – the soil is incredibly fertile, as the sugar plantation owners know, but there’s always a catch – in this case the humidity, floods and drought. Welcome to Nsanje and Chikwawa Districts which make up the Lower Shire. It’s a little cruel, in my opinion, that from the bottom of the basin the soaring ridge of the plateau is visible so that every time you look up you are reminded that not everywhere is already 36 degrees at 7am.

Having heard the legend, last week I was fortunate enough to travel to Nsanje and Chikwawa for a week to conduct a flood impact assessment as part of the joint WFP-FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation – another UN body) mission team. Actually, the ‘team’ was made up of me and Chester, a FAO guy and previous Chikwawa District Crops Officer, and the ever important driver who managed to only get us stuck once. In November some flash floods hit the Lower Shire – quite normal for that time of year, and quite expected. BUT, come January, no one was expecting more floods. At WFP these floods have been disastrous, as transporters carrying food for the Jan-Feb distributions have become stuck in an area called the East Bank, along the River Shire.

According to Ministry of Agriculture assessments huge numbers of hectares had been totally destroyed by the January floods. Unfortunately the very lovely Ministry of Agriculture have a few ulterior motives when reporting crop damage, so we were there to do our own assessment. Unlike in the health sector, where Malawi’s 28 districts are divided into Traditional Authorities (TAs), in agriculture the districts are divided on geographical, not political lines, which results in about 5 or 6 EPA (Extention Planning Areas) per district. We spent a lot of time wandering around fields of half flooded maize, and looking at sand covered rice crops. Why oh why, we pleaded, had these people been advised to plant maize after the first rains?? Why not cassava, rice or sweet potato, which are much more resistant to flooding? At one spot we cowered under a tiny tree for shade and looked out on a field of maize which now looks like a beach. Gradually the whole village came over to us and explained that floods had never happened before in the area since 1997, and that they were 100% reliant on the maize they had planted for food. Luckily most other areas weren’t so dependent on their summer crop (it’s summer here!) and could get by on winter harvests, so there’s no need for food aid. Food aid, in my opinion, can be a hugely dangerous thing.

One night I found myself in a snazzy motel in a place called Nchalo, half way between Chikwawa and Nsanje, with ‘you want regret’ under its sign. Nchalo is your typical Malawian town, strung along a main road with a PTC shop, petrol pump and a whole host of little run-down shops selling very randoms things from bicycle tires to goats (Chester actually bought a goat on the way back). There I sat in a bar drinking a ginger ale next to a guy slowly getting drunk on green Calsberg who asked the same question ever 10 minutes or so. Behind the barman’s head was a novelty item: a television with DSTv disk, flashing scenes of As Time Goes By. It had taken some persuasion and the agreement of the entire bar to change the channel to BBC Prime, but the explanation that it would remind me of home made everyone very agreeable. Of course, there followed 100 questions: where was home, what was I doing in the Lower Shire, how long had I been here, which football team do I support??? They were, for the most part, half drunk, and so ecstatic to oblige a white girl who for some bizarre reason was spending a night down in the Lower Shire. So, we sat in the bar till 10pm, by which time the temperature had dropped to a sleep-able 30 degrees.

I wouldn’t want to live in the Lower Shire, although an awful lot of people do. Illovo, the sugar company, has a huge plantation there, and about 30kms of the M1 road travels alongside the sugar cane. Of course, those 30km takes nearly an hour to drive as the road is so bad as to make you feel that your spine is being compacted on every single bump. Nsanje, the last town on the M1, or the first – depending on your viewpoint – promises the exciting Nsanje Port on the Shire River when you enter the town. Unfortunately this hasn’t been built yet, and comments go that why not build a proper road before building a port. At least the promise of the port has brought a baker to the town.

According to my colleagues, I can now say I have seen Malawi. I have traveled the whole of the M1, from the most Southern tip in Nsanje to the most northerly point in Chitipa, covering 24 of the 28 districts. What can I say? Half the time I want to stay for ever in this beautiful, friendly, well meaning country, and the rest of the time I desperately want to come home.

Problem solving in the New Year

Here follows a typical problem:

My friend Amos over in logistics called me the day after New Year saying that, unfortunately, there wasn’t enough maize meal to fulfill the therapeutic feeding distribution plan for January and February: shortfall of 30metric tonnes, and we need 82Mt. Well, I had checked our pipeline stocks, and apparently we had loads of maize meal and no pipeline breaks until Easter – when it won’t matter anyway. Wasn’t the distribution plan supposed to have been implemented that day, or at least the next day??? Anyway, these questions can be dealt with after some sort of food commodity has been dispatched in place of maize meal.

In therapeutic feeding (the NRUs) we give maize meal to the caretaker of the child. This means the mother (caretaker) will stay at the NRU until the child is better instead of withdrawing the child early because the mother can’t afford to buy food independently. It’s one of WFPs really great, well thought through schemes. Studies have shown that when the caretaker isn’t given a ration the abscondee and death rate of children in NRUs increases dramatically.

So Step one: try and borrow maize meal from another programme. Whoops…the only other programme using maize meal are the refugees and for the next two months they’re getting rice.

Step two: try to replace the maize meal with something else. Ah ha, there is sorghum, and we have tones of it and are trying to get rid of it. Perfect, especially as in the Southern region sorghum is accepted (it’s not in the North – they’ll burn it), and we have the biggest distribution in the South. Oooh, so perfect, we’ll replace maize meal with sorghum in the South. BUT, the sorghum needs to be ground ready for use. Technically CHAM hospitals (about half of the ones we supply) could grind it themselves, but then they’ll charge the beneficiaries, which isn’t so great (admission will decrease, which in this lean season is BAD news).

Step three: Spend a morning on the phone to millers seeing how much it costs per metric tonne to grind sorghum, plus calling round the District MCH Coordinators to see if they’ll accept Sorghum this month (like they have a choice).

Step four: with quote see if we have any money for grinding. We don’t (we’re broke). Help.
Step five: at this point Blessings (National programme officer) suggests that maybe we just don’t send any food. I start pleading. So, in steps the lovely Karla, our Deputy Country Director (who has a lovely house we house-sit for at every opportunity).

Step six: A solution which will cost a lot (but to logistics budget, not ours) and irritate logistics – but it buys us 4 weeks to find more maize meal!! Horray. We continue with 100% distribution of maize meal in the South (a mere 23 Mt) for Jan/Feb, but only do a one month maize meal distribution to the Central and Northern regions (29Mt), there by giving everyone maize meal and allowing us to hunt some more down before Feb. Logistics now hate us due to the cost of transporting such small tonnages twice, and all the other commodities for NRUs (likuni phala, sugar, beans) is still being distributed in a two month cycle. So…watch out for health facility misuse and confusion. But, problem solved for now.

An interesting thing about this time of year is all the maize growing. Even in our ghetto of Area 15 the verges have been dug up for maize. Dave, our housekeeper, without asking, dug up our entire vegetable patch to plant maize (we had words on that). Everyone is talking about maize, and the quantity of rain to quantity of sunshine, and whether this year there will be enough maize. Everything here is so dependent on the weather and this one annual crop. If it fails we enter an emergency, and we are still only just recovering from the last one. I was at a very depressing national Food Security and Nutrition conference where one guy got up and said – ‘all we need for food security is to grow more maize.’ Oh dear – not really the point WFP, FAO etc have been hammering on about for the last 20 years. Food diversification is the one thing that could really work here. With such a great growing season and good climate, products do grow all year round, and no one is saying stop growing maize, only perhaps suggesting growing 85/90% maize and the rest sunflowers or soya, with the odd avocado tree in the villages (vitamins and fats in one great package).

The end of 2006

There’s nothing like a reminder of the UK, and down in Thyolo on the tea estates you could be forgiven for thinking yourself in the Lake District, apart from all the tea, that is. Is there anything more picturesque than a rainbow framing Mount Mulanje, poised behind a field of flourishing maize?

New year was spent in the Southern region, flitting between Blantyre, Thyolo and Mulanje. Pete, another VSO with WFP, lives on the Confordzi tea estate by Thyolo boma, in what must have once been a very beautiful colonial house, which still contains some interesting retro furniture and matching curtain pelmets. His kitchen must surely be the envy of all VSOs: large and freshly painted, with an oven, kitchen table, and looks over his garden. He also has the most extraordinary bedroom, complete with walk-in closet and attached bathroom with full length mirror. It might seem extremely odd that I am listing the contents of a house, but for VSOs in this country such items were very strange sights.

Thyolo boma is a blink-and-you-miss-it type place, set off the main road going to Mozambique, but a convenient 40 minutes by minibus from Blantyre. Its setting is beautiful, with the hills keeping it cool, and the fields of tea keeping it green. Thyolo is also a modestly prosperous district, which is unsurprising considering the number of NGOs working there. But the prosperity is visible in brick houses and slightly fewer un-torn clothes than usual. From my perspective, Thyolo has the highest number of supplementary feeding centres in one district, at remarkably close distances from each other.

On New Year’s eve Nell, Pete and I headed to Chitikali, a small village on the main road to Mulanje, situated at the base of the mountain. It’s a really beautiful spot with the mountain running all the way behind one side of the street. Having missed the daily motolo to the Forestry Lodge down a dirt track 10km away, and the start of the climb up the mountain, we braved some bicycle taxis and marveled at the strength of the guys as they cycled us up and down the track in not especially cool weather. Considering we must have been double the weight of their usual load, what with backpacks and water bottles and not being malnourished, it was quite extraordinary how fast we went.

By the time we got to the forestry lodge and had been pounced on by our self-selected guide Edington and entered the park, it was sweltering, and not even the smell of Mulanje cedar made us feel particularly enthusiastic for the climb ahead. Still, a mere 2 hours later and we were swimming in the waterfall about a third of the way up the mountain with Nell doing her best ‘mysterious girl’ impression. It was a perfect stop, and even Edington didn’t complain about the vegemite sandwich we offered. Thanks goodness it wasn’t marmite!

The journey back was made eventful only by a shortcut by the bicycle taxis. It seemed that wading across a waist-high river was for them a shortcut, and somehow I didn’t believe that Peter, by taxi-driver, who was a good 5 inches shorter than me and about half my weight, would be able to carry me. So Nell and I turned back opting for the road while Pete braved some extremely murky looking water.

Chitikali is not one of those places where you would expect to find a pizza oven. Goodness, even Lilongwe has difficulties on that front. Still, there at the bottom of Mulanje Info is a pizza plaza place, and I don’t know whether it was the climb or the trials of the bicycle taxis, but the pizza there is phenomenal. The perfect ending to 2006.