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).