As the food security situation continues to deteriorate, World Renew and its partners are looking at how to scale-up the response programs. This decision-making relies on having accurate information, but in a place where numbers are absent yet the needs are so obviously overwhelming, the task seems impossible. 

To help fill in the information gaps, World Renew is conducting an extensive needs assessment in Mwandi District in South Western Zambia. Ten young people from the main town head out with their tablets pre-loaded with standardized questions to serve as enumerators.  ‘How many people in your family?’, ‘How many acres of land do you plant?’, ‘How much did you harvest?’, ‘How much are you eating?’, ‘How much food do you have in storage?’  All questions designed to reduce misery to measurable data points, to turn suffering to a simple bar graph that will tell us how to respond.

The current drought is one of the worst in their memory. 

While the enumerators begin their work, talking to people one-by-one, a small group of people gathers under one of the few trees that still has leaves. They are elderly women who have seen hardship and suffering in their lives and have witnessed countless droughts. They tell us that the current drought is one of the worst in their memory. 

91 year-old Twambo Mandande, who walks almost bent in half, talks about the small garden she maintains behind her home. She speaks with a steady determination but malnutrition and dehydration have left her frail. Her skin looks like crepe paper. Sitting near her is a woman, born in 1916, whose tear ducts have dried up leaving her vulnerable to eye infections. Flies are attacking her left eye and she doesn’t have the energy to swat them away.

A Community Liaison Officer, named Rev Sipalo, translates for us but when we ask ‘how much did you harvest this year?’ the response is one that needs no translation. People simply shrug, turning their empty palms up. Where harvests would normally be measured by ox carts they can be counted in a few bags.

We pray that as agents of Christ’s love here in Southern Africa, we will be able to meet the many needs we see before us.

Then we hear a story that has been repeated throughout the week; a story of traders coming to the village to sell maize meal on credit at the height of the dry months. Those first few bags, purchased at a steep price, have already been eaten. Now, more maize meal is provided by the traders once again; this time on a deepening scale of credit. For some families who have sold off all of their assets in order to get by, the scale of debt being accumulated is staggering. It will require several years of bumper harvests to repay. When no assets remain the only thing to trade is hope.

For 17 million people across Southern Africa hope is all that remains. The food has run out and there are nine months before the next harvest. They turn to God, trusting that His grace and provision will sustain them even in this most difficult time, and we join them. We pray that as agents of Christ’s love here in Southern Africa, we will be able to meet the many needs we see before us.