Dorothee
Germany
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The TV-channel ‘Arte’ says that the most Southern villages of Madagascar currently go through a famine due to too little rain. And gangs of robbers and rustlers from the North of this country attack these villages to steal cattle and food products to sell them somewhere else. Poverty can be found in all of Madagascar you know. During some of these attacks people even got injured or so traumatized they meanwhile spend as much time as possible in some hidden places in the forest instead of the house. This is why the government of Madagascar reduced the number of food deliveries to this famine stricken area and instead ordered some soldiers to guard the few food-deliveries they still send. Some places even closed because of these attacks as shop owners, headmasters, hospital staff etc. were too afraid of these bandits to go to work every day. Sick people even died because of disease, because their healthy relatives were too scared to bring them all the way to the nearest doctor. Farmers limited the time spent on their crop fields – therefore also reducing the harvest – due to feeling too exposed there. I said before that the government still provides famine-stricken areas with food and that the food deliveries are guarded by military. Alas some gangs then just wait until the person has left the guarded place with the food he received. Then they attack. So instead of saving some food for later – or for family members who for one reason or another had to stay home – many people eat as much as possible right where they received it before going home. Thus the loss of food wouldn’t be too big in case of robbery. Some even started eating larves and insects or the roots of the trees they once planted to have some cool shade – not an unhealthy food, but not usual diet for a Madagascan. What is unhealthy however is the fact that some even eat crops – stolen or from their own fields – before they’re even edible. Others store types of food that can be stored for a very long time and don’t need to be cooked – robbers also stole their kitchen utensils due to the metal – meaning they eat more or less the same every day.
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