Famine Alert: Millions May Die in Drought
Photo credit: FAO
This was published in the spring of 1974 in The Yale Standard.
A drought that is now in its sixth year has brought West Africa to the brink of one of the greatest disasters the world has ever known. Millions are now in danger of death by starvation.
The lack of rain has left vast stretches of land bleached and brittle, unable to produce anything but dust. The large herds of animals that once grazed on the green land are nearly wiped out. A United Nations report says that the situation, which has been building up gradually for years, “has now become catastrophic.”
In some places, children simply curl up on the ground and die because there is nothing else that they can do.
Six nations stretching across the sub-Saharan zone of West Africa—Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Upper Volta, Chad and Niger—have been blighted by crop failures, water sources gone dry, spreading disease and famine.
Out of a total population of 22 million, some 13 million are in acute danger. Half of them are children under 16 years old.
“You see it everywhere: sickly, starving children, their bellies swollen, too weak even to lift their heads or arms….”
One report tells of “children suffering agonizing deaths. You see it everywhere: sickly, starving children, their bellies swollen, too weak even to lift their heads or arms; skeletal animal carcasses lying where they dropped, left in the sun for the vultures to pick at; barren fields once green with crops,” and desperate people watching life and livelihood wither away before their astonished eyes.
As a United Nations report put it, “We cannot ignore what is happening. At this very moment, day-to-day life in the Sahelian region presents constant suffering for its inhabitants. Emergency aid will be required through 1974” and probably thereafter.
The disaster is one of truly Malthusian proportions. It is so big it may seem there is nothing you can do. But that is not the case at all.
If one child came to the table where you eat your meals because he or she was starving, you would see to it that that child got enough food to sustain life. By your act one child, certain to die, would live.
Emergency relief has been going in for the people of West Africa, but what is being done is not enough. They are utterly helpless to help themselves. Thousands will live or die by what is done for them, or by what is not done for them.
There is only one answer to starvation and that is food now. It is not food next month, or food next week, or food the day after tomorrow. It is food now. Those who get it will live, those who don’t will die.
These human victims cannot live on the promise of food. They must have it. Even if the rains come later and new crops are sown and harvested, that will not help those who didn’t have enough to make it through.
One way in which any of us can help is by getting behind those who are actually doing something about it.
There is no overall shortage of food in the world. There is enough, but for a variety of reasons, including a kind of inertia and failure of imagination, it does not get to where it is so desperately needed in time.
Some of the inter-governmental machinery for arranging relief, while possessing a potentially large capacity, is cumbersome and tends to be slow.
The nations are better able to mobilize for wars than they are to mobilize for massive human relief, and they will put more energy and urgency into the former than into the latter.
It is strangely easier for nations to inflict suffering than it is for them to act decisively to alleviate it.
But there are some who are not caught in inertia; they are doing everything within their power to see that help gets to those who need it quickly. Yale’s student organization, the African Famine Relief Organization has been active since last fall. We know personally of others hard at work.
One relief organization is Food for the Hungry, headed by Larry Ward. Its whole purpose is to keep a famine watch on the world, moving food and other emergency relief supplies to points of acute need. They are limited only by the amount of money and food that is made available to them.
In certain cases—notably the famines in Afghanistan and Ethiopia—the conditions were discovered and reported in the press only after the famines had far advanced. Sometimes, specialized organizations are weeks ahead of the general press in discovering famine conditions and in starting to move food supplies toward starving peoples.
Famines on the scale in which millions are affected do not come as a surprise to people who compare world events with what the Bible tells about them. There have been famines at various times, but the Bible reveals that there is to be a great season of famines. There is every reason to believe that we have begun to enter that season.
When Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him and asked, “Tell us, what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
He answered, “Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars…nation will rise against nation, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All this is but the beginning of the sufferings” (Matthew 24:3-8).
In no sense are we counselled to a passive observation of such events. We are urged to “deal your bread to the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, cover him…” (Isaiah 58:7).
Do not talk yourself into thinking that, because you cannot do everything, you cannot do anything.
It is because such events are inevitably ahead that organizations like Food for the Hungry, World Vision, and the Foundation for Airborne Relief are doing everything they can to gear up to get help where it is needed, when it is needed, and to do it speedily.
By years of successful emergency work, the men who head such organizations have proved their effectiveness.
If you wish to receive accurate, up-to-date news of the worldwide food, famine and famine-relief picture, write to Food for the Hungry, Box 200, Los Angeles, CA 80041.
Larry Ward works with Russel O’Quinn, the aviator who flew tens of thousands of pounds of food into Biafra at great personal danger, during the food crisis there.
O’Quinn, a former test pilot, heads the Foundation for Airborne Relief—essentially a mercy mission air force with ready crews. It airlifted tons of grain and other essentials to Bangladesh and then flew to the most gravely deprived sectors. It has a fleet of huge former Air Force cargo planes and men who know how to run them.
Men like this, and others, who are not just deploring the situation, but are taking action to the hilt of their abilities, deserve our confidence and await our help.