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Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Women crowd a well in the village of Kiral, near Goudoude Diobe in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. Wells in the area are often 75-meters deep, and aren't always able to produce enough water for residents' daily needs.
Since late 2011, aid groups have been sounding the alarm, warning that devastating drought has again weakened communities where children already live perilously close to the edge of malnutrition.The situation is most severe in Niger, Chad and in Mali, but this time it has also pervaded northern Senegal, the most prosperous and stable country in the Sahel.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Mariam Orgho, 3, looks at her mother, Coumba Seck, as she cooks the one small meal of the day for her extended family.
Many sub-Saharan economies are growing fast but the growth rates have not translated into significant hunger reduction, said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark.
Sub-Saharan Africa's growth, now around 4 percent, is accelerating faster than the rest of the world excluding China and India, according to UNDP statistics.
-- Reported by the Associated Press
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Two-year-old Aliou Seyni Diallo collapses in tears after not eating since the day before, inside his family's yard in the village of Goudoude Diobe, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. A neighbor stepped in to help Aliou's struggling mother, giving the boy a bowl of dry couscous to stop his tears.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Men share a meager breakfast of thin porridge and instant coffee, during a break in building a mud-brick house for a neighbor, in the village of Goudoude Diobe, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. With little paid work available, a group of village men, including professional masons, have banded together to build houses for free for several residents.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
A girl follows a village path through a landscape dotted with thorny scrub brush, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
A herder stands on an empty water trough as he surveys his animals, in the village of Mbelone in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. Some residents spend hours each day pulling up water bucket by bucket from the village's 75-meter deep well, but the well isn't always able to produce enough water for the daily needs of the residents and their herds of cattle and other livestock.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Herder Oumar Ba walks away after indicating where one of his cows died, he says, of hunger, outside Dikka village, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal.
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people ( I mean Western civ people) need to understand that poor people don't have social security nor healthcare. with that in mind you may be able to realize that having 10-12 kids is their way of insuring that 2 or 3 of their kids will make it to adulthood long enough to care take of them in their old age. nothing to do with religion.
So what about we provide these folks with drilled water wells and solar powered water pumps to water gardens and animals, along with a contraceptive program to reduce family sizes so that they no longer starve and can stop dying like flies as seen on TV after supper. Is it just me who's bothered seeing toddlers die like underfed animals? That's all I've seen my whole life coming out of Africa, starvation, wars, ethnic cleansing. IF we can sell them weapons I'm pretty sure we can sell them solar panels and water pumps,along with condoms.
Save the environment,
God Bless you for your post. Your last sentence said it all about the weapons, solar panels and water pumps.
I just read this article. Since childhood I remember seeing commercials on TV, etc. of feed the children. That was in the 1970's. I wonder why this is still going on? I wonder because it seems to me that like "save the environment" stated, why don't we put to use some things that would help them become self sufficient? "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" comes to mind. How can we sit back and allow this to go on and on and on? This really disturbs me; I wonder how a woman can even carry a baby full term and deliver when she is so malnourished? I also have seen pics/videos of several chickens, cows, walking around. Are they not butchered? Is there not anything the US can do to assure their government can help their people? We seem to help every other country. I'd like to help but not a lot I could do. I've contacted an organization to see if there is a way I can send care packages to a specific family but doubt that will be a possibility. I'd rather send care packages like I did when my son was deployed. At least I'd know where my money/goods were going to. This just breaks my heart.
It's too bad that these people and their country do not have something that we want, otherwise we could give them massive amounts of aid.