| The face of
famine By
Anderson Cooper
CNN
Aminu's dead." Charlie,
my producer, tells me when he gets back from the intensive-care
ward. Aminu was 4. Yesterday he seemed better. Yesterday was a long
time ago.
"Aminu's dead."
That's all the nurses said.
They don't know exactly what killed him. They don't do autopsies
here. No point. No time. He was starving, but that's not what
finally did him in. Aminu's body was riddled with infections, he
might have had malaria, his skin was peeling. "A zinc deficiency,"
they said. I don't even know what zinc is.
The United Nations had been
warning about food shortages in Niger for months, but who pays
attention to press releases? In the television age nothing is real
without pictures: starving kids, bloated bellies, sunken eyes --
Sally Struthers stuff. Warnings don't get headlines, crises do.
Malnutrition sounds so bland. Famine? Now that's a showstopper.
Niger isn't suffering from
famine, however. Adults aren't dying, just thousands of kids. It's a
food shortage, a hunger crisis, severe malnutrition, none of which
is ready-made for TV. In July the U.N. warned that tens of thousands
of children were facing starvation in Niger. The BBC came, so did
CNN, but no other American cable outlets bothered to show up.
When I landed in Niger, the
gin-swilling British businessman sitting next to me stared out at
the endless stretch of sand and scrub brush and burst into tears.
"They have nothing," he mumbled to no one. "The children are dying."
"What's your problem?" the
Air France steward asked as he sauntered by. "People are dying every
day, all over the world." He was tired of dealing with drunks.
The truth is, it's hard to
see the hunger, at first. There are fields of corn and sorghum and
millet. "This isn't a famine, it's a sham-ine," I heard one nervous
newsman mutter, concerned the images weren't going to be what his
bosses back in the newsroom were expecting.
The hunger is there, of
course -- you just have to look closely, let your eyes adjust to the
light. Crops are planted, but harvest is a long way off, and there's
little food to get families through till then. A plague of locusts
and a devastating drought decimated last year's crops, so there's
not much food stored up. The adults can live off leaves and grass,
but the kids need nutrients, and there are none to be had.
In a makeshift hospital set
up by the relief group Doctors Without Borders, hundreds of mothers
sit with their starving kids, waiting for help. The kids can barely
move, can't even focus their eyes. Some cry; others just sit
silently, too weak for tears. Their hair is falling out, their skin,
dry, is cold to the touch, no layer of fat between flesh and bone,
nothing to cushion the pain.
When a child is severely
malnourished, his body breaks down, devours itself. The fat goes
first, then the muscle, then organs -- liver, intestine, kidneys.
The heart shrinks, pulse slows, blood pressure drops. Diarrhea
dehydrates, the immune systems collapse. Feet and hands swell with
water, limbs get riddled with sores.
The kids die from
infections, disease; their little hearts simply give up.
Niger isn't the worst, and
TV likes superlatives. More kids have died elsewhere, more people
have been at risk. It's not the worst, but it sure as hell is bad
enough.
On TV I suppose it all looks
the same. Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Niger. Another year, nameless
children, endless loss in Africa. Of course, all deaths are not the
same. Each child looks at you differently, with a different kind of
fear, a different kind of pain. I've seen more than my share of
children dying and parents weeping, and I still can't imagine what
it's like. Lying on a plastic mat, no sheets, no privacy, medicine
only for the lucky. I suppose some people get used to seeing it, to
covering it. I hope I never do.
The mortgage, bills,
friends, even family -- it all seems so far away. Calls to make,
appointments to cancel -- none of it matters when you're out this
far in the field. With money, of course, you can always survive,
always find a place to stay, food to eat. I stocked up on tuna and
power bars, but eating is sickening when those around you are
hungry.
You tell yourself you're
doing some good, your stories will matter, but the truth is, you're
really not sure. You can't stop the kids you meet from dying; you
realize you're of no use to them at all.
They are buried in unmarked
graves. No headstone, no service, just a quickly dug hole, and a
tiny body wrapped in a shroud. From a distance it looks like an
oversize seed hastily planted in the sand. A little mound is all
that remains. It barely reads on camera.
Aminu was buried hours after
he died. His mother lives in a faraway village and returned home the
very same day.
She's seen death before; her
entire village has. Her mother lost children, her grandmother lost
half of her 38 grandchildren, 13 of her great grandchildren. She
can't even remember all their names.
When a child dies at night
in Niger, they let his mother sleep by his side. I can't get this
image out of my mind. Did Aminu's mom speak to her baby in the pitch
black of night? When she opened her eyes in the morning, did she
think her child was still alive? How many seconds was it before she
remembered?
Aminu's dead.
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