The Team
Personal Reflections
February 2010, Maradi, Niger.
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With Adam & Jimmy’s trip dedicated to raise funds for Save the Children, Alison asked me to write a bit about a trip I made last week to some of our work in Niger and Nigeria.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
I travelled with our CEO -my boss – and the CFO. We were in Niger 3 days, including a long drive down to Katsina in northern Nigeria, then Kano from where we flew home after 2 days in Nigeria. We started the trip by flying through Paris into Niamey, the capital of Niger. While there we visited a couple of Ministries, plus the UN mission. We get excellent access to federal government Ministers of State, provincial government, and others helpful to the work we do. With government having so little resource, we are often seen as a strategic partner in delivering basic social services. Niger sits above Nigeria and below Libya, containing a large part of the Sahara. Acute water shortages are common, with desertification driving the population south, away from the encroaching desert. To see some of our nutrition work , we flew east from Niamey to Maradi, the second largest city in Niger. We travelled for an hour or so in a UN World Food Programme plane.
Photographs 2 & 3 show the landscape approaching Maradi, and as we approached our project by road.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
This project is a health and nutrition project; basically children so acutely malnourished as to be near death. Often they have complications; malaria is endemic, and in this fragile state of existence even a simple problem like diarrhoea from foul water can dehydrate and weaken the child beyond saving. Traditional medicine is about all the mothers can access.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
Save the Children uses heavy duty motor vehicles, often Toyota Land cruisers, adapted for the special circumstances of temperatures that can reach 50+ Celsius. About an hour further driving east we reached our project. It would have been around midday, and a loose queue of women was outside the project gates.
This project serves the community for as far as they can travel to it; even road transport is beyond the reach of most of the women who come to our project, and they would probably walk to the centre, carrying their sick child.
Inside the project it was already full for the day, and we are still a few months away from the peak severe drought time of the year. Even if you have seen this kind of thing before, it hits you very hard. We accompanied a woman and her child through the registration and health assessment process. The project was full of women and their sick children. The silence was awful. Young children are meant to make noise, but these children had no energy, were just about conscious and still, cradled by their mothers. The mother we were following through the registration process looked quite scared. She would have been in her 30’s; we spoke to her quietly in French, translated to her own language Hausa.
She had borne 10 children so far, with just 3 of them still alive. She’d travelled around 50 kilometres to the feeding station. Her child was 13 months old and weighed 3.5 kilos. The child’s arms and legs were no more than sticks, and his face so shrunken. His belly was swollen in the way of starving children. These women are proud and independent, but in coming to our project they have reached the end of their resources. I just couldn’t take photos, out of respect to the child and his mother.
The medical assessment took a few minutes; acute malnutrition, with pneumonia. Amazingly the doctors felt the child could be saved, and so he and his mother were admitted. The mother didn’t react; she was just too exhausted to be able to do anything more.
At this point we felt we were witnessing some kind of miracle. The centre has 4 phases for recovery, each lasting a couple of days. We moved on from admission – a 42 bed shed that had a mother and baby on each bed. Most were also severely malnourished, and the silence hung in the air; the babies weren’t even crying. But, with high protein nutrition, antibiotics and a sugar/water diet, they miraculously start to pull around. We are proud to have a recovery rate of around 97 in every 100 children admitted.
As they pass through the other 3 stages, incredibly for such a short stay, they put on weight and their nutrition levels stabilise. They will most likely be permanently stunted, and have a life expectancy lower than the average of 43 years, but they will live. By the end of the process, they are conscious and - to a degree- lively. Their mothers are happy.
We entered the final stage of the process, and were greeted by whooping and clapping and mothers dancing in our honour. Still in shock at seeing such malnutrition, we were overwhelmed. The mothers knew their children would live, at least for the next little while. We talked with them but even with a translator we had no words. The mothers had nothing to give us, apart from the wish we would be blessed in this life, and receive our reward from Allah in the next. We left quietly, and without much conversation; it’s common to be emotional in this kind of situation, and by keeping quiet you hold it back.
Back in the Land Cruiser I reflected that just to be a part of this is blessing enough.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
With Adam & Jimmy’s trip dedicated to raise funds for Save the Children, Alison asked me to write a bit about a trip I made last week to some of our work in Niger and Nigeria.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
I travelled with our CEO -my boss – and the CFO. We were in Niger 3 days, including a long drive down to Katsina in northern Nigeria, then Kano from where we flew home after 2 days in Nigeria. We started the trip by flying through Paris into Niamey, the capital of Niger. While there we visited a couple of Ministries, plus the UN mission. We get excellent access to federal government Ministers of State, provincial government, and others helpful to the work we do. With government having so little resource, we are often seen as a strategic partner in delivering basic social services. Niger sits above Nigeria and below Libya, containing a large part of the Sahara. Acute water shortages are common, with desertification driving the population south, away from the encroaching desert. To see some of our nutrition work , we flew east from Niamey to Maradi, the second largest city in Niger. We travelled for an hour or so in a UN World Food Programme plane.
Photographs 2 & 3 show the landscape approaching Maradi, and as we approached our project by road.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
This project is a health and nutrition project; basically children so acutely malnourished as to be near death. Often they have complications; malaria is endemic, and in this fragile state of existence even a simple problem like diarrhoea from foul water can dehydrate and weaken the child beyond saving. Traditional medicine is about all the mothers can access.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
Save the Children uses heavy duty motor vehicles, often Toyota Land cruisers, adapted for the special circumstances of temperatures that can reach 50+ Celsius. About an hour further driving east we reached our project. It would have been around midday, and a loose queue of women was outside the project gates.
This project serves the community for as far as they can travel to it; even road transport is beyond the reach of most of the women who come to our project, and they would probably walk to the centre, carrying their sick child.
Inside the project it was already full for the day, and we are still a few months away from the peak severe drought time of the year. Even if you have seen this kind of thing before, it hits you very hard. We accompanied a woman and her child through the registration and health assessment process. The project was full of women and their sick children. The silence was awful. Young children are meant to make noise, but these children had no energy, were just about conscious and still, cradled by their mothers. The mother we were following through the registration process looked quite scared. She would have been in her 30’s; we spoke to her quietly in French, translated to her own language Hausa.
She had borne 10 children so far, with just 3 of them still alive. She’d travelled around 50 kilometres to the feeding station. Her child was 13 months old and weighed 3.5 kilos. The child’s arms and legs were no more than sticks, and his face so shrunken. His belly was swollen in the way of starving children. These women are proud and independent, but in coming to our project they have reached the end of their resources. I just couldn’t take photos, out of respect to the child and his mother.
The medical assessment took a few minutes; acute malnutrition, with pneumonia. Amazingly the doctors felt the child could be saved, and so he and his mother were admitted. The mother didn’t react; she was just too exhausted to be able to do anything more.
At this point we felt we were witnessing some kind of miracle. The centre has 4 phases for recovery, each lasting a couple of days. We moved on from admission – a 42 bed shed that had a mother and baby on each bed. Most were also severely malnourished, and the silence hung in the air; the babies weren’t even crying. But, with high protein nutrition, antibiotics and a sugar/water diet, they miraculously start to pull around. We are proud to have a recovery rate of around 97 in every 100 children admitted.
As they pass through the other 3 stages, incredibly for such a short stay, they put on weight and their nutrition levels stabilise. They will most likely be permanently stunted, and have a life expectancy lower than the average of 43 years, but they will live. By the end of the process, they are conscious and - to a degree- lively. Their mothers are happy.
We entered the final stage of the process, and were greeted by whooping and clapping and mothers dancing in our honour. Still in shock at seeing such malnutrition, we were overwhelmed. The mothers knew their children would live, at least for the next little while. We talked with them but even with a translator we had no words. The mothers had nothing to give us, apart from the wish we would be blessed in this life, and receive our reward from Allah in the next. We left quietly, and without much conversation; it’s common to be emotional in this kind of situation, and by keeping quiet you hold it back.
Back in the Land Cruiser I reflected that just to be a part of this is blessing enough.
Save the Children
We're working flat-out to right the fundamental wrongs that affect children. Too many children are still dying because they haven't got enough food or because they can't get treatment for simple illnesses.
We're changing this, partly by working directly with children, and partly by using our experience and influence to persuade governments and others who are responsible for children to do the right thing by them.
We seek out the most marginalised children, wherever they are in the world, so that means we work in a really broad range of countries, from fragile states like Afghanistan, to developed countries like here in the UK. We work closely with our colleagues in the International Save the Children Alliance, both in our programmes with children and in our international campaigns and advocacy work.
We have high ambitions for what's achievable for children - we aim to inspire dramatic change for children and to involve them in creating that change. We'd like you to get involved too.
We're changing this, partly by working directly with children, and partly by using our experience and influence to persuade governments and others who are responsible for children to do the right thing by them.
We seek out the most marginalised children, wherever they are in the world, so that means we work in a really broad range of countries, from fragile states like Afghanistan, to developed countries like here in the UK. We work closely with our colleagues in the International Save the Children Alliance, both in our programmes with children and in our international campaigns and advocacy work.
We have high ambitions for what's achievable for children - we aim to inspire dramatic change for children and to involve them in creating that change. We'd like you to get involved too.