Travel blog: "Famine", from New Zealand to West Africa

It's three in the morning. I am in a hotel in South Africa and I am worried -- do we have the visas to get into Niger? And then I get the note I have been waiting on all week: We have the visas!!!

TV3 presenter Rachel Smalley and cameraman Simon Ashworth are en route to meet with me in Kenya. From there, we’ll head across the continent to West Africa, the Sahel region specifically, which is currently affected by a food and nutrition crisis due to drought and insect plagues.

TV3 and World Vision view the Sahel crisis as a valid and important news story which New Zealanders need to hear. Several countries, including Niger are on the brink of famine which also means it’s a race against time.

Getting Nigerien visas has been a nightmare – one filled with much uncertainty. Only now that Rachel and Simon are actually on the plane do I know that they are definitely coming and our trip is really going to happen. I have been working in South Africa for the past week so I’ve had to rely on email updates about the status of the visas (which had to be sent to the nearest Nigerien embassy in Washington D.C!) and whether the team would have them back in time to travel.

As well, I am doing my own 40 Hour Famine thousands of kilometres away from all the hype of the New Zealand scene where 153,000 Kiwis engaged in our campaign to combat global hunger this last weekend. What makes this message different from others is that thousands of New Zealand kids have been touched by seeing the 40 Hour Famine video of Salissou, the boy from Niger whose story has been shared this year.

Salissou gathers millet with his father. Millet is all they eat and this year's harvest has produced only 10% of what their family needs.

I last visited Niger in November. Even then I was gripped by fear for the people there. The signs of famine were all too familiar, all the ingredients were there. The harvest had just finished. People should have been carefree and well-fed. But the farmers looked at me with a worry in their eyes confided that the harvest had only provided 10% of what was needed to get through the year. Now, several months on and well into the hungry season, I am on my way to see the real impact of it all.

My journey begins: How losing changed my life and dreams

My life changed six months ago when I made the decision to stop drinking. Last Sunday, 20 May, I had officially gone six months without a drink.

What did this really mean to my life? It meant I was now going to take focus in things that would be filling my life and not distracting from it. Things that would help my life be fruitful and flourishing. For me, drinking was one thing that kept me away from God.

Within two months of sobriety, I found a job that was fulfilling, a job that was going to wake me up in the morning with excitement rather than just the ring of my alarm going off. I was going to be part of the Face-to-Face sponsorship team at World Vision. Initially on my observation day, it was hard for me to see myself doing this job. It meant I would have to overlook my pride, talk to people from all walks of life, and try and help them understand how they could help enrich someone else's life. But I couldn't walk away; something just told me that I needed to stay. So I did.

I come from a successful background competing in national and international pageants: Miss North Shore first runner up 2010, Miss Earth New Zealand 2010, Miss Tourism Queen of The Year 2011. The reason I first started competing in pageants was to become an influential woman in New Zealand – this was my dream. I had studied Social Work but always had this vision of success that meant impacting people’s lives. I had been successful through these pageants but what I really wanted was to be involved in charity work or have organizations accept me to be a voice or ambassador for their work. But it wasn’t happening.
It was my most recent pageant Miss World New Zealand 2012 that changed my perspective; but not the pageant itself, not the people, but the fact that I didn’t win.

The night of the pageant I believed I was doing very well, confident I would win. The way I performed throughout the competition, my true empathy toward my charity and the purpose of winning the title – those seemed like good enough reasons for me to win.

They called the top eight and I made it and when the final question came, I answered it in front of everyone feeling like I nailed it. But then backstage, two of the other contestants told me I answered the question wrong, that I had answered the wrong topic. I smiled, nervously giggled and walked around dazed in disbelief but I hoped the judges might still understand the sincerity in my answer.

When my name wasn’t called with the three runners up, I remember thinking to myself, Oh my goodness. You’ve done it. You’ve won. Then they called the winner. It wasn’t me. In that moment I realised this wasn’t God’s plan for me. All the prayers I had prayed and the ones from the people I knew… they weren’t a worry to me any more because I knew this was not His plan for me.

Never never too late to make a difference

I have previously had the privilege to speak at the World Health Assembly (WHA) on behalf of World Vision and children around the world.

As you know, health is not only my professional background but an issue I am incredibly passionate about.

If children, and their parents, do not have access to healthcare and advice, particularly in the first 1,000 days of life (from conception to two years), the chances of babies and toddlers dying before their fifth birthday or suffering irreversible stunting and permanent brain damage are much higher. These in turn clearly impact a person’s ability to fulfil their potential.

The 65th World Health Assembly is gathering in Geneva this week (21-26 May). The assembly will discuss issues such as universal health coverage, the Millennium Development Goals, non-communicable diseases, mental disorders and nutrition. While I am not able to speak in person this year, I am delighted that the children World Vision works on behalf of are being well represented.

Your guide to the G8 and G20

On the 18-19 May in Maryland, USA., world leaders are gathering to discuss important world issues. World Vision is advocating for bold commitments to prioritise child nutrition and global hunger issues as well as following through on existing G8 aid promises.

Children in Burundi line up to receive their lunch of fortified rice with beans.

What is the G8 and G20?

The G8 — or Group of 8 — is an annual forum of the leaders from eight of the world’s largest economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The G20 includes these eight countries, as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, and a representative from the European Union.
These annual summits provide leaders an opportunity to highlight and discuss matters that have the potential to impact our world for good. In the past, these leaders have discussed the global economy, security, and development issues. These summits sometimes result in financial commitments made by individual countries to go toward pressing global needs. They are also a powerful symbol of political will and direction for global efforts to solve those problems.

When and where are the G8 and G20 summits?

The eight countries represented in the G8 take turns hosting it each year. This year, the United States is hosting the event on 18-19 May at Camp David, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C. The G20 Summit is being hosted in Mexico the following month in June.

What have they done in the past?

• At the 2000 Summit in Okinawa, Japan, the G8 leaders called for the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, which has led to billions of dollars in the battle against these global diseases — and millions of lives saved.
• At the 2005 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, the G8 leaders promised an increase of $50 billion in official development assistance by 2010 to fight global poverty in Africa.

A few thoughts for Mother's Day

This weekend we are getting together to celebrate my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary and to meet the newest members of our family – Charlie – the first child of a new generation, born to my niece and her partner in Palmerston North. It will be a joyous occasion, a combination celebration of Mother's Day, a wedding anniversary, and the birth of a new child.

Charlie’s birth was complicated and required considerable medical intervention. Fortunately, for most women, especially in New Zealand, excellent antenatal care, supportive midwives and first world support from medical and health services regard childbirth as a natural and relatively uncomplicated process.

In my professional and humanitarian experience, I know that this is not always so.

Statistics predict that this Mother’s Day (13 May) 960 women around the world will die from childbirth related causes. Even more sobering is that we know how to prevent the majority of those deaths.

In Papua New Guinea (PNG), one of the worst places in the world to give birth, an estimated 770 women die for every 100,000 live births (in New Zealand that figure is 14 – albeit, 14 too many).

While I was on a visit to PNG, I had the opportunity to speak with pregnant women, who far from anticipating what should be one of the most joyful occasions of their lives, were in fact acutely aware that they and their child may not survive childbirth. Most had already made preparations with extended family members in that event. This memory resurfaces at every mention of child birth in my mind.

Join the movement for a hunger free world

Hunger…

• Affects 925 million people worldwide, that’s 1 in 7 people in the world who are going to bed hungry at night
• A child dies from hunger-related causes every 12 seconds. That’s nearly three million children a year
• Worldwide, 1 in 4 children don’t get the nutrition they need

In Mali and Niger (where this year’s 40 Hour Famine funds will go to help)... 

• 80 per cent of the people survive off the land which makes living off the essential to life.
• One in five children born in Mali dies before reaching his or her fifth birthday. The figure in Niger is one in four
• More than half the population of Niger – some 9 million people – could be in desperate need of food, the harvest is only a tenth of what families need to survive the year

Hunger is reality that no person should live with — but millions do. World leaders are uniquely positioned to address the complex issues that contribute to global hunger. This May and June, leaders from around the world will gather for the G8 and G20 summits. Hunger needs to be on the agenda, and leaders need to commit to taking steps toward food security and better nutrition. World Vision wants to ensure that the voices of the hungry reach the ears of the people who have the power to make influential decisions.

That's why we've launched HungerFree — a global campaign to end hunger that will urge for world leaders to address the issues that contribute to global hunger.

Recognising the impact of midwives

Sometimes it astounds me how such simple solutions can have such a profound impact. Take for instance Susan Crowther. She’s a midwifery lecturer at AUT who has just returned from assessing maternal and child healthcare in Rwanda for World Vision. What she witnessed would likely horrify most of us, but she got down to business and identified some really easy ways of improving and saving lives. It’s people like her who make me think Millennium Development Goal five -- improve maternal health -- isn’t such an impossible task after all…

Rwanda has among the worst maternal mortality rates in the world; on average 550 women die for every 100,000 births. In New Zealand, the figure is 14. The most frequent causes of maternal death in Rwanda are infections, eclampsia and hemorrhages. Furthermore, 29 babies out of every 1,000 die in the very first month of life.

Susan’s report focused on the quality and accessibility of care available in Kicukiro district in Rwanda’s capital Kigali. The area was chosen because it is home to one of World Vision’s child sponsorship communities – Tubehoneza.

The main reason for Rwanda’s poor maternal and child mortality rates is a lack of skilled birth attendants. The country’s population is close to 11.4 million but there are only 700 qualified tertiary educated midwives nationwide. In New Zealand, there are over 14,000 to service a population less than half that. As a consequence, Susan encountered staff overwhelmed by need and noticeably exhausted.