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Home | Mary's Meals | Mary's Meals getting food to those hit by Famine in Mogadishu

September 2011

Dear Friend

I have just returned from Somalia where I was able to see our first 20 tonnes of food being distributed in the camps of Mogadishu. It was very moving to see the maize porridge that we had flown in from Malawi, normally used to feed Mary's Meals children in that country, being given to some of the 750,000 people facing imminent starvation in Somalia. We are now committed to helping keep 20,000 of those people alive during the next few months, people who have been forced to abandon their parched farms and dead cattle, and walk with their families to war weary Mogadishu in a desperate search for food. All over that city, on the dry sand between burnt out, bullet strewn buildings ruined by 21 years of civil war, people are erecting pathetic little huts of sticks, cardboard, rags and plastic. Every day mothers queue patiently with their thin children for food. Our Likuni Phala from Malawi is a wonderful gift for them and their children. The difference between life and death. In one queue I spoke to Fatima, a mother with two small children. She explains to me that Samson is her son but that Howa, dressed in a brown dusty shawl, is an orphan whose parents died in the famine. She has seven children at 'home'. She had to leave the district of Baay - the latest region to be categorised by the UN as suffering from famine - after all ten of her precious cattle died. Standing next to Fatima in the queue is Fartune who is holding her very sick child. She carried him 165 km to get here. Pinte's head is far too big for his little body and his swollen eyes can no longer see. He is three years old and has been sick for one and a half months. Fartuna has never had the chance to take Pinte to a doctor or receive any medical help for her child. She tells me she has another three children at home. I ask her how they are. 'Yes, they are fine,' she smiles sadly. 'Apart, from the malnutrition. We never have enough to eat. '

We can now send as much food into Somalia as funds allow. If you want to, you can buy some food in Malawi and we will transport it for Fatima, Samson, Howa, Fartuna and Pinte - and some of the other people in Mogadishu whose lives now depend entirely on the charity of strangers. One 20kg sack of Likuni Phala provides 250 meals and costs us around £7.60 , while a tonne of Likuni Phala costs £380 pounds and will provide over 13,000 meals.

Meanwhile our emergency work in neighbouring Kenya also continues to save many lives thanks to your kindness.

If you would like to know more about our project in East Africa please go to
http://bit.ly/oGsoyf where you can see a recent CNN report about our work.

God Bless


Magnus MacFarlane Barrow CEO Mary's Meals