Families survive on one meal of porridge a day as hunger strikes Kaliro

A number of families in Kaliro District are suffering from hunger as a result of shortage of food following the long dry spell, Daily Monitor has learnt.

When our reporter visited Nawaikoke Sub-county on Tuesday, some families were found having one meal of porridge a day.
At around 2pm, when people are ordinarily expected to have a meal for lunch as by common standards, Ms Aidha Balibonaki was found with her four children, each taking a cup of porridge.
A resident of Mudi village, the 35-year-old widow said she doesn’t have enough food to feed her family.
Ms Balibonaki says all her potatoes, beans and maize gardens were ravaged by the long dry spell.

READ:

“All the crops I planted in July dried up leaving me with nothing to feed my family members. I bought a quarter a kilogramme of posho which I used to prepare porridge for lunch,” she narrates.

At around the same time, her neighbour Edinansi Nampava has not prepared any food for lunch. She is found pounding dried cassava in a motor as the children feed on jackfruit. The cassava flour could measure about half a kilogramme.
“We are suffering from hunger and sometimes we sleep on empty stomachs. We don’t have food and I got this cassava from a friend,” Ms Nampava says.
The 42-year-old mother of seven tells Daily Monitor that her husband abandoned the home, and the jackfruit they are having for lunch was got from the garden where she offered casual labour earlier.

Although the season for mangoes to ripen has not yet started, a number of pupils who don’t get lunch at the nearby Muhirwa Primary School are found on trees eating raw mangoes.
“We don’t take porridge at school. I was hungry that is why I had to come and eat these mangoes as lunch,” says Moses Waibi, a Primary Five pupil.
Kaliro District vice chairperson Ivan Musasizi says apart from Kaliro Town Council, the remaining 12 sub-counties are facing a problem of food scarcity.

He says plantations of maize, beans, potatoes, cassava among other crops were destroyed by the dryspell that started early in March and families have started buying food.
“We appeal to government to come to our rescue because some elderly people who cannot afford to buy food are sleeping on empty stomachs,” Mr Musasizi says.
He adds that weather conditions have become unpredictable and as a mitigation measure government should provide them with irrigation schemes such that during dry seasons, farmers can water their plants.