{"id":934,"date":"2012-01-04T13:06:42","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T13:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ingeta.com\/?p=934"},"modified":"2012-01-04T13:06:42","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T13:06:42","slug":"new-york-times-for-congo-children-food-today-means-none-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/new-york-times-for-congo-children-food-today-means-none-tomorrow\/","title":{"rendered":"New-York Times : For Congo Children, Food Today Means None Tomorrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tSource: NYtimes.com<\/a>. By ADAM NOSSITER<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo \u2014 Today, the big children will eat, Cynthia, 15, and Guellor, 13. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of the little ones, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte, Josiane and Manass\u00e9, 3, 6, and 9.<\/p>\n

Of course, the small ones will fuss. \u201cYes, sure, they ask for food, but we don\u2019t have any,\u201d said their mother, Ghislaine Berbok, a police officer who earns $50 a month. There will have been a little bread for them at breakfast, but nothing more.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt night they will be weak,\u201d she said. \u201cSure, they complain. But there is nothing we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Berboks are practicing a Kinshasa family ritual almost as common here as corrugated metal roofs and dirt streets: the \u201cpower cut,\u201d as residents in this capital of some 10 million have ironically christened it. On some days, some children eat, others do not. On other days, all the children eat, and the adults do not. Or vice versa.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cpower cut\u201d \u2014 in French, d\u00e9lestage \u2014 is meant to evoke another unloved routine of city life: the rolling blackouts that hit first one neighborhood, then another.<\/p>\n

D\u00e9lestage is universally used in French-speaking Africa to describe these state-decreed power cutoffs, but when applied to rationing food it illustrates a stark survival calculus, one the head of a household must painfully impose on the rest. And unlike the blackouts, it is not merely a temporary unpleasantness mandated from on high.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf today we eat, tomorrow we\u2019ll drink tea,\u201d said Dieudonn\u00e9 Nsala, a father of five who earns $60 a month as an administrator at the Education Ministry. Rent is $120 a month; the numbers, Mr. Nsala pointed out, simply do not add up. Are there days when his children do not eat? \u201cOf course!\u201d Mr. Nsala answered, puzzled at the question. \u201cIt can be two days a week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Though residents here frequently gather on crowded street corners to argue politics, their daily struggle may help explain why the capital did not experience sustained mass demonstrations after disputed election results<\/a> were announced last month. Sporadic protests and street clashes certainly erupted, but the margin of survival here is simply too slim for most people to demonstrate for very long.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in Kinshasa are so poor, they are living hand to mouth,\u201d said Th\u00e9odore Trefon, a researcher at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium. \u201cThey simply don\u2019t have the means to mobilize for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond that, the government leaves little room for expressions of popular discontent. Human Rights Watch said that Congolese soldiers had killed at least 24 people<\/a> and detained dozens more after the flawed elections<\/a> that returned President Joseph Kabila to office.<\/p>\n

Whatever the city\u2019s misgivings about the vote<\/a>, daily life itself is enough of a challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the weekend, you\u2019ve got to do everything you can to have food because you are at home with the children,\u201d said Mr. Nsala, the administrator. \u201cBut there are days, for sure, when we don\u2019t eat. I\u2019ll say, \u2018There isn\u2019t enough to eat, so you, maman and the kids, you take it.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Nsala, soft-spoken and precise in his diction, stared at the floor of his modest cinder-block, metal-roofed living room. Fuzzy television news played in the background. His wife was selling vegetables out front, to supplement the meager family income. Don\u2019t ask him about meat.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe, if we make a sacrifice,\u201d he said, pointing out that a pound of beef costs $5.<\/p>\n

At the Berbok household \u2014 where Ghislaine\u2019s husband, a teacher, earns $42 a month, adding to her salary as a police officer \u2014 there has been no fish in a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cD\u00e9lestage. That means: \u2018Today we eat. Tomorrow we don\u2019t.\u2019 The Congolese, in the spirit of irony, have adopted this term,\u201d said Mr. Nsala quietly. He added that the family had eaten the day before: \u201cSo, today, there is nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The food d\u00e9lestage is not new in Congo, a country rich in minerals and verdant landscapes yet also one of the hungriest on earth, according to experts. It is last on the 2011 Global Hunger Index<\/a>, a measure of malnutrition and child nutrition compiled by the International Food Policy Research Institute<\/a>, and has gotten worse. It was the only country where the food situation dropped from \u201calarming\u201d to \u201cextremely alarming,\u201d the institute reported this year. Half the country is considered undernourished.<\/p>\n

Ten years ago, even poor Congolese could expect to eat one substantial meal a day \u2014 perhaps cassava, a starchy root, with some palm oil, and a little of the imported frozen fish that is a staple here. But in the last three years, even that certainty has dropped away, said Dr. Eric Tollens, an expert on nutrition in Congo at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, where he is an emeritus professor at the Center for Agricultural and Food Economics.<\/p>\n

Dr. Tollens blamed the \u201ctotal neglect of agriculture by the government,\u201d which is fixated on the lucrative extraction of valuable minerals like copper and cobalt. Less than 1 percent of the Congolese national budget, he said, goes to agriculture. Foreign donors finance \u201call agricultural projects,\u201d he said, and \u201cmassive amounts of food\u201d are imported in this rich land, so food is expensive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgricultural productivity is simply gone,\u201d he said in an interview, adding that there was no reason for a lush, fertile country like Congo to be importing 20,000 tons of beans a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s worse than Niger or Somalia,\u201d he said, citing two sub-Saharan nations perennially teetering on the verge of famine. \u201cCome on, come on. With so many resources, what\u2019s happening?\u201d<\/p>\n

Half the population eats only once a day, Dr. Tollens wrote in an essay several years ago, while a quarter eats only once every two days.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore, we ate three times a day; now, we eat by d\u00e9lestage,\u201d said Cele Bunata-Kumba, a tennis coach who lives in the Matongele neighborhood of Kinshasa with his wife and 12 children.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, it\u2019s the children who eat,\u201d he said. \u201cWe, the adults, we can sacrifice ourselves. We, the adults, we can get by,\u201d he said, grimacing. \u201cYes, yes, of course, all day. With nothing to eat. No bread. Sure, that happens,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In the immediate term, the street-smart Kinois \u2014 as Kinshasa\u2019s residents are known \u2014 famous for hustling and adept at the art of survival in a harsh environment, must cope. They must feed their children, the top priority, a number of families said.<\/p>\n

In the household run by Elisa Luzingu and her sister-in-law Marie Bumba \u2014 Ms. Luzingu\u2019s husband is out of work \u2014 the children range in age from 7 to 17. D\u00e9lestage means no meals, three days a week. \u201cMy children are studying, so, it is very difficult,\u201d Ms. Luzingu said.<\/p>\n

On the days without food, Ms. Bumba said, the children \u201cwill be very tired and hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a recent gray Sunday, at least, \u201ceverybody eats,\u201d Ms. Bumba said, standing outdoors in the bare courtyard next to a simmering pot of matembele: sweet potato, palm oil, greens and a little fish. There were smiles all around. The food was almost ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Kinois,\u201d said Mr. Bunata-Kumba, the tennis coach. \u201cFor him, eating is day to day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Isaac Ngwenza contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: NYtimes.com. By ADAM NOSSITER KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo \u2014 Today, the big children will eat, Cynthia, 15, and Guellor, 13. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of the little ones, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte, Josiane and Manass\u00e9, 3, 6, and 9. Of course, the small ones will fuss. \u201cYes, sure, they ask for food, but we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[107,142,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analyses-commentaires","category-ce-que-disent-les-medias","category-politique-societe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/congolobilelo.com\/IN\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}