Senegal Children Wail for Food that isn't Coming

GOUDOUDE DIOBE, Senegal -- It's 10 a.m., and the 2-year-old is still waiting for breakfast. Aliou Seyni Diallo collapses to his knees in tears and plops his forehead down on the dirt outside his family's hut.

Soon he is wailing inconsolably and writhing on his back in the sand. A neighbor picks him up and gives him a little uncooked millet in a bowl. The toddler shovels it into his mouth. The crying stops, for the moment.

Each day now is a struggle for the women of this parched village in north Senegal to keep hungry children quiet as they search desperately for food. Aliou's mother can recall only one time when it was worse -- more than 20 years ago.

"I start a fire, put a pot of water on it and tell the children I am in the middle of preparing something," Maryam Sy, 37, a mother of nine, says. "In reality, I have nothing."

Here are the two most alarming things about Aliou's story: He lives in the richest country in the Sahel, the geographic belt that spans Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

And the worst is yet to come.

More than 1 million children younger than 5 in this arid land are at risk in a food shortage so severe that it threatens their lives, the United Nations Children's Fund estimates. In Senegal, which is relatively stable and prosperous, malnutrition among children in the north has already surpassed 14%, just shy of the World Health Organization threshold for an emergency. ::snipping2::

http://www.freep.com/article/20120527/NEWS07/205270521/Senegal-s-children-wail-for-food-that-isn-t-coming?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE