Why there’s hope amid the hunger in Zimbabwe

The hunger season has come early to a remote area of Zimbabwe where Alister, a 17-year-old boy who looks younger than his years, lives with his paralysed mother, blind grandmother and three orphaned cousins.

Food is usually scarce between October and March in Binga, a dirt-poor district of mud huts, scrawny goats and swirling clouds of dust near the Zambian border.

But this year the hunger season has started in July after crops failed in a devastating drought linked to the El Niño climate phenomenon.

Thousands of children facing death

The hunger is expected to get much worse in the months ahead. Our colleagues in Zimbabwe believe that by Christmas, thousands of children could be facing a slow death from starvation.

Alister, however, is protected by our scheme that alleviates the crisis in communities where some are already going without food for three to five days.

His family is entitled to $42 a month, which is given to them on a sim card that can be used to get cash or goods ranging from vegetable oil to grain at markets and shops.

Begging for survival

The difference this tiny sum has made to Alister’s life is immeasurable. For three years, starting when he was 13, he and his grandmother begged at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe’s most spectacular tourist attraction.

“The most difficult thing was seeing children like me in uniform going to school,” he said “I wasn’t happy to be responsible for the family.”

On several occasions, he was locked up by police who told him they didn’t want his sort in their town.

Back at school

Since the cash transfers began last September, Alister has been able to stop begging, return home with his grandmother and go back to school.

He loves maths and dreams of becoming a mechanical engineer.

His widowed mother Mboo Murimbo, 38, who is paralysed from the waist down after a road accident, beams with pride at this change in the family fortunes.

Sitting on a sheet of canvas in her homestead, a cluster of huts with grass roofs, dung floors and no furniture, she told me she had feared for her son when he was begging.

“I had various painful feelings,” she said.

“I was thinking of Alister on the street, vulnerable. I imagined him being poisoned and beaten when he was sleeping on verandas.”

The family is now able to afford regular meals of corn mash.

We must fight injustice

Alister was briefly off school again in recent weeks because he had no shoes and was too ashamed to attend in bare feet.

Now he’s back, hopeful of helping his family to thrive in one of the toughest parts of the country.

Two things struck me as we sat talking outside the hut where Alister sleeps head to toe with his younger brother: the sheer injustice of a bright, shy boy having to beg for his family’s survival; and the dignity he has preserved despite the many misfortunes that have befallen them.

We must do whatever it takes to fight such injustice and ensure that children like Alister are not only able to live and learn, but develop into young adults capable of building a brighter future for their families, their communities and themselves.

Please donate to our Emergency Fund.

Names have been changed to protect identities.