A little girl moved a seasoned North Kildare based aid worker to tears when he saw her playing with a doll made of clay in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Five -year-old Cynthia Sikaenela, from land-locked Malawi in southeast Africa, doesn’t have any manufactured toys, but makes her own out of clay and small sticks she picks up from the ground.
The impoverished girl, her parents and four brothers are among those being helped out of extreme poverty by Ireland’s largest humanitarian aid agency, Concern Worldwide, in a country where an estimated 6.5 million people will need food aid by the end of the year.
Concern board member Michael Kenny, 59, from Maynooth, who has a long association with the aid agency and who was a Concern volunteer in Rwanda in 1994, was visiting Cynthia’s village in Malawi recently when he saw her playing with one of her clay dolls.
Mr Kenny said: “There were a lot of children around, but I met this one girl who was holding her doll.The way she was carrying it and looking at it reminded me of my own granddaughter caring for her doll, and wrapping it in a blanket like a tender fragile baby.So I asked the girl, with her mothers’ permission, to show me her doll.She laid back the baby blanket, which was no more than a rag, and with pride showed it to me. It turned out to be nothing more than some clay held together with sticks.I marvelled at it while inside I was so sad that this was all she had. Her eyes were full of delight as I, a stranger, admired her doll. I was so grateful that my grandchild was born in Ireland; a developed country, and so sad that this little girl was not.A child is a child no matter where they are in the world and we would be aghast to think that a child does not have a toy and, in countries like Malawi, they are forced to make them out of waste and any material they can find.Toys give stimulation; the colours and texture. These children don’t have any of that.”
Michael Kenny, an agriculturalist, who lectures in Maynooth University, and who is also a former town councillor for Trim, Co. Meath, said Malawi needs our help.
He said: “The Malawian people are gentle, welcoming, and very resilient.They are living in a land damaged by frightening levels of deforestation and drought caused by El Nino and climate change – which means their harvests have all but failed.There is no space for harvest loss or late rains, and while Concern is doing great work to help, the scale of the difficulty is huge.”
Between January and April this year Malawi received about 30 per cent of the required 750 to 2500 mm of rainfall, which along with the strongest El Niño weather event in 35 years, resulted in drought, severely affecting crop production.
The problem got so bad that in March this year, the Malawian government declared a state of national disaster and the crisis is getting worse with 6.5 million forecast to be in need of aid next year.
According to Concern, many households in Malwai are already critically short of food because they have harvested nothing and assets are depleted.
Concern Worldwide's Country Director in Malawi, Caoimhe de Barra, said: “The country is experiencing a humanitarian disaster of massive proportions.Not only do we have to ensure that 6.5 million people survive the lean period to next April, we have to help them build up their ability to produce food for the years ahead.Climate Change has hit Malawi hard and will continue to do so. Malawians have done least to cause climate change but are amongst the worst affected by it.The world needs to wake up to its responsibilities and support Malawians to build stronger, healthier and more resilient livelihoods.”
1.
2.