By Rev. Stephen Okhutu
As we live into Globalisation, we still have people who do not believe that somewhere in the world there are people who are dying because of malnutrition.
A visit in some of the Hospitals in Africa reveals shocking details of how people are continuing to die every day due to malnutrition. This is in most cases worsened by lack of medical care in the Hospitals!
I have been carrying out a tour around Kayunga District to establish the rate at which the Government Programme of Prosperity for All in Uganda had benefited the people.
I was shocked to realise that many children are dying not only because they don’t have food but also because their parents are ignorant of what to do in case of malnutrition.
We discovered a three year old boy, Reagan Kakeeto who actually looked like a nine months old baby just because the parents believed that their mother was bewitched.
The Cultural Belief
In some of the African tribes, there is no such thing as malnutrition in babies. Normally due to the value attached to children, wives still believe that the more number of children produced the more love they are likely to get from their husbands as a reward. In the process you find a mother conceiving as soon as the last baby hits three months!
Due to the burden imposed on this mother during pregnancy, the last baby is likely not to get enough care thus poor feeding. Medically, a child is supposed to breastfeed until 6 months but in Africa any woman who dares this is regarded as a problem to her husband!
Since these babies are not breastfed, given the general baby weakness of the mother, the baby will also be underfed.
Given the belief in Spirits, when the baby gets malnourished, parents will start believing in witchcraft –that either the mother is an adulterer (Adultery is believed to be one of the factor that annoy the Spirits) or someone is bewitching the family.
Like I said earlier on this site; the question you ask yourself plays a bigger role in finding the solution to your problem.
Personally I would not blame these families because after all they labour to find the solution but because they do not know what to do, the result is therefore a perfect reward of ignorance!
This explains why Africans believe in producing many children. That if a mother produces about 9 children; at least 5 are likely to survive. The funny thing is that the production of children in African is inspired by the belief that some are likely to die!
The solution
The parents of Reagan Kakeeto admit that their son was sick but they refused to take him to hospital because they were treating him with local herbs. (The herbs were dried tree roots which they used to bath him with)
When asked how they were feeding him, we were shown a cup of Tea (Hot water with Tea) which he had just finished taking at around 12:30 pm. Because the parents were busy, the boy had just taken tea at lunch time. We found the mother peeling Bananas at noon meaning the boy was likely to take lunch at the time when he would be taking evening tea! Scientifically, the largest potion of Banana is water!
It is funny to note that the people in the villages are the most likely to suffer malnutrition than those in towns. It is likely to find a large portion of unused land in the villages when the residents are importing food from town! The food basket is instead turned into a food market!
The Bible stresses that work is a major avenue to success.
I personally believe that regardless of how much money one has, poverty will still remain a challenge unless we jointly fight ignorance. Africa will continue to be poor until we identify the enemy. Poverty, which we have been fighting all the time, is not the problem in Africa but Ignorance.
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