Zimbabwe blog: saving a baby
Updated on 07 November 2008
Guest blogger Helen describes one mother's plight to feed her child when food is in short supply.
My heart was lost the moment I saw baby Tatenda: snuggled up in a towel on his mother's back, the baby sucked his thumb and stared out of shiny, big brown eyes.
"Can you help my save my baby?" his mother asked.
I was taking a small bottle of milk to an elderly neighbour when she stopped me on the road. Her eyes locked onto the milk, the young woman said she wasn't looking for charity or money, just information on where to get some protein for her baby.
"Any protein food," she said, "eggs, milk, cereals - whatever will help my son gain weight."
Right there on the side of the road I heard a story which is being replicated in countless homes around Zimbabwe.
Stella is 22, a single mother and desperately trying to find enough food to keep her child alive. The baby's name is Tatenda, which means 'thank you' in the local language of Shona, and he is 10 months old.
Stella was living with Tatenda's father when she fell pregnant but he refused to accept the child and threw mother and baby out.
The baby's name is Tatenda, which means 'thank you' in the local language of Shona, and he is 10 months old.
When she first found herself alone with a new baby, it wasn't too bad. Stella breast fed her son and he slept most of the time in between feeds and she coped fine.
The problem began when Tatenda was about six months old and needed more than breast milk. There was (and still is) nothing to buy in the shops - no baby cereal, flour, wheat, oats, rice or even bread.
Stella managed to buy some maize (corn) on the black market, had it ground into meal and she cooks this into a thin porridge for Tatenda.
Nothing unusual about that as all Zimbabwean babies are weaned onto maize meal porridge. The problem is that Tatenda can't stomach the porridge, it doesn't agree with him and after every meal the baby coughs almost incessantly, sometimes for hours at a time.
Tatenda is losing weight dramatically and the doctor has told Stella that she must give the baby high protein food as a matter of urgency if he is going to survive.
The only protein Stella's been able to get is peanut butter which she adds to the maize meal porridge. This is a favourite dish here but it hasn't helped Tatenda at all.
He still coughs, retches and vomits after every meal of flavoured porridge and now Stella has resorted to dipping her finger into the peanut butter and Tatenda sucks it off.
This alone isn't going to be enough for her son and that's why Stella stopped me in the street. She needs eggs and milk for her son but can't find them anywhere.
My own son, now a teenager, used to suck his thumb. Maybe that's why helping this baby is the least one mother can do for another.
The dairy farm that supplied the town with milk closed down two months ago. It was the last of four big commercial diaries still functioning and the closure has left all shops without milk, yoghurt and lacto (processed sour milk).
The only milk left to buy must be purchased direct from a small home dairy farm about 15km out of town. The milk is not pasteurized or packaged and if you can find a way to get to the farm at milking time you can buy raw milk if you bring your own container.
Eggs are just as difficult to come by because chicken food is in critically short supply as is maize, wheat, and soya beans which has forced most egg producers to cull their hens and close down.
My own son, now a teenager, used to suck his thumb. Maybe that's why helping this baby is the least one mother can do for another.
An egg every second day and half a cup of milk morning and evening is already working wonders. Add to this a few precious spoonfuls of a wildly expensive, imported wheat-based baby cereal and Tatenda is already gaining weight.
The fate of hundreds of thousands of other hungry Zimbabwean babies being supported by desperately malnourished parents doesn't bear thinking about.
