Sean Callahan, CRS’ executive vice president for overseas operations, recently returned from a trip to east Africa and testified today before a House Agriculture subcommittee about the additional help needed by impoverished Africans affected by mounting food and fuel prices.

“CRS staff around the world has heard stories of families who are stretched to the limits of life itself by the high price of food,” Callahan told a subcommittee hearing of the House Agriculture Committee.

Family members must feed their malnourished children therapeutic milk every three hours until wasting bodies return to health. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS

In some regions of Niger, he said, families have started eating only one meal a day. In dire circumstances, people have resorted to eating anza, a wild plant with bitter leaves, to supplement their diet. In northern Ghana, students have been taking CRS-provided lunches home to share with hungry family members, sharing their only meal of the day.

“Some families must make do with eating less at each meal. They are already skipping meals, or even not eating on a particular day,” he said. “Tragically, they may even have to decide which child or children may have the best chance of survival and which, already so ill and weak, will be allowed to die. These are the agonizing choices the global food crisis is forcing the poor to make.”

Callahan also alerted the subcommittee to what he saw several weeks ago in Ethiopia, where two consecutive seasons of poor rains have led to total crop failure and malnutrition.

“I visited a feeding site run by the Ethiopian Catholic Church and the Missionaries of Charity in a largely Muslim area where, over the previous five weeks, 28 children had died of malnutrition. The conditions there are already dire,” he said.

“I saw one Ethiopian parent bring a very sickly, lethargic child to the center for emergency treatment. The parent told the sisters, ‘I brought this child because I thought he could make it. My weakest child is at home.’

“My first reaction on seeing all this was simply to bite my lip, to contain my emotion,” Callahan said. “My second reaction was anger. How could we let this happen? But the more I observed, I realized that this was a place of hope. I saw kids being fed and stabilized, getting better. Parents were thanking the workers for saving the lives of their children.”

Sean’s entire testimony is posted on the CRS website.

Ken Hackett and Ange. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS

Ken Hackett, the President of Catholic Relief Services, recently visited the Missionaries of Charity — the order founded by Mother Teresa — in Cotonou, Benin. Lane Hartill, CRS’ West Africa Regional Information Officer, accompanied him and writes about the visit:

Ange and his twin sister, Angel, 11 months old, showed up here a few weeks ago. Their mother, who has three other children at home, couldn’t care for them. And it showed. They have thinning hair, twigish limbs and skin mottled with rash. But the religious sisters here are nursing Angel and her brother back to health. The twins have greatly improved in the three weeks they’ve been here. When the sisters think they are healthy enough, they will go back to their mother. The sisters will then visit their home to make sure they are cared for.

As the sisters tell us the children’s stories, the toddlers sit on the floor and stare up at their new visitors. Ken quickly spots Ange (pronounced AHN-je, which means angel in French). “Hey Spike!” he says, as he squatted and picked him up. Ange likes the attention and Ken immediately takes to him. He bounces him in his arms and listens as the sisters tell us that the number of Beninese coming to their center has jumped in recent months. Food prices have shot up here, and the poorest of the poor — those who they serve — can’t manage.

One sister says that one portion of corn in Cotonou used to cost about $.75. Now it costs about $1.25 — out of the reach of many people.

“The poor people are starving because it’s too much for them,” says the sister. “People here are living hand to mouth.”

The head sister shares anecdotes, one after another, that illustrate the problems: A woman went to the local Catholic Church and left a baby boy with another person and told her she’d be right back. She never returned. And the baby, it was later discovered, had a serious wound on his back.

Not long ago, a baby was found in a Dumpster, tied up in a sack. A passer-by heard the cries, opened the sack and brought the baby to the Missionaries of Charity.

But despite the rough circumstances, the sisters say Beninese still have hope and are persistent, many showing up at 5 a.m. to wait for food. “Even though they are suffering day after day after day, they accept it,” says the sister. “It’s amazing how they accept it.” What’s more remarkable, she says, “They have a place in their heart for God.”

“At the Missionaries of Charity,” Hackett says, “you’re in the midst of giants. [The sisters] are not trying to change something; they’re accepting it. They’re not like the rest of us who think we’re going to fix all the problems.”

Carla Brown-Ndiaye, the head of CRS’ Benin office, who is in the process of adopting a little girl from the Missionaries of Charity here, says the sisters are incredible.

“I find them to be just amazing women,” she says.

CRS is working in partnership with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) office of Food for Peace to meet the immediate needs of those most affected by the food crisis in Haiti. USAID is funding a $10 million emergency food security program that will enable CRS to reach 382,500 Haitians during the next 12 months.

CRS Haiti will distribute 7,730 metric tons of cereals, pulses and oils over the next two months to meet the immediate needs of vulnerable groups through orphanages, nutrition programs for pregnant and lactating women, primary school lunches and assistance for people living with HIV and AIDS.

To meet the longer term and livelihood needs of families, a Food For Work program will help people help themselves by improving agricultural infrastructure, drainage and mitigating the effects of ecological degradation.