Families have to survive day by day and decide who in the family is allowed to eat and whether they can skip a meal. Mission East distributes cash so the population can buy the food they need, says Peter Drummond Smith, who has just returned from a monitoring visit to Afghanistan.
Mission East’s Operations Director Peter Drummond Smith has just returned from a field visit in northeastern Afghanistan, where Mission East works. The aim was to encourage the 100 local staff and monitor their relief work in Takhar and Badhakshan provinces.
Here he witnessed a country in acute food crisis. The population can barely think of anything other than what to eat from day to day. And they have to plan who in the family is going to eat how much and when.
This is because the harvest has failed and there is simply not enough food. Mission East distributes cash for food and seeds for the fields, so the families have enough to live on for next year.
Who should eat today?
– I have traveled on field visits many times over the years, but have not often found myself in the middle of a real humanitarian crisis. The people of Afghanistan have to do without the food they need, and they have to make terrible decisions every single day: What meals can we skip, and what can we just eat today? Who in the family should be allowed to eat, and who can do without food right now? It’s hard to be confronted with, but that’s also why Mission East is working in the country.
