Life Without Wal-mart?

Corn cribs for storing harvested corn.Recently Circle of Hope’s International Director, Karen Roller, tried to explain the challenges of growing, harvesting, and storing enough food to feed a village for an entire year to a group of school children. Puzzled by the complexity of the ordeal, one little boy piped up, “Why don’t they just go to Wal-mart?”

We have a hard time trying to imagine life without Wal-mart, Chinese take-out, frozen pizza or microwave dinners. Can you even imagine trying to plan meals for the next month, much less an entire year?

This week instead of going to the store to pick up groceries, our Malawian friends are hard at work to harvest 10 acres of corn which they will store and use for the next year to provide meals for the children in our programs until the next harvest.

Dried corn.If you follow COH on Facebook, you’ll remember last week we told you about Chrissy, one of our children who was hospitalized for what seemed to be HIV related complications. Remarkably, Chrissy’s blood work came back clear, which means her illness was most likely caused by the scarcity and poor quality of food available during the months before the harvest.

We are excited that this year’s harvest looks like it will be good with promise of stretching through the hungry season. The success of our harvest can be credited to our conservation farming practices, the hard work of our farmers, and surely a measure of divine blessing.

ChrissyOur hope is that Chrissy and hundreds of children like her will never again suffer because of malnutrition. Thanks to our child sponsors, the children’s nutrition programs continue to move us closer to that goal. Click here for information on how you can be involved.