BBC News - Friday, 30 August, 2002
Grethe Ostern, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Here, the food crisis is seriously overstretching extended families' capacity to absorb the needs of orphans, and they are often left with little support.

A sad example is that of six-year-old Evelina Mangiolo - her body reduced to a ribbed chest and swollen stomach.

She and her three-year-older sister, Loveness, are two of Zambia's many orphans.

Some 17.6% - or more than 870,000 - of Zambian children have lost one or both parents.

And 65% of those are orphaned because of Aids.

Where one parent has died from Aids, the probability that the child has already lost or will lose the other parent too, is quite high.

Quest for food

Since their mother died and father left, Evelina and Loveness have been staying with their grandmother in Sinde, in the bush outside of Livingstone town.

Their aunt, 55-year-old Irene Munchindu tells me it is frustrating and horrible to see the girls wasting away.

She and her husband have many children and they simply cannot give any assistance to Evelina and Loveness, and their grandmother.

In pictures: Southern Africa famine

Evelina and Loveness can go for days without a proper meal.

They tell me that they go in the bush in the morning to look for nuts, and come back before dark with what they have collected.

If they find a mwitu (citrus fruit) that is ripe, they eat it right away.

The skin on Evelina's hands feels decades older than mine, even though she has just lived for six years.

Her elder sister's disfigured finger nails are witness to her everyday toiling with a heavy stone to break open the nut shells, and shows the length to which the sisters must go for the smallest amount of food.

Help

I came to Evelina and Loveness's home together with Red Cross volunteers based in Livingstone.

There are not enough resources to help Zambia's orphaned children

Whenever stretched resources allow, they provide the girls with food, tiding them over for at least a few days.

This was the third time in the last seven months that they had brought one kilogram of beans, one kilogram of dried fish and one kilogram of high energy protein supplements for each of the two sisters.

The volunteers tell me that because of lack of funding they receive food supplies only now and then, and what they get is too little.

At the same time they are getting more and more orphans in search of care.

There is an urgent need for more resources to provide food and home for more orphans.

For now, what the volunteers are able to give to children like Evelina and Loveness is just a drop in the ocean.

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