Droughts, cyclones, floods – weather torments the people of Mozambique and threatens their babies and young children. Mothers must walk miles to obtain a little food. A nutrition center operated by Divine Word Missionaries is the salvation for many.

Triplets Fausto, Faruque and Faizal are 1 year old and healthy. Their mother, Muachena Amade, owes the fact that her babies did not starve to death to the Pastoral Center for the Promotion of People run by Divine Word Missionaries in Liúpo, a district of 89,000 people in northern Mozambique.

“It was a blessing from God to be accepted here,” said Muachena, who has five other children. “I didn’t have enough milk to breastfeed the kids. After two months, we ran out of money. We couldn’t buy any more baby milk.”

The nutrition center in Liúpo is the only place in the region where malnourished babies and toddlers can be nursed. Mothers come when they cannot breastfeed sufficiently, suffer from breast infections or the babies’ birth weight is too low. Mothers such as Muachena who live too far to walk every day can live at the center.

“The mothers stay until the children are over the mountain. It can take a year,” said Brother Moacir Rudnick, SVD, director of the center. Nine women and 15 children currently live there.

In a kitchen next to the treatment room, freshly cooked vegetables from the center’s garden are used to feed mothers and babies. The smallholders – agricultural landowners whose fields aren’t large enough to be considered farms – do not know such diversity. Usually only beans, corn and cassava grow in their fields. Cassava flour with dried fish is the most common meal. And when there is nothing left, people eat unripe mangoes. Or rats.

Weather can lead to hunger

The weather is relentless in Mozambique. It is the biggest cause of hunger in the nation on Africa’s southeastern coast. 

Cyclones, floods and droughts alternate. In the early months of 2022, two tropical cyclones roared in, destroying crops and roads. The mud huts of the smallholders, covered with straw or grass, cannot withstand these storms. Only the rats multiply and eat the grain that is so urgently needed.

The women living in the nutrition center and those who come for outpatient services tend the center’s vegetable beds, learning which native plants they can grow to better cultivate their own fields. Brother Moacir purchased a solar pump, so the beds are watered sufficiently, and the vegetables thrive. Now he can give seedlings to mothers leaving the center.

“We also teach them which local ingredients can be used to make and enrich baby food,” he said. “Or how to cook for the family matapa, a nutritious cabbage stew with vegetables and peanuts.”

Recipes against malnutrition

The center has training courses regularly. Laura João Castigo, a longtime employee, shows women how to use natural ingredients to prepare a dietary supplement that will help them breastfeed.

“Women often have children very early, at around 14 years of age,” Brother Moacir said. “There’s a lot they don’t know yet.”

Muachena and her triplets returned to their family after 10 months. She wants to help her husband rebuild their hut destroyed by the most recent cyclone. But the next disaster looms: The dry season, when nothing can be cultivated, has begun.

“Without our help,” Brother Moacir said, “many children will starve.”

Battered by insurgency

After centuries of Portuguese colonial rule, Mozambique became independent in 1975. A civil war followed. Only since 1994 have democratic elections been held in the country of 28 million people.

Islamist fighters terrorize the mostly non-Muslim population. Thousands of people have been murdered, and their huts set on fire. Hundreds of thousands are fleeing as a result. In September 2022, the community of the Comboni Missionaries in the province of Nampula was attacked, and a missionary sister was shot dead.

Mozambique is one of the least developed countries in the world. On the Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy and education levels, it ranks 185th out of 191 countries. Seventy percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Forty percent of the residents are younger than 14 years old. About half the adults are illiterate.