A group member demonstrating how the meals are made

Feed the Children is empowering rural communities in Mzimba to provide under-fives with nutritious food.

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Children shall not live by maize flour alone, but also a diversity of meals made from locally available nutritious foodstuffs.

This opinion has become a lifeline in Mzimba South West, where Mary Banda has seen platefuls of maize-flour porridge leaving her twin babies stunted and malnourished in just months.

“Having twins may seem like a double blessing, but raising ours was a tough test,” she says.

Twins are not a curse like some cultures in Malawi and other African countries assume. They are meant to be blessings, a cause for celebration.

But the woman from the rural background explains: “From the start, we had no idea what raising the twins would entail.

“We had a rude awakening when the boys started losing weight and you could count their ribs at a glance.”

Not that the mother of four did not have enough food. The maize garden surrounding her thatched sun-baked brick house usually gives them a bumper harvest.

Yet, it was her obsession with phala loyera, porridge purely made of ground soaked grain that left her children on the brink.

“After six months of breastfeeding, I started giving them the porridge because we could not afford nutritious meals from shops,” she said.

Health surveillance assistant Jonathan Nyasulu referred the babies to Hehleni Health Centre where a clinical officer referred them yet, to Katete Rural Hospital for nutritional rehabilitation “as a matter of urgency.”

“The twins were severely malnourished which exposed them to diseases. But they were not alone in this predicament,” he said.

He recalls that there were at least 416 children with severe malnutrition in his catchment area which includes Mayereyere, Zamani, Mlongoti, Mbundu and Kenani.

Not anymore. Thanks to child-centred approaches by Feed the Children, Banda and the majority of households are using locally available foodstuffs to make nutritious porridge which locals aptly call thanzi (healthiness).

“It only takes a cup of maize flour, three spoons of vegetable oil, two tomatoes and a few other foodstuffs available in our locality,” she says of the magic portion which saw her twins gain weight from 7.2kg to nearly 10.5kg in just 12 days.

But what is thanzi in a nutshell?

“It is not your usual porridge. It enables mothers nourish their children with porridge made of various starches—from mgaiwa to ground soya beans, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes and sweet beans—mixed with a bit of milk, eggs, oranges bananas and vegetables.

You don’t need money to get all six food groups these days; everything is available in our villages,” says Eunice Mwale, leader of the mothers’ groups called Tiwalere in Mpokonyoka.

For three years, Rose Moyo has been touring villages, uniting every 10 households into groups which meet two times a month to discuss childcare issues and offer close monitoring to those pregnant, breastfeeding and with under-fives.

“Traditional leaders welcomed Tiwalere very well. Women groups are instrumental in registering children, their mothers and giving feedback. So far, reports from the group’s lead persons show underweight and sickly children are no longer widespread,” says Moyo.

Having learnt how to make thanzi from Tiwalere’s community mobiliser Mable Lungu, Mwale is one of the leaders who have been going round the village teaching women how to make the magic portion in their homes and to always present under-five children for growth monitoring.

According to Hehleni CBO coordinator Humphrey Chipeta the initiative has been well received because the people shudder to remember the plight of children, especially orphans and those under the care of widows and the elderly.

“Since 2000, we have been struggling to end hunger, disease and malnutrition among vulnerable children. The arrival of Tiwalere’s growth monitoring and thanzi feeding sessions is really changing lives,” says the man whose organisation has built 11 communities based childcare centres.

Not only has Tiwalere built 11 more CBCCs, but also furnished each with goats to improve the diet and income of household with orphaned and vulnerable children.