Starving Zambians turn to poison plants in desperation

The President of Zambia, Levy Mwanawasa, congratulates himself on being the first African leader to reject US aid donations of genetically modified corn and soya, but the starvation affecting millions of his people is reaching catastrophic proportions.

Even the wild fruits, leaves and tree roots on which up to three million Zambians rely for survival are running out in some areas.

With desperation among the rural population intensifying, people have started using the elderly as guinea pigs to test untried and potentially poisonous varieties of roots.

"If we resort to a new type of root from a plant we are unfamiliar with, we first get the oldest person in the village to test it before the rest of us eat it," says Tom Hamonga, 28, a villager in Chimbe in an area of southern Zambia hard hit by crop failure and food shortages. "This must be a person who is already too ill either because of hunger, disease or age that he is going to die sooner or later anyway. If he lives after eating the roots, we then feed them to the children. If he dies, we won't," Mr Hamonga added.

In this isolated village of mud huts 90 miles (150km) from the capital, Lusaka, a narrow dusty footpath leads to Ellie Luwindi's compound, a collection of three tiny, dilapidated pole and dagga huts which she shares with her three children and 10 orphaned grandchildren.

Mrs Luwindi, aged 70, a cousin of Tom Hamonga, is slowly drowning a bunch of roots which she describes as being highly toxic and poisonous in a bucket of water. Mrs Luwindi, her own body withered by the lack of food, invites us to sit under a shade. "I keep them in water for three days so that the poison can swim out," she explains. "After that period, I boil them and eat them with the family. In the meantime we have nothing to eat until I complete this process." The roots in the bucket look barely enough to satisfy one stomach.

Her cousin says he and other villagers experimented with the roots in a nearby small dam before it dried up because of lack of rain. They spread the roots on top of the water. Every living creature in the dam perished.

In the local graveyard more than two dozen shallow graves have appeared over the past few months. There are no official statistics, or confirmation of anyone who has died of hunger. However, the fact that people are succumbing to HIV and severe malnutrition is self-evident.

Apart from our pitiful discussion about roots, the only other noise from Mrs Luwindi's homestead is the rhythmic clack of stone against stone as a group of her young, emaciated grandchildren pound open the hard, wild mupandulamabondo nuts. They hope to extract a dark small nut at the core of the hard outer shell to supplement their wild roots.

The children have been pulled out of school to help their grandmother in the daily battle for survival. On her own she cannot collect sufficient quantities of the bush nuts for which the villagers have to compete with monkeys and baboons.

A few yards away at Haulin Mwemba's compound a group of children cluster around her with their swollen faces and bodies – evidence of severe malnutrition. They are all peeling raw, unripe mangoes. Mrs Mwemba explains that the aim of the peeling is to keep the white part of the fruit skin, which is then ground for porridge in place of maize meal. That has been the only food for her four children for the whole week.

The cold hearth in her traditional cooking hut indicates that no fire has been lit there for some time.

Word quickly spreads that there are strangers in the village asking about the food situation. By the time we reach the home of the Malambo family, where we hoped to meet an aide to the tribal elder, Chief Hanjalika, a group of about 100 women and children has already assembled. They think we have come to distribute food. "If they had known that you are only here to hear stories of our suffering, they wouldn't have assembled," says Ellie Malambo, a wife of the chief's aide.

The villagers none the less relate their ordeals. Women tell of travelling up to 25 miles to fetch water, of people feeding on soil, tree leaves, and even their own domestic pets.

Most villagers are unaware that only 12 miles away, at Mazambuka business centre, thousands of tonnes of relief maize donated by the US is sitting in warehouses waiting to be shipped back out of the country.

Zambia's Agriculture Minister, Mungia Sikatama, insists that there are enough alternative foods for Zambia to feed its people and issues of starvation are being exaggerated. But the villagers of Chimbe say they have not seen any government officials in the area except the aid agency officials who came on a fact-finding mission and "went for ever".

To donate to Unicef's southern Africa children's appeal call 08457 312 312 (24-hour local rate) or go to Unicef's website www.unicef.org.uk/emergency