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TechnoratiAfrica's Women Last and Least in Food Crisis
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso - After she woke in the dark to sweep city streets, after she walked an hour to buy less than $2 worth of food, after she cooked for two hours in the searing noon heat, Fanta Lingani served her family's only meal of the day.
First she set out a bowl of corn mush, seasoned with tree leaves, dried fish and wood ashes, for the 11 smallest children, who tore into it with bare hands.
Then she set out a bowl for her husband. Then two bowls for a dozen older children. Then finally, after everyone else had finished, a bowl for herself. She always eats last.
A year ago, before food prices nearly doubled, Lingani would have had three meals a day of meat, rice and vegetables. Now two mouthfuls of bland mush would have to do her until tomorrow.
Rubbing her red-rimmed eyes, chewing lightly on a twig she picked off the ground, Lingani gave the last of her food to the children.
"I'm not hungry," she said.
Mealtime conspires against women
In poor West African nations such as Burkina Faso, mealtime conspires against women. They grow the food, fetch the water, shop at the market and cook the meals. But when it comes time to eat, men and children eat first, and women eat last and least.
Soaring prices for food and fuel have pushed more than 130 million poor people across vast swaths of Africa, Asia and Latin America deeper into poverty in the past year, according to the U.N. World Food Program. But while millions of men and children are also hungrier, women are the hungriest and skinniest. Aid workers call malnutrition among women one of the most notable hidden consequences of the food crisis.
"It's a cultural thing," said Hervé Kone, director of a group that promotes development, social justice and human rights in Burkina Faso. "When the kids are hungry, they go to their mother, not their father. And when there is less food, women are the first to eat less."
A recent study by the aid group Catholic Relief Services found that many people in Burkina Faso are now spending 75 percent or more of their income on food, leaving little for other basic needs.
Pregnant women and young mothers are forgoing medical care. More women are turning to prostitution to pay for food. And more families are pulling children -- especially girls -- out of school, unable to afford fees and clothes.
But perhaps the most pervasive effect of the growing global crisis is the ache in the stomachs of millions of poor women such as Fanta Lingani.
Sweeping for pennies
Lingani, who sleeps on a concrete floor, began one recent day at 4 a.m. and dressed quietly in the dark. All around her, children slept on the cracked floor under a tin roof, common conditions in a country that ranks 176th out of 177 on the U.N. Human Development Index.
A year ago, Lingani might have started a small fire to boil herself a cup of weak coffee. But even that is now too expensive.
Such sacrifices led to food riots in February in Ouagadougou, the capital, and towns across the country. Hundreds of people were arrested after they set fires and smashed government buildings to protest rising prices. But for Lingani, the struggle is quieter, and harder by the day, and it starts before the sun comes up.
Lingani, who said she is about 50, walked across the dirt courtyard past the two-room hut where her husband was sleeping in his own double bed, with a thick mattress. The dirt street outside was muddy and steamy from an overnight rain shower.
After a half-hour walk on the black-dark streets, she reported for work and pulled on the long green smock of the Green Brigade, a city program that pays poor women the equivalent of about $1.20 a day to sweep streets two mornings a week.
Lingani picked up a pair of small straw brooms and pushed a wheelbarrow onto a wide, deserted avenue. In the orange haze of streetlights, she bent over at the waist, so far that her bottom was higher than her head, and started pushing red dust into little piles.
The "shssssh shssssh" of her sweeping was the only sound, except for the crowing of a few roosters and occasional laughter from men at an all-night bar down the road.
She worked a section of road about 150 yards long, while a dozen others in the all-female brigade swept along. A tanker truck sped down the street, kicking up a cloud of dust into her face and blowing away her little piles. She coughed, pulled her pink head scarf across her face and swept the same dust all over again.
Lingani swept until the sun came up, pushing her piles onto a small metal dish, then dumping them into a wheelbarrow and finally into a pothole on an unpaved side street.
By 7 a.m., she'd finished her section. But she had to wait an hour for a male supervisor to show up and check her work. In two weeks, she would get her monthly pay of less than $10.
'The job of women'
Lingani walked a half hour back to her house, where her huge family was starting to stir. She took off her smock and picked up a green plastic basket about the size of a shoebox.
Market time. She and one of her two "co-wives," Asseta Zagre, do the shopping on alternate days. Their husband's other wife, the senior of the three, is nearly blind and can't do chores anymore.
Polygamy is common in much of Africa. In this household, the patriarch is Hamado Zorome, 68, a retired police officer whose pension is the family's main income -- but he doesn't tell his wives how much he gets.
The pension of a mid-level civil servant is probably modest in Burkina Faso, where the United Nations says nearly 72 percent of the country's 15 million people live on less than $2 a day.
Zorome also collects a "tip" of 60 cents from each of his two working wives when they get their monthly pay, which he uses to buy the kola nuts he likes to chew.
Lingani and Zagre, who also sweeps streets, said Zorome doles out small amounts of money for them to buy staples such as cornmeal. But the bulk of the family's meals are paid for out of the wives' sweeping wages.
As she prepared to leave for the market, Lingani kept bending over and rubbing her ankles and feet. She said they hurt from sweeping for so long. She has never weighed herself, but she said she can feel a significant loss in her weight and strength in the past year.
Last month's sweeping money was already gone. So she went to her husband, who handed her about $2.50 for groceries. He told her to spend no more than about 75 cents and save the rest for another day.
"Women are born with this job" of feeding the family, Lingani said, as she walked around puddles and past goats tied to trees. "The man has to have his share. And we have to make sure the kids have their share. So we eat less."
Lingani said none of the older boys in the family has a steady job, since work is hard to come by in this poor city. So, she said, the boys mostly spend their days doing odd jobs or playing soccer. What little money they earn they tend to spend on food and beer for themselves.
"A man can never sit at home. They are always out somewhere," Lingani said. "They don't do anything. They don't help."
Lingani walked past small stands where women were selling fruit or water, assisted by small girls. A few men sold bags or charcoal, but most were sitting in the shade and talking.
"Men and women should fight together for the children," Lingani said. "But if the men won't do that, the women have to fight alone."
Zorome, Lingani's husband, said that men don't help with shopping and cooking because "that is the job of women." Like many men interviewed here, he said African culture clearly defines roles for men, who work outside the house, and women, who manage children and meals.
He said that men are willing to work but that jobs are scarce. He would prefer it if his wives didn't have to sweep streets, but "life is much more expensive now."
"Last year, we could eat well, but now, forget it," he said. "My sons don't work, so it's up to me to feed 25 people. That's why the women sweep. We don't have anything, so they have to work. That's life."
Ugly math
On her way to the market, Lingani explained the ugly math: A year ago, she could feed her entire family a nutritious meal of meat and vegetables and peanut sauce for about 75 cents. But now the family gets much lower-quality food for twice the price.
She said the cost of six pounds of cornmeal has risen from 75 cents to $1.50. A kilogram -- 2.2 pounds -- of rice cost 60 cents last year and costs a little more than $1 now. Other basics such as salt and cooking oil have also doubled in price.
Fuel costs have more than doubled for trucks that haul food to landlocked Burkina Faso, helping keep food prices high.
Beef or goat meat is now so expensive -- about $1.20 for a tiny portion -- that the family has given up meat completely, eating cheap dried fish instead. Rather than seasoning their sauces with vegetables and peanuts, they now use the tough leaves of baobab trees, the gnarly giants that flourish here in the dry lands south of the Sahara.
To soften the sour taste of the leaves, Lingani mixes in potash, a paste made by boiling down water strained through ashes from wood fires.
"In the past, our money would last the whole month. We might even have some left over," Lingani said. "But now as soon as it arrives, we spend it."
Dinner happens only if there is a bit of food left over from lunch. Even then, she said, there is rarely enough left for women.
"When the children ask for food, we have to give it to them," she said. "We're mothers."
Never enough
"Are you sure you don't want more?" the vegetable vendor asked Lingani. "Is that enough for your family?"
Lingani, standing in a crowded neighborhood market, had just asked the woman for 30 cents worth of baobab leaves.
"No, it's fine," Lingani said, handing over a few coins.
The vendor shrugged and stashed the coins under a burlap sack of tomatoes covered with a beard of small flies. She handed Lingani back some change, which she counted carefully.
At the next stall, Lingani bought four small onions. As she turned to leave, the seller tossed in a fifth with an understanding smile. Lingani caught her eye and thanked her.
Moving through the churning mass of people, Lingani bought a bag of dried fish, a small plastic bag of salt, two small cubes of beef bouillon and a bag of potash, the paste made from ashes.
In 10 minutes, her shopping was done. She had spent double her budget of 75 cents.
After the half-hour walk home, with the temperature already above 90, Lingani and Zagre started plucking the baobab she bought at the market, saving the leaves and throwing away the thick stems.
For an hour, the two women methodically pounded the rough leaves in a wooden bowl, then dumped them into a pot boiling over a wood fire. Then Lingani added the dried fish and some of the ash flavoring.
"Of course we would prefer something else," she said. "But it's the cheapest thing we can buy, and we can afford enough to feed everybody."
Two hours after she started cooking, Lingani scooped out six bowls of flavorless food. The first was for Zorome, delivered to his hut. He ate it alone, then said he felt as though he needed a nap.
Others were set aside to be shared by the children.
The last bowl, slightly larger than Zorome's, was to be shared by 10 people: Lingani, Zagre and eight small grandchildren. Lingani took two bites before letting five hungry toddlers finish her food.
Near the front gate, half a dozen of the children sat in a circle, playing a game. They had built a play fire out of pieces of bark. On top of it they had placed a little plastic cup, overflowing with street garbage: onion skins and bits of rotting leaves.
They were pretending to cook.
"We're cooking rice with meat!" said a beaming Ousmane, 6, the head chef.
His father, Zorome, watched the game and laughed. He was asked if he would eat again today. Yes, he said, Lingani would make him a little rice or porridge for dinner that night.
Nearby, his daughters and granddaughters heard him and exploded. "What are you talking about?" they said. "Why are you saying that? We have no food."
Zorome smiled sadly and admitted his lie.
"When we have food one day, we have to tighten our belt the next," he said. "But it is very hard for a man to admit when things are not good."
Lingani was still sitting next to her empty food bowl. She had stopped the children from finishing one last lump of corn mush, about the size of her fist.
"The small children will be crying in a couple of hours, so we have to save it," she said. Her voice was small and soft, and she didn't look up from the red dirt. She said she felt "very sad."
"I'm thinking too much," she said.
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
14 Comments so far
Show AllBetheChange and Brad,
Please come write as much as you can at at Oped News where there is an effort to make it clear that farming is political, and the corporations are taking almost total control of food, animals, plant DNA, fish, and water. Liberals haven't yet gotten it what is going on and glaze over at farming articles, not realizing Kissinger said if you control food you control populations and neocons listened. We are losing 1000 ranchers a month, our dairy farmers are being intentionally wiped out, and our farmers are immensely threatened by NAIS which more progressives have never heard of.
Please show up and write there - and here, and wherever you can.
BetheChange
I fully agree with, and support your view that local food production should take preference over exports. Yes, my comment seemed to be just the opposite of that. Thanks for catching me on that.
Sadly, government research money is spent in ways that destroy local markets here. Food irradiation, for example, is designed to allow old food imported into the regions and communities by giant corporations to compete on store shelves against fresh local food.
As I read and comment on articles I learn more. The paradox that high, (fair-trade/living-wage high) farm prices are needed as a/the major way to end world poverty, (at least for billion(s)) but hungry people in vast rural regions devastated by decades of below cost prices can't afford them initially--that's what I was reflecting upon. I'm yet to find an article around here dealing with both sides, consistent with the policy proposals of the National Family Farm Coalition.
So my comment about exports was a sudden thought. I hadn't considered much about the local impact of such harsh, long-term, low farm prices and poverty on local farm marketing in LDCs.
Consider experience in the U.S. during our Great Depression. First we had the farm depression of the 1920s (following the price surge of 1910-1914). Then the 1930s, depression widespread. My grandfather lost his farm during the depression. They went in to check the price of corn and it was just 7 cents per bushel.
I've been listening to some songs from that era: Woody Guthrie on the dust bowl and "hard travelin'." Pete Seeger on "7 cent cotton," and "Brother can you spare a dime." Also, a few years ago we had a hunger meal at our church. One group got a four course meal (four food groups). The second got beans and rice. The third got only rice. One farmer pointed out that his family was in the middle category during the 1930s, beans and corn bread.
Then the New Deal came along, with Henry Wallace. Wallace understood that farm markets lack "price responsiveness" on both supply and demand sides. We don't eat 6 meals when food is half price, and farmers don't plant less at half price. So supply and demand doesn't balance out to keep prices above costs. (Search Daryll E. Ray, APAC, Wallace, "price response.") So Wallace started our price floors with supply management (no subsidies needed,) and on the top side, commodity reserves with price ceilings to release the reserves. In a few years prices were up to parity (living wage/fair trade levels). My grandfather bought a farm and put a down payment on a second one and gave it to my father.
So that's how things turned around here. Parity ratios rose until we had 100% parity or more from 1942-1952. We ended the Great Depression and then had no depression at all after World War II like we had after World War I. (In fact, parity legislation later went though the banking committees as a stimulus package, on the idea that $1 in agriculture generates $7 throughout the economy. Much better than the recent stimulus which basically gives us a credit card of borrowed money to be paid back later.)
1953-1995 price floors were lowered. Then they were ended. None of the subsidy greening and capping proposals from progressive groups and many sustainable agriculture groups for the farm bill here had any price floor, supply management, strategic reserves or price ceilings. They had no anti-dumping or anti-price surge mechanisms. (Only NFFC related proposals had them, including APAC and IATP).
Brad -
I'm 100% with you on your description of how the US's lowballing of prices for basic staples in past decades are deeply rooted causes of the current rise in prices for those same items. I touched on it lightly in my reference to development policies (namely those designed in a Friedmanite-friendly way to counter developmentalism)that conditioned international development assistance on import purchases of those same underpriced food items that you are referring to, thereby decimating local agricultural markets and reducing the majority of farming to the small-scale subsistence level.
What you did gloss over, though, in the last portion of your commentary is that the effects of price lowballing and consequently distorted markets (i.e. high food prices, developing nations forced for years to purchase imported rather than locally produced food, etc) can be overturned more quickly and efficiently by local production and processing for local and regional consumption rather than by export-based agricultural production (re:"well, those that export"). Seeing your references to IATP, however, I'm sure you're familiar with the concept and that this is a point we'd agree on.
The main reason behind my point is the inefficiency (bordering on insanity) of investing in export while the majority of the high-food-price problematic affects local populations.
Even if a country like, say, Kenya, who has the capacity to produce a food surplus well-fitted to export markets (but currently exports more flowers than food, yet another shitty policy supported by global market-logic), were to focus on exports, we need to remember that export-based strategies are becoming decreasingly feasible due to the upward trend in transportation costs (i.e. oil).
The key is to counterbalance the current trend with local production for local and regional consumption, especially in Africa where agricultural markets have massive potential (it breaks my heart to see my continent so fertile yet so poor) for redistributing wealth among equals, rather than (mis)placing faith in global markets that, judging from experience, tend to have the opposite effect.
So here we have another excellent solution to work on to combat the effects of rising prices.
"a city program that pays poor women the equivalent of about $1.20 a day to sweep streets two mornings a week"
What a dignified job. Help beautify the city and not participate in the exploitation of other human beings, and not participate in the destruction of ecosystems. All people should aspire to such noble endeavors.
I think in some ways it's an excellent article. From my perspective, however, it misses the most important issues, so it also fails miserably.
I like the two comments of BetheChange even better. I like the thesis, I like the anger too. Good job. You're just the kind of person, I'd say, that can build a movement. I needed those responses, very much. They help.
Especially, as I've heard, the Washington Post and the New York Times are often copied around the nation. That's a problem!
Both Sullivan and BetheChange miss the points that I think are most important in the BIG picture. Here, though, BetheChange calls for just what I want: "What this article lacks is the kind of language that assists the public in understanding the origins of the global food crisis and finding solutions based on such."
First, Sullivan did emphasize "Soaring prices for food and fuel," which relates to BetheChange's comment about "rising costs of oil which in turn lead to a skyrocketing of food transportation costs." He didn't mention "biofuels."
All of this from both misses some key historical facts. First, Food and fuel aren't quite on the same scale from where I sit. In the 1970s they were comparable, and before that not far off, relative to today. So we said, "a barrel of oil for a bushel of wheat." But now wheat is under $10 and oil has hit $140. So oil gained in price more than 14 times as much. Recent rises in food prices are tiny compared to oil, but of course those living on $2 per day don't buy many oil products!
But it's more than this. Corn, wheat, rice, cotton, soybeans, sorghum grain, oats and barley all lost money in the market place under U.S. farm bills that lowered and eliminated price floors and supply management over 55 years. That's what devastated the rural regional of the world, including Africa, as we dominated world markets, (with 50-90% of the corn, soybean market especially). Bigger in percent than OPEC, we didn't join with Africa and others to get a fair price. We exported below cost (see US Dumping on World Agricultural Markets: 2004 Update), losing money on exports for a quarter century to subsidize commodity buyers, (foreign and U.S.: ethanol and other processors, animal factories and feedlots, food and feed mills) including the world's consumers, including the world's poor.
But cheap, below cost grain and cotton wasn't wonderful for struggling Africa, for example. It was devastating! It was huge in leading to $2 per day, since it drained billions from african rural economies. Actually, especially when economic multipliers are figured on cereal grains (2.7, or 7) Africa's loss due to LOW farm prices was surely in the multi-trillions. Still, if you look at those supporting the fight against this at the National Family Farm Coalition, you'll find most of the "good" groups missing. Only a few of us supported true anti-dumping policies in the 2007/8 farm bill.
Not subsidies. They raise corn prices 3%, or cotton 10% while dumping reached 61% below cost on cotton, and nearly 30% on corn (see anti dumping booklet listed above).
Subsidies are a false hope put forth by free trade WTO and Cargill/ADM/Tyson lobbyists. As NFFC shows, price floors and supply management are needed. Sadly, few groups supported here the kind of supply management that the Africa Group called for at WTO. Search "Africa Group" and iatp. See nffc.
So the missing context is the devastation caused, in a huge way at least, by LOW farm prices, not high, over decades.
Then in this relatively rare situation of higher farm prices (fall 2006-2008), even making up for some of the past losses and seeming to therefore be up where it should be, those in destroyed places are starveing much more quickly, as the article shows.
And that is deadly and must, must be stopped. But the root is in low prices, and so is the long term solution.
Again, the "good" groups were mostly missing on policy activism with the National Family Farm Coalition on this other side: "Strategic reserves" to be released to temper volatile price rises, when they hit the "price ceiling."
I hope this message gets to African immigrants. We need them in our coalition. Don't listen to WTO arguments, or those who, not knowing how the commodity title of the U.S. farm bill and the economics of farm markets work (they lack "price responsiveness," search that and APAC!). Do NOT listen to those who say price floors, supply management, strategic reserves and price ceilings are NOT needed, but instead only subsidy caps or subsidy elimination. Remember, historically, that's what we had in our Great Depression: no subsidies and no price floors! "Hooverism" is what new dealers called it . That's it. We gave Africa Hooverism.
We have Hooverism in the U.S. farm bill, covered by subsidies. All anti subsidy proposals except nffc were Hooverism. But Hooverism for U.S. farmers will not end Hooverism in Africa. Yes, go with NFFC, THEN end ALL subsidies, NOT before you win with NFFC.
Ok, but yes, of course, as happens rarely, the market has ended dumping. Big money is pouring in to Africa's (and the world's) farmers, well those that export. Some of this is caused by biofuels, by the way. Obviously, there are not many people left in devastated rural areas of Africa to pay a fair price locally, so recovery from low prices will be a longer time in coming. That's what must be addressed.
Final word: don't end the farm wealth boom into Africa's rural areas. But stop hunger now. And Read "Crisis by Design" at IATP and "Legacy of Crisis" by George Naylor, et al.
Thanks to all
Zoya, way to call me out: I will definitely consider submitted an article to CD in the near future and have no qualms about that.
It's a great idea....unfortunately though, it will irk me endlessly that in so doing I will definitely not be reaching the same demographic as Keith Sullivan in publishing for the Washington Post. Which is part of my critique targeting not just the author but the fact that this article appearing in a major MSM newspaper serving to disinform the public once again. But as you said, we should be doing what we can instead of critiquing from afar.
On another note, though, I do need to say that I refuse to accept the "he's just a white guy" excuse on behalf of Mr. Sullivan. Being a white guy and clearly part of the best-educated demographic in America, he has no excuse and we all know damn well that there are plenty of his "white guy" counterparts who are adequately informed. I'm just as suspicious of accepting the "white guy" explanation for Keith Sullivan's ignorance as I am of accepting the "african woman" explanation for Fanta's difficulty finding food to feel her family. However, if you were just kidding, Zoya, then I do appreciate your brand of humor :D
Cheers though - all critiques and support much appreciated...
cheers
I suspect President Barack Obama (if such is to be) would get more mail from real Africans living in the real Africa than any U.S. president in history. Hard to imagine anything with more promise to be influential on U.S. policy for the correctly-defined problems of these people.
"Millions of Zimbabweans are threatened with starvation after the widespread failure of the latest harvest brought on by the government's disastrous mishandling of land redistribution, and food shortages in the shops caused by hyperinflation."
At least they can all die Billionaires.
That should make the Corporations happy.
Good post BetheChange! The World Bank and IMF et al. are the world's greatest Loan Sharks. Have NOTHING to do with them.
Be the Change: your critique of Sullivan's piece is powerful, clarifying, and long overdue. Thank you, and please consider writing a more formal piece on these exact points!
BetheChange...Bravo
However, the authors last name is Sullivan, an Irish name which does not make him an anglo-saxon by any means. Most likely he is Irish American. The Irish were colonized once also (and still are in the North). However, his writing style certainly mimics Waspiness on that I agree with you.
wow. The article and the comment were both very informative and eye opening thank you both.
Ok, BetheChange, cool it. Instead of launching an attack on this writer (after all, as you point out, he's only a white guy--what do you expect?), why not write up an article and submit it to CommonDreams for publication? Having been in the business for 35 years myself, it's starting to piss me off when people with obvious writing skills and knowledge would rather bitch about the gap in the published literature, instead seeing this as an opportunity for publishing something themselves.
speak on sistah!
So let me frame my following comments by saying that dealing with rising food prices in West Africa is what I do for a living:
One the one hand - thank you to this article for bringing to the forefront the hardest-hit victims of the global food crisis (and any other crisis to date, for that matter), namely mothers, single women, and daughters. Mothers because they choose selflessly to feed their families first and are strong enough to do so even in the face of starvation; single women and daughters because we are either sold into marriage to compensate our families for the rise on food prices or forced to sell ourselves as job opportunities dwindle with reduced resources, starving markets and dwindling crop yields (the vast majority of female employment in west africa is linked to food production and sale, i.e. food markets).
On the other hand, and as an African woman, screw you, Kevin Sullivan, Sir-Anglo-Saxon-Male for painting us as victims when we are by far the strongest among our communities. We bear the burden of rising food prices and fight it's impact on our families every waking day and for doing so we are warriors. We will not be, and have never been victims. Pity is not a solution to poverty nor is it a means of explaining this situation. On top of that, STOP, for chrissake, capitalizing on hundreds of years of propaganda and history painting africans as dirty savages who eat ash and leaves and twigs. Boabab leaves are only leaves insomuch as spinach or lettuce is, and this woman is not eating a "twig"; this is a specific branch from a specific plant (Miswak) that is used to clean one's teeth after eating.
What this article lacks is the kind of language that assists the public in understanding the origins of the global food crisis and finding solutions based on such. Africans are not starving because we are african, and woman are not eating less simply because they are women (nor are they munching on twigs because they are a combination of the latter two caricatures). Rising food prices are a tsunami that is systematically destroying communities across the global south because of the unsustainable trends specific to today's "globalisation" that have rendered a divided world in which the rich continue to eat more for cheaper while the poor continue to eat less at a higher social and financial cost.
It is due to the maniac method of burning food for fuel as seen in the production of biofuels, namely in the US, which is eating up cropland and using it to feed SUVs rather than circulating it in global markets as initially planned according to WTO agreements.
It is due to the rising costs of oil which in turn lead to a skyrocketing of food transportation costs and subsequently imports - which developing nations have been made to rely thanks to the genius strategies of the IMF, World Bank, USAID, and other " global market-based" development strategists, who have discouraged local production and coerced international importation under the guide of letting the little guy "participate" in global markets.
It is due to climate change, to the accelerating growth of emerging economies such as China and India (and the wasteful habits of a growing global middle and upper class), to the increasing shortage of fresh water supplies and to the decline of the dollar as a global currency.
In short, I'm more inclined to give a sarcastic "thanks" to Mr. Sullivan for this piece of crap, pity-pandering expose that is just about as empty as FANTA - not "Lingani"'s food bowl (this is a first name, buddy. In Africa, first names and last names are not interchangeable. Believe it or not, we have a formal first-name-+last-name system too!! ). He is robbing the public of the information they need and should have to understand the root causes - and potential solutions - of what is really occurring to Fanta and her family.