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Chad: Slovenian basketball star helps children in Chad: Part I

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Source: European Commission Humanitarian Aid department, UN Children's Fund
Country: Chad

17/10/2014

In order to raise awareness to children in emergencies and make their voices heard, the EU and the UN Children Fund (UNICEF) have launched a joint campaign, involving national celebrities from various EU countries. One of them was Slovenian basketball player, Boštjan Nachbar, who's currently playing for FC Barcelona. Boštjan travelled to Chad to shoot a video about undernourished children. In this post, he shares some of the unforgettable moments of his trip.

This summer I was invited by UNICEF Slovenia and the EU to participate in the 'Voices of Children in Emergencies' campaign, and I responded gladly. Immediately I wanted to learn more about the contents of the project, and about the expedition to Chad where I was supposed to meet the children, to hear their stories, and to lend to them my voice through my social network contacts. Until then I had followed the happenings in crisis areas through television, but by participating in the project I got the opportunity to get acquainted with the situation there by myself.

Chad is one of the countries in the Sahel region, for many years facing severe shortage of food. Malnutrition in combination with some other diseases is the main cause of mortality for children up to five years of age; in Chad the number of deaths of young children is the third largest in the world. More than one third of the children are chronically undernourished, in some parts of the country even two thirds of the children are affected. The lives of the children are threatened by poverty and lack of basic health care.

A week after the end of the season I organised a basketball camp, and two days later I was already in the plane on my way to Central Africa. The travel took 15 hours, from Venice through Paris to n'Djamena, the capital of Chad. As soon as we landed it became obvious that taking photo was forbidden. Later we learned that some locals believe that by taking their photographs we steal their faces, and through that their souls as well. Already during the passport control the power went out. The customs procedure for the luggage at the airport was quite chaotic when looked through our eyes.

The next morning we visited the UNICEF office where the security measures were explained to us, i.e. the strict rules which must be consistently obeyed, as well as the programme for the next 6 days. The representative of the ECHO – European Community Humanitarian Office described to us the projects for fighting and treating malnourishment, and emphasised the importance of development for solving the problem. He stressed that malnourishment does not influence a single generation only, but has impact on a number of generations. An undernourished child is sick, falls behind in growth and development, doesn't go to school... And his children will most likely be forced into poverty as well.

After the preliminary meetings we bought food and water for six days of our stay in the field. In the city of Mao which was our destination there are no shops and no restaurant, only a very rudimentary market. We obtained the last necessary documents and data of all the needed contacts, and after one-hour delay left for the city Mao 400 km away. Only for the first two hours we drove on asphalt roads, the remaining part of the travel which lasted almost seven hours led us through roadless areas and over sand dunes. Quite soon we started getting the notion of huge distances and detachment between towns. Sometimes an hour or two passed without meeting a living soul on our travel.

The last part of our journey was the most difficult and uncomfortable, as it was out of the question to stay on the road after sunset. Driving in dark is practically impossible. And considering the fact that we travelled in the wet part of the year, I can't even imagine the state of the 'road' after a hard rain.

It might look as if we had planned it, but we got to the UNICEF base precisely 10 minutes before darkness. Each member of the team got a room, extremely modest by our standards, but we have electricity and water. When I saw the surroundings it became clear to me that for most of the people living here these two commodities are inaccessible. The town Mao is the capital of Kanem Province with almost 20 000 inhabitants, yet the feeling is that of being in a village. The buildings are low and modest, the streets unpaved, sandy. Garbage lies everywhere.

After the first night – and nobody really slept – we started with our work. At first we visited the governor of the Kanem province who expressed his welcome and thanked us for our help. Next, we visited five families facing shortage of food, each with at least one undernourished child. Mothers usually take care of the children by themselves, as their husbands work in distant places and in order to provide for their families. One of the mothers told us that the members of the family usually eat once a day, mostly grits – they grind and cook the corn by themselves. She showed me the process of grinding the corn: she has to crack corn grains with a heavy stick for at least half an hour. I tried it myself, but I gave up after a minute. It is very hard physical labour.

Thanks to the UNICEF and EU support these children are included into a free health care programme, which improves their chance for survival. In the Kanem Province every fourth child suffers from acute undernourishment, while 60 percent of children are chronically undernourished.

Five mothers, five stories. The common denominator: poverty, and shortage of food. There are several reasons, the main being the consequences of draught which prevents them from growing enough food. All the mothers are grateful their children have free health care, and they all wish for them to get education, and have bright future. They fear for their children, as they know they can't offer them enough food, let alone the right kind of food. The health centre educated them on correct method of feeding children, but they simply don't have the ingredients to prepare meals as the feeding programme prescribes.

After the entire day of shooting, on our way back we saw boys of different age playing football. The field was improvised on the sandy ground, they were all barefoot, but the ball was proper! I wished to play with them too, so I joined a team and we played a short match. Although we never trained together, and the goals were very small, we managed to score, which caused a lot of satisfaction and brought smiles to all the faces. In the field you can notice a lot of children with football jerseys of FC Barcelona, and other teams. But the colour of the jersey loses importance when the issue is help for children.


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