$1 = 70 Ksh in case you're wondering.

Now that we have finished an overabundance of food and we return to the real world, I of course return to my beloved Kenya. Today it is in my heart and in my head as I read the Sunday Nation (one of their two daily papers). I ache for them and feel somehow smaller for the pinch we complain about here. At least the norm here is not starving. Even in bad times we have food pantries, churches, and shelters. Over there it's just starvation. So now that we're heading back to our homes and our stocked pantries and refridgerator I thought you should read the Nation if you have a moment.

The Nation Sunday 30 November 2008
Households despair as hunger stalks


It is 4pm on a Friday. James Otieno, 28, walks through the endless rows of Kibera slum houses, his four-year-old daughter Belinda Atieno clinging onto his back. He has just picked her up from a Lutheran nursery school and is taking her home.

The Sunday Nation walks with him the entire 3km journey to his house. After several turns and twists, Mr Otieno finally ushers the Sunday Nation team into his house.

His three other children are having lunch consisting of ugali and sukumawiki (kales).

“This is how we live. “When you see us taking late lunch it means there isn’t enough flour for supper.

Instead we will make porridge,” says Mr Otieno as his wife Alice Aoko, 23, nods in support of her husband’s remarks that the family has not eaten meat this year. Bread too has become a luxury.

“At Sh240 a kilo, meat is just too expensive,” says Mrs Otieno. Her husband earns Sh130 a day from his job. When the business is down, his boss pays him Sh70. He has to pay a Sh500 monthly rent and meet the other family needs.

“When I get the Sh70, we go for the half-kilo maize flour, but since it is too expensive now, we opt for one gorogoro (2kg tin) which costs Sh60,” says Mr Otieno.

But he is not alone in this predicament. The soaring food prices are continuously making life unbearable for many Kenyans like him.

The prices of essential commodities such as maizemeal have been rising since the start of the year.

Last year, the price of a 2kg packet of maize flour was Sh48. It is now retailing at between Sh100 and Sh120 in most Nairobi retail stores.

Offered subsidies

The shortage in flour comes a few months after farmers demanded that the Government subsidise farm inputs to increase production. The price of fertiliser shot up from Sh1,700 to Sh6,000 a bag before Agriculture minister William Ruto intervened and offered subsidies.

Last week, the Cabinet authorised the release to millers of 700,000 bags of maize from the National Cereals Produce Board strategic reserve. The Cabinet also approved the importation of 5 million bags.

Agricultural economists at Egerton University’s Tegemeo Institute say Kenya produces about 33 million bags of maize a year, but the consumption is about 34 million.

“For the production period 2007/08, Tegemeo had estimated a deficit of over 10 million bags. This has serious food security implications as most people in Kenya effectively equate food to maize and food security as access to maize,” says Dr Mary Mathenge, the institute’s director.

Early this year, the institute warned that Kenya would have only 1 million bags at the strategic reserve if no appropriate action was taken.

Ms Betty Kibaara, a policy analyst at the institute, says there is an urgent need for short-term measures to deal with the current deficit especially through removal of trade restrictions.

According to the institute, 3.5 million bags of maize were destroyed during the post-election violence.