by Jonathan Krause

I don’t know the little boy’s name. His mum had called Australian Lutheran World Service (ALWS) to give a donation to help victims of the Africa famine crisis. She’d handed the phone to her seven-year-old son.

‘I want to help the children, please.’

He’d been saving his pocket money, and had $6. He wanted to give it all.

You might think $6 too small to make much of a difference. Especially when the number of people in danger across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia is more than 12.4 million. Yet we were able to tell that young boy that his $6 was enough to provide a precious meal of high-energy maize porridge for 54 children! Of as much value is the example this young boy’s pure generosity of heart gives to us all.

The world has not seen a hunger crisis like this since the 1984/85 Ethiopia famine (that time of Live Aid and Bob Geldof). That means if you’re younger than 35 years old, this is a first for you. It’s hard not to be shocked. Each day up to 1300 people arrive at the Lutheran-managed Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya. Eighty per cent of those people are children. Most are severely malnourished, suffering a hunger that slowly eats the body from inside out: fat first, then muscles, then finally the vital organs collapse from weakness.

In the last 90 days, 29,000 children under the age of five years have died of hunger.

The numbers are overwhelming, but we must never let these people simply become statistics.

Families arriving in the camp have made a perilous 1000-kilometre journey out of lawless Somalia, across the desert. On foot. With no food, and barely any water.

Mothers tell our Lutheran teams they’ve had to choose between their children: those who will live … and those who won’t. Imagine having to leave behind your weakest children, sacrificed, in order to give the strongest children a chance at life.

One mother who came out of the desert told of putting her children under a bush to sleep … and waking to see lions dragging them away.

These are the horrors our brothers and sisters in east Africa are facing.

Lutheran action

Lutherans from across Australia and New Zealand have opened their hearts to help these victims of the African famine crisis. In just two weeks after asking for help, ALWS was able to send more than $150,000 to support the emergency effort.

We’re working with churches of many denominations from all around the world, through actalliance, with our special focus supporting the work of Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

The work includes

• • managing the reception and registration process for new refugees
• • providing tents for shelter
• • establishing new shelter plots in the expanding camp at Dadaab (250 per day)
• • trucking in extra clean water supplies as bores are overworked (18 hours a day)
• • supplying maize porridge for thousands of malnourished children
• • supporting foster families who take in lost children.

With so many tens of thousands of children now in the camps — many of whom have suffered severe trauma — the urgent need now is to establish emergency schools.

Just as in Australia, ‘Lutheran’ is held in high regard in the refugee camps when it comes to education. Lennart Hernander, the LWF Representative for Kenya-Djibouti, explains the importance of setting up schools: ‘It has been clearly established that in emergency situations, quality education provides physical, psychosocial and cognitive protection, which can be both life-sustaining and life-saving … by giving a sense of normalcy, stability, structure and hope for the future.’

The challenge facing us is huge.

Our hope is in the rains due to come from September to October, so farmers can plant crops. Even so, it will still be months until there is anything to harvest. During that time there is the risk of a ‘green famine’ – where crops are growing, everything looks beautiful and green, but there is still no food to eat.

As Christians we know every person is precious in the eyes of God and that whatever we do for the ‘least of these’, we do for Jesus.

Jesus stands before us right now in Dadaab Refugee Camp, lining up patiently for a bowl of porridge. He kneels in the desert, weeping at the blood on the ground where his child was taken by a lion. He whispers to us in Arabic and Swahili and frightened broken English, ‘I’m hungry; I’m thirsty’.

A little seven-year-old boy heard Jesus, and gave his $6 of pocket money.

An elderly lady saw Jesus. Even though she was a pensioner and times were tough, she’d looked a few weeks ahead and hoped she didn’t have any bills coming – and gave $266.

A young refugee from Sudan, now settled in Australia, though still poor, felt Jesus tug at the hem of his soccer guernsey. The young man, a soccer player good enough to be paid for playing, told his Australian Lutheran pastor that his soccer payments could go to help the children.

In the Africa famine crisis we see the full awful horror of hunger.

But we see what love looks like, too. Jesus’ love. Alive in people’s lives. And as we witness this love we see what it means to be a church where love comes to life.

Jonathan Krause is communications manager for Australian Lutheran World Service.