Recently, the Zimbabwean government plans to use 300,000 pounds to add meals for students in poor areas, and the dishes that can be added are really disgusting, no chicken, duck and fish meat, even if there is moth larvae in the porridge?
Spend so much money to give children "bug meals"? What's so strange about this bug?
In fact, in Zimbabwe, this moth larvae is amazing, it is the emperor moth larvae, usually in the supermarket price, more expensive than pork, and in the local dish is still a famous dish.
The people of Zimbabwe usually catch this larvae during the rainy season, take it home and squeeze out the larvae's internal organs, then wash it and dry it so that it can be eaten all year round, which is somewhat similar to Chinese making cured meat or bacon.
But the main reason Zimbabwe is feeding its children this time is because famine in Africa has once again intensified.
Before the 1990s, Zimbabwe was also hailed as the country with the largest surplus grain in sub-Saharan Africa, "a model for agricultural development in Africa".
But more than three decades later, drought has dramatically reduced the country's food production, and according to a warning issued by the United Nations World Food Programme in 2019, half of Zimbabwe's population, or about 8 million people, currently do not have enough to eat.
During the 2008 famine, even the diplomatic corps of the Chinese Embassy in Zimbabwe had difficulty buying staple foods, meat and vegetables, not even condiments, not to mention other hungry people.
Even that year, the South African government donated 150,000 body bags to the Zimbabwean government so that they could bury starving starving people.
Now zimbabwe's famine is getting worse, and Zimbabwe's runaway inflation is like a heavy boulder, weighing Zimbabweans breathless.
The UN WFP report reads: "Runaway inflation has pushed up the prices of basic commodities to a level that is unaffordable to all but the most privileged." ”
More than a decade ago, the denominations of banknotes issued by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe have grown rapidly from 100 yuan, 1000 yuan and 10,000 yuan to 100 million yuan, 1 billion yuan, or even 100 billion yuan, and now, the inflation rate in Zimbabwe has reached 191%.
So there's a joke on the Internet that everyone is a billionaire in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe once abandoned its national currency and used the US dollar and South African rand as legal tender, but by 2019, the Zimbabwean dollar was reintroduced.
Because zimbabwe is often hyperinflationary, Zimbabweans have a "bad habit" of hoarding things they think are capable of preserving value, such as stocks, cars and real estate.
The more inflation is severe, the more fiercely they hoard things, and the vicious circle is constantly, and the valuable things are hoarded, and the more valuable things are lacking, which also contributes to the expansion of famine.
And the first to be affected by the famine are women and children. During a visit to Zimbabwe, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Hilal Elver, personally saw that some mothers sometimes ate only one meal a day of cooked corn and more often could not even eat food, and therefore could not provide breast milk to their children, which also led to malnutrition in infants.
"90 per cent of Zimbabwean children aged 6 months to 2 years do not consume the minimum amount of food acceptable," Elfer said. ”
And it's not just Zimbabwe that has a famine and is preparing to use bugs as a staple food, along with Congo in Africa, which recently also intends to invest £50,000 to encourage people to promote insect production.
In addition to being used for food, these insects can also feed animals, and the Congolese government even plans to bring caterpillars, locusts and black water flies to the table.
However, these methods can only temporarily alleviate the plight caused by famine, not to mention that the symptoms are not cured, I am afraid that even the "symptoms" cannot be cured.
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