Food in Gaza (whtfood?)
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| Food vendors |
and
The New York Times
For two million hungry Gazans, most days bring a difficult search for something to eat. Amany Mteir, 52, scours the streets north of Gaza City, where people sell or trade what food they have. This was the scene along Saftawy Street two weeks ago.
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A pot of thin broth with pieces of carrot visible in a spoon. Nizar Hammad, 30, is sheltering in a tent in Rafah with seven other adults and four children. They had not gotten aid in two weeks, and Nizar worked two days at a market to earn enough money to buy these bags of rice from a street vendor. |
Farther north, in Beit Lahia, Aseel Mutair, 21, said she and her family of four split one pot of soup from an aid kitchen twice last week. One day they had nothing but tea.
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| Two packages of rice are placed side by side. On one, the words “Egyptian Fine Rice” are visible. |
As the war in Gaza enters its sixth month, the risk of famine and starvation is acute, according to the United Nations. Aid groups have warned that deaths from malnutrition-related causes have only just begun.
The war, including Israel’s bombardment and siege, has choked food imports and destroyed agriculture, and nearly the entire population of Gaza relies on scant humanitarian aid to eat. The United States and others are looking for ways to deliver supplies by sea and air.
The problems are especially worrisome in the north, where aid has been almost nonexistent. U.N. agencies have mostly suspended their aid operations there, citing Israeli restrictions on convoys, security issues, and poor conditions of roads.
The New York Times asked three families to share photos and videos of their search for food over the past few weeks. They all said that food was getting harder to find, and that most days, they did not know whether they would eat at all.
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One meal a day
Humanitarian aid convoys do not reach Aseel and Amany’s homes in the north, and they have decided it is too dangerous to travel to seek them out. Instead, they head out early most mornings to survey informal street markets like this one.
A few vendors stand behind tables displaying food and other supplies for sale on the side of the road. Several adults and children survey the items. Behind the tables is a heavily damaged building and a building riddled with bullet holes.
Most food shops in northern Gaza are damaged or closed, so vendors set up informal street markets to sell food and other items.
Some vendors used to run grocery stores and are selling what stock they have left. Others buy and resell humanitarian aid. An average of just six commercial trucks carrying food and other supplies have been allowed to enter Gaza each day since early December.
One of the cheapest foods Aseel’s family can find is ground barley, which before the war was used in animal feed. Corn flour is sometimes available but is more expensive.
[My dear reader, if the below images fail to download, please just continue to read the posting. The images come from the best of The New York Times but to continue will be financially inhibited to try to post. I have been at it since early this morning but decided the words were in this case as important or more than the pics. Thank you, this is Adam]
Corn flour
$5.71/pound
Ground barley
$4.44/pound
Aseel’s mother used these ingredients to make a piece of palm-sized pita bread for each of them. “I can’t even describe how awful it tastes,” Aseel said.
Pita bread
made from
animal feed
Even when Aseel’s family finds food before the afternoon, they wait to eat their single meal until dinnertime so they can sleep better.
On a recent day, her father found this small amount of rice at a street vendor’s table, and a day later found this portion of flour — after a five-hour search. The discovery made the family feel festive, but the inflated prices chipped away at their savings.
White flour
$8.89/pound
now
$0.38/pound
before the war
Rice
$11.43/pound
now
$1.02/pound
before the war
Aseel’s parents were unemployed before the war but received some social services support because her mother is a cancer patient.
One night, Aseel, her parents, and her brother, Muhammad, split a can of mushrooms to go with the rice. Aseel said she tried to convince herself it tasted like chicken.
With the flour, they made traditional pita bread, eating it with this soup from the leaves of a wild plant known as khubeiza.
Aseel’s family makes and eats soup from khubeiza leaves when there is nothing else to eat.
Last week, they had no luck at the markets. So on Monday, Muhammad, 16, stood in line for two hours at a tekeyah, a charity kitchen, at a nearby school. He brought home a bowl of rice soup for the family, but Aseel said he told her he did not like to be seen as begging.
Aseel ate five dates from the family’s stash and had a cup from her last container of instant coffee, a reminder of her life as a university student before the war.
A ration of
five dates
A cup of
instant coffee
The next day, Aseel’s father and brother spent hours on their feet searching for supplies. They visited Aseel’s aunt and reluctantly asked her for food. She shared a small amount of lentils. They ate them that evening and finished the dates they had planned to save.
They were too weak the next day to check the markets again, and there was no food at the aid kitchen. Instead, they drank tea.
What Aseel’s family of four ate each day from Feb. 28 to March 7
Wednesday A pot of khubeiza leaf soup
Thursday A pot of khubeiza leaf soup
Friday Rice and one can of mushrooms
Saturday A pot of khubeiza leaf soup and pita bread made with white flour
Sunday A pot of khubeiza leaf soup
Monday Rice soup from the tekeyah and a few dates
Tuesday Lentils and dates
Wednesday Tea
Thursday Carrot soup from the tekeyah
“Human beings are energy, and my energy is depleted,” Aseel said. “I can’t endure more than this.”
Like Aseel, Amany’s family drinks tea to feel full. They used to fetch water from a nearby mosque, but since it was bombed, they have been buying water from trucks that pass by most days.
A teapot sitting on top of a metal grate, placed on a stove made of a large can with a cutout for adding wood.
Amany boils water for tea over a fire made from scrap wood.
Her family — seven adults, including her three sons and their wives — has been surviving on a broth made with water and cubes of chicken bouillon.
“When I can’t think and I don’t know what to do, I focus on the kids, but it’s especially hard when they tell you at night that there’s no food,” Amany said.
Many to feed
In Rafah, where Nizar is sheltering, there have been more aid deliveries than in the north. But the amount of food provided to each family — a bag of flour or a few cans of beans every few days — has not been enough, he said.
Over the past two weeks, Nizar’s family has not gotten any aid at all. They have just one bag of flour left.
The family used to draw on its savings to buy ingredients from street vendors, and Nizar’s mother would then prepare one meal to split among 12 people.
One pot to fill 12 bowls
But Nizar said his family’s situation was getting worse. The money he was saving for his wedding is gone, and the prices at street markets keep rising, he said.
Nizar took this photograph of a street shop near the Rafah border crossing on Saturday where humanitarian supplies were being resold. “Everything you see here is mainly aid,” Nizar said, adding that most people could not afford the products on the shelves.
Canned beans
$1.68 now
$0.42 before the war
Pack of diapers
$53.18 now
$8.40 before the war
Halva sweets
$7.84 now
$1.12 before the war
Shelf-stable milk
$5.04 now
$1.40 before the war
He explained that some people sold aid when they had more than they needed. It is harder for people without connections to aid organizations or shelters to get assistance, he added.
“This is tiring and disgusting,” Nizar said.
Whenever they can, the adults in his family save extra food for the children. The children also visit a tekeyah, shown in this photo that Nizar took in late February, where they wait hours for a container of soup or grains.
An outdoor, walled enclosure contains rows of large pots filled with food and sitting on open fires. Children sit on a stretch of wall nearby or stand just behind it, hanging their arms over the wall. Many of them are barefoot, and each holds a small pot or container.
Children in Rafah carry pots to charity kitchens like this one to bring food home to their families.
On Saturday, with no other food available, the whole family ate their day’s meal from the tekeyah.
For all three families, splitting limited food among so many people is a challenge. Amany, whose family of seven stays in an apartment with 23 others, said that life in close quarters was chaotic.
“People start criticizing each other and keeping track of everything, trying to hide things for fear they’ll run out,” she said. “Some sneak out in the middle of the night to eat everything before anyone notices.”
Makeshift kitchens
At Amany’s home, each person takes turns in the morning to search the streets for wood to burn. The work keeps them busy, but it is tiring.
They build a fire in a room where a wall was blown out, giving them a view of the ruined buildings outside.
Amany’s family burns wood scraps they find in the streets.
“We’ve regressed to the era of firewood and smoke,” said Amany, who worked as a school administrator before the war.
Aseel moved back to her home in Beit Lahia in January after being displaced five times. Her family’s apartment has no power and their refrigerator and stove sit empty. But unlike many in Gaza, her family still has access to a water tank fed by a municipal source.
Now they cook outside, making scrap-wood fires to brew tea and boil water for drinking and washing.
Pan for making
pita bread
Open fire for
heating water
and cooking
Tank connected
to municipal
water supply
“This used to be our garden, it used to be filled with olive trees where our entire family would gather,” Aseel said. “But now it’s all been swept away.”
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