The Shed That Fed a Million Children

by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

  To this day we strive to ensure that our paid staff have a feeling of vocation, a sense of ‘calling’, when they work for Mary’s Meals, regardless of their various personal faiths and beliefs. It is one of the reasons why our salaries will never compare well even with other similar-sized charities, let alone corporate organizations. People do not come to work for Mary’s Meals as way to get rich or as a simple career choice. Of course, sometimes people go on from Mary’s Meals to have good careers elsewhere, hopefully having learnt something in their time with us, and those of us who work for Mary’s Meals need to be able to survive and afford to feed our own families too. But always to work for Mary’s Meals as a paid employee will involve a sense of vocation and a sense of privilege that we are being paid to do this work when so many of our co-workers take part in this mission without any financial reward.

  But most of our supporters didn’t live in castles. In Vienna, an old friend of Milona’s, Dr Christian Stelzer, had founded an organization called Oase des Friedens to spread the word about Medjugorje. When Christian learnt of Mary’s Meals he started to write articles in his monthly magazine about our work. The response was astounding. Thousands of people in Austria began to make generous donations and hundreds of thousands of euros were given for Mary’s Meals. Christian then invited me to give a talk at an annual prayer evening that they held in the enormous St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. I arrived early and was amazed to find the church already packed full with thousands of people and more arriving each minute. Maria, one of the visionaries, was also there and it was lovely to catch up with her after a long time. She had her apparition on the altar steps and then Cardinal Schönborn celebrated the Mass. It was a very special evening. Afterwards many wanted to speak to us about Mary’s Meals, having heard the little talk I gave, which Milona translated. Among the many new supporters of Mary’s Meals in Vienna was Cardinal Schönborn himself, who became a wonderful advocate of the work of Mary’s Meals, which in later years he described as a fruit of Medjugorje. On different occasions he preached about our work and wrote articles on it.

  The support in Austria has continued to grow in the years since. The way our work there developed was something hard to explain, certainly in terms of established fund-raising methods. For the first several years in Austria, there were no paid staff or full-time volunteers (although Christian, when he was not working long hours as a GP, spent hour upon hour, often through the night, writing about our work and organizing events) and yet the support base multiplied and proliferated way beyond the original Medjugorje network. As our work has grown around the world I am sometimes asked to give talks about fund-raising. I normally decline as I would never consider myself an expert in fund-raising; nor do I pretend to understand all that has happened with Mary’s Meals. And perhaps those things that I believe have been most important in our growth – prayer and trust in God’s providence as starting points – would not necessarily be received as helpful pearls of wisdom at fund-raising conferences. There were, however, things we learnt along the way, certain approaches and ways of doing things, which became dear to us. Our experience convinced us that it was important to concentrate mainly on supporting the growth of a grassroots movement. Thousands of people making regular donations appeared a safer way to support a long-term intervention like Mary’s Meals than becoming over-reliant on grants that would perhaps last only three years. And we felt that part of our core mission was to involve as many people as possible in this work, and to let people know that all could play a part no matter their circumstances, background, creed or race. Some, like my brother Mark whose health had deteriorated to a point where he could no longer help us in other ways, made prayer for Mary’s Meals a personal commitment. He would come to me often and ask if there was anything particular that he should pray for. I was normally able to supply him with a long list! And at Craig Lodge House of Prayer at that time lived Brother Paul, a saintly ninety-five-year-old Marist brother. Every morning he prayed for Mary’s Meals (and each day he was on his knees in our chapel before 6 a.m.) and the rest of the day he was the most incredible joyous advocate of our work, telling all who passed through the doors of the retreat centre about the marvels of Mary’s Meals.

  One day Brother Paul mentioned to me that his grand-nephew happened to be Sir Terry Leahy, the well-known CEO of Tesco, and although he hardly knew him he had started writing to him about Mary’s Meals. He showed me one of the letters.

  ‘Magnus is a very tall man, but not at all scary … perhaps you would like to meet him?’ he had written. I laughed a lot at his choice of words but a couple of weeks later we were surprised and thrilled to receive a letter from Sir Terry, asking me to lunch at their HQ in London. After a series of meetings with him, other staff and board members, Tesco began to support Mary’s Meals very generously through their Foundation. And so the doors continued to open in all sorts of unexpected and amusing ways.

  Another key philosophy that developed from this idea of Mary’s Meals being a ‘movement’ was that there should never be a sharp divide between givers and receivers. We wanted to develop a deep understanding that we were all walking together with the same goal. Those who lived among the poorest of the poor and gave up their time to cook the daily meals were unified with those rattling collecting cans, or making donations, in their desire to see the hungry child receive that daily meal. We wanted to ensure that those involved in the programme delivery part of the work never saw fund-raising as just some necessary evil, but rather another crucial part of the whole process – with equal beauty and ability to change lives.

  For similar reasons, we felt we should look for funding in Malawi too, even if that seemed unlikely to be fruitful. Through Gay and David we met members of the small business community, and before long large sugar companies, banks and estate agents were supporting our work. In addition to generous funding others gave us ‘gifts in kind’. A sugar company shared their HR expertise and gave us a hugely reduced price on the sugar we required for our Likuni Phala, while a fuel company provided us free diesel for transporting the food. We organized high-profile events for these company executives in the cities of Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu, and a huge sense of pride and responsibility for Mary’s Meals was engendered. At one point in the early years of Mary’s Meals 10 per cent of our required budget in Malawi was being raised from within that country.

  We also became great friends with some prominent members of the Asian business community – both Hindus and Muslims – who supported us generously through their charitable organization called Gift of the Givers. Often they funded the provision of water wells in schools where we wished to begin cooking meals but where there was no clean water supply, and over the years we enjoyed some wonderful dinners together marked by fascinating discussions about our various faiths. Years later we teamed up with Gift of the Givers to fly and ship food from Malawi to Somalia during the terrible famine there in 2011. I made a short visit there that year to see bags of Malawian Likuni Phala, labelled ‘Mary’s Meals’, being distributed to thousands of starving people in Mogadishu. It was the scariest place I ever visited. On my first evening, while unpacking in our makeshift accommodation, a loud close explosion made me jump. One of our gently spoken Somalian hosts, a young man with good English, turned to me and, as if soothing a small child, said, ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It was just a bomb.’ For a few days I was surrounded by co-workers who at first light were on their prayer mats facing Mecca, while I sat on my bed saying my morning rosary, and despite the stressful situation we were all in, there was something about that interfaith mission to bring food to those suffering hunger that I will always treasure.

  Meanwhile, back in Malawi, we continued to meet children whose lives had been resuscitated by Mary’s Meals. One day, Ruth and I visited a Mzedi school just outside Blantyre with Peter Nkata. The school was tucked into a rocky hillside, among little patches of cultivated soil, ready for planting and patiently awaiting the rains.

  ‘Sma
ll Peter! He is alive!’ exclaimed Peter Nkata, recognizing a boy in the crowd of children who surrounded us as we parked in the school playground.

  ‘I was sure that child was dead,’ he said as we climbed out of the vehicle. He pulled the little child, perhaps four years old, to himself and hugged him. Then he held him at arm’s length and delighted in his appearance. An older boy stood beside him, with eyes that looked too large for his solemn face and legs too thin to support his frame.

  ‘Your brother looks well, Lazaro,’ Peter said to him.

  The boy nodded his head and smiled. Peter then told us their story.

  Some months back the teachers at Mzedi had noticed that Lazaro, who had previously been a very punctual boy, had begun to turn up late every morning without explanation. They investigated and discovered the mother of the family had died, leaving Lazaro and Small Peter at home on their own. Some distant relatives sometimes visited but gave little support. Lazaro, who looked about eight but was actually twelve years of age, became the head of the household and tried to look after his little brother. But they didn’t have enough food at home and Lazaro depended almost entirely on his daily meal at school. Small Peter, inevitably, fell sick. As he grew weaker and weaker, Lazaro decided, literally, to take matters into his own hands. He knew that Mary’s Meals were providing food not only in his own primary school, but also in an Under 6 centre half a mile away from their home. He started to carry Peter there every morning and only after he had deposited him there safely, knowing that he would be fed and cared for, did he continue to school himself – arriving late and tired. When Peter Nkata had visited some weeks ago he’d heard that the carers at the U6 centre had taken Small Peter to the hospital and were not hopeful he would survive. The weeks without food had taken their toll. But here, right in front of us, was a bright-eyed, smiling Small Peter, with the hand of the brother who saved him on his thin shoulder.

  8

  A Bumpy Road to Peace

  Poverty in the world is a scandal. In a world where there is so much wealth it is unfathomable that there are so many hungry children, that there are so many children without an education, so many poor persons. Poverty today is a cry.

  POPE FRANCIS

  ‘What did you eat this morning before school?’ we asked the next pupil on the bamboo bench.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied, in the same way as all the others had before her.

  ‘And yesterday – what did you eat?’

  ‘Just rice.’

  The answers were predictable. It seemed that each child, dressed in rags, ate ‘just rice’ or ‘just cassava’.

  But then a small boy surprised us.

  ‘What did you eat this morning?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘And yesterday?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  We repeated the question, thinking he had misunderstood. Again he replied, more softly, ‘nothing’. He turned his head away, embarrassed, as tears began to form in his eyes. He didn’t want the other children to notice.

  ‘It’s true. I saw him near my house yesterday rooting around for wild yams,’ his teacher said to us quietly. We moved on quickly to question the next child, but the questions seemed pointless. We didn’t need to complete this survey to know that the children of Biffany, a village in Liberia, would benefit greatly from Mary’s Meals. Before we left the class I glanced back at the little boy who hadn’t eaten the day before and saw tears were still trickling silently down his face. I felt so ashamed.

  Soon after establishing Mary’s Meals in Malawi we had developed a burning desire to put this project into practice in other countries as soon as possible. We could see it was transforming the lives of young people in Malawi and we were already stating boldly that our vision was ‘that every child receives one daily meal in their place of education’. If we were serious about this global vision, and we were, we needed to prove to ourselves – and others – that the same approach would work in other countries, cultures and situations where children missed school because of poverty.

  It seemed obvious that Liberia should be next on our list. We had been working there for many years and had a close relationship with the long-suffering people of Bomi County. In addition, it would have been hard to identify a country in greater need of Mary’s Meals. The series of civil wars had at last ended in 2003 and the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world had just been deployed. There was a real opportunity to build a lasting peace but the people were suffering abject poverty and the children were hungry. Liberia had one of the lowest rates of primary-school enrolment in the world. If their young people could not access education and equip themselves to play a part in building a more prosperous Liberia, then other temptations would remain. Disenchanted, uneducated, impoverished young men (especially) would remain easy prey for future warlords looking for fighters who could be tempted by promises of power, status and loot. Meanwhile, in Bomi County, the children of the Gola were malnourished and dressed in rags. Once again families were taking the first steps towards rebuilding their lives. They had resumed their battle with the ever-encroaching rainforest and were clearing land to plant cassava and rice. Here and there little mud-and-wattle homes were being rebuilt. It would be months before their crops were ready for harvest – a harvest that could only be meagre because they had few seeds and few tools. In 2003, the Economist, which annually predicts the worst country in the world to live in the following year, had chosen Liberia for that dubious accolade. It was not difficult to understand why.

  Among those rebuilding in Bomi County was Father Garry. As he drove me from Monrovia out to Bomi County and shared his latest news with me, I was struck by a depressing scene. At one time a rail track, built by mining companies to transport their iron ore to the port, ran alongside this road as far as Tubmanburg. Four years previously I had watched men rip up the rail lines and load them on to trucks as the country was looted and stripped bare of anything that could be sold. This time, along the same stretch, hundreds of men, women and children were now digging up the small stones that had formed the rail track’s foundations. They were washing the stones clean before heaping them in little piles for sale beside the road. It seemed even the quality of loot had reached a new low.

  Before long we had left the tar road behind and on the muddy tracks between the villages we saw more pitiful sights: mothers searching for fruit and berries, fathers hunting wild game and children wading in swamps with home-made nets trying desperately to catch fish. Many of the children were naked with swollen tummies. The Gola were no strangers to such suffering. They had the misfortune of living in an area close to the diamond, gold and iron-ore mines, and the armed struggle for these natural resources had repeatedly torn apart their villages and ruined their farms. For some, this was the third time they had returned to looted, overgrown, broken-down villages to pick up the pieces.

  We began to visit some of the villages to carry out surveys and talk to the communities about the idea of Mary’s Meals. The people knew us well because we had been working with them for many years and their welcomes were as warm as ever. The mobile clinic that we funded was still providing the only health care in the whole county and was hugely important for the returning people. When we talked to the community leaders we were clear that Mary’s Meals could only start if the local people were willing to volunteer to do the daily cooking and serving of food. This would be perhaps an even bigger sacrifice for the embattled parents of these villages than for those giving up their time to do this in Malawi, but our proposal was met with an overwhelmingly positive and excited response. Once again the people told us they were ready and willing. Our survey meanwhile confirmed what we already knew – that many of the children here were malnourished and that hunger and poverty was often keeping them from school. It also revealed other sufferings.

  In a village called Jennah Brown, we visited another school to assess the need for Mary’s Meals. Here local volunteers were teaching the children in what must have once been a relat
ively grand house, overlooking the village huts below. Until 1998, it had been used by an American company that was extracting gold from the nearby river. Inside, in the absence of benches, the children sat on black rubber pipes that had been used in the mining process and left behind. In another room, a group of older children sat on a vast metal safe where the miners had once stored their loot. Curiosity got the better of us and the children helped us prise open the huge lid. There was nothing inside but a few shreds of paper and some old leaves. The loot had, of course, long since been carried overseas. The hungry children clambered back on to their unusual seat, oblivious to the irony and the injustice.

  But when we talked with them we learnt that most of these children knew all about carrying a different kind of loot. When the armed fighters took this village the children were forced at gunpoint to carry away every single item of value – often from their own homes. All household belongings, tools and food supplies were taken in this way. Some of the children were then made to carry guns and ammunition and often progressed to become child soldiers. They had no real choice, their village having been emptied and sometimes their parents killed. The children in front of us were those who didn’t become fighters – either because they escaped or were allowed to go. They spent the rest of the war with their families in displaced camps around Monrovia, or became refugees in Sierra Leone, before recently returning home. All had been traumatized in different ways. In one class Father Garry asked if anyone had seen someone being killed during the war. Every child raised their hand.

  One of the villages that the mobile clinic visited on a regular basis was Massatin. Of all the villages that he knew and loved, it seemed Father Garry had a particularly deep affection for this one. It was a leper colony and those suffering the disease had been neglected for many years, prior to Father Garry’s arrival and his determined efforts to help them. Our health clinic had been visiting every week, dispensing medication for leprosy as well as for numerous other ailments. We had also been providing food for the sick given the acute hunger in the village. We decided this should be the very first place in Liberia to receive Mary’s Meals. They had recently built a few mud-wattle classrooms and in them 162 children were being taught by teachers – who again were volunteers in the absence of any government provision.