Local Plumpy’nut production brings hope to Uganda families

With a keen eye on the scale and her classmates’ eyes on her, Consy Olweny measured the ingredients that go into a recipe she was making for the first time. Others held the bowl as her sturdy hands stirred the paste that they all hoped would save their children.

“In the camps, we don’t get enough food. So I’ve come to find a solution,” said Consy.

PHOTO: IMC IMC staff teaches women how to make Plumpy'nut.

In the Kitgum district of northern Uganda nearly everyone lives in a camp for the displaced. For Consy, it’s been a long time.

“Ten years ago, the rebels took my husband and killed him,” she said.

After that, she moved into a camp too. Now she takes care of three of her own children, her mother, and four orphans. She used to grow sorghum and peanuts, but since she’s been displaced, she and her family have been surviving on rations.

“The babies don’t get enough from their mothers, and they don’t even know milk,” she says.

So along with other women from her parish, Consy is attending a course where she learns to make Plumpy’nut, a high-calorie peanut based paste that revitalizes malnourished children. Until recently, the product has been imported from France and distributed in the camps. But now International Medical Corps is starting a program by building the capacity of the women’s groups in Kitgum town to make Plumpy’nut themselves with mostly locally found goods.

IMC’s Uganda coordinator for nutrition programs, Zekarias Getachew, and Adeline Lescanne from Nutriset, the manufacturer of Plumpy’nut, led all day courses that trained the women to choose the right ingredients, follow the recipe, monitor the quality and package the product.

PHOTO: IMC Women make Plumpy'nut in Uganda.

“By making it locally, I hope we will create demand for the ingredients and income for the farmers,” said Getachew. “The minerals and vitamins is a special formula from my company, Nutriset,” added Lescanne, “but everything else is from here.” On a shopping trip to the local market, she and Getachew found the peanuts, vegetable oil, powdered milk and icing sugar that they needed.

Consy recognized much of the process. “I’d already ground nuts with a mortar and pestle,” she said. But the group showed their pride in what they’d just learned. They ended the day with a song:

Let us sing praising IMC
Who have come to provide us with skills
Making us better women of Kitgum.

source : www.imcworldwide.org