Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Addis Abeba (Fides Service)- “Women suffer from discrimination even in tragic stiatuions of food shortage which periodically strike Ehtiopia”, Sr Elisa, an Italian Salesian missionary told Italian television. The nun works in Zway, a mainly Muslim area of Ethiopia: “The barns are empty and people are now living off nothing and many are already dying of hunger”.
“The only way to see that women and children eat is to feed them at our mission because if we give them food to take home they give it to the husband ” Sister Elisa told Fides. “There have been cases of mothers coming to collect milk and farfa for their baby but we noticed that the child did not grow, in fact it lost weight and eventually died. When we asked the mother if the husband drank the milk she said that the husband is always the first to eat because he was not very well, because he is the husband, because the husband ordered her to give him the milk” The women obeyed, and anyway the child who died was a little girl so it was not much of a loss for the family”.
“Sadly the area risks famine and people are used to decide who must live and who can be left to die ” Sister Elisa concludes sadly. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 14/7/2004 righe 22 parole 271)
