SUDDENLY WE HAVE A NEW PROJECT: TWINS AND ORPHANS!!!
So you, as a Nuer woman, gave birth to your baby. Cows are your blood line, your kindred spirits. That means babies are nourished with at least a little cow milk to supplement their mom’s. Without cows, babies do fine on breast milk alone.
But what about twins? If you deliver twins, you want to be close to your family cows. Twins demand too much, especially when there has not been much of a harvest for you to eat! And for some reason, this year brought more twins than we thought possible.
And what about the orphans, little kids whose mother has died? People caring for them have to find a cow fast. But now there are no cows.
So twins and orphans run to Old Fangak. What to do? Families really truly have no where to go. A tin of milk powder that feeds a baby for 10 days is sometimes available, but costs more than 50 USD. A family could buy 50 kg of grain and eat for a month for less than that. So we import 25 kg bags of milk powder, divide it up, and watch it disappear. Here’s hoping for the return of the cows!