By Melanie Brooks
Jan. 21, 2012

Aminou Chaibou, 29. Serkin Yamma village, Maradi region, Niger. Aminou participates in CARE's cash-for-work program. © 2011 CARE/Melanie Brooks

When Aminou Chaibou left his wife and three small children last year to find work in Nigeria, it was with the hopes of earning enough money to help them survive the worsening food crisis gripping Niger. Like millions of others across the country, his crops had failed; if he didn''t find work, they would starve.

Instead, he ended up losing money – and much of his family''s hope for the future.
"I found work right away, digging ditches for laying electrical cables. I had gone there before for work, when times were bad," Aminou said quietly. "But right when I was going to be paid, there was a bomb attack near where I was working. Things were hard at home, but I decided it was more important to save my life, not the money. So I came home."

For many people along the border with Nigeria, travelling to Nigeria to work for several months a year has been a crucial survival mechanism in difficult times. But with the recent unrest in Nigeria – increasing bomb attacks by a militant group, and more recently national protests against the government''s removal of the oil subsidy – many Nigeriens have decided that the work is too risky. Here in Maradi, Niger''s economic heartland, thousands of Nigerien migrant workers have returned home, many with empty pockets.

For Aminou, 29, the situation is even worse; in order to pay for his transport to Nigeria, he had to sell his wife''s only remaining goat. Piece by piece, they are selling the items in their home in order to survive.

"All we have to eat is millet paste mixed with a bit of milk," he said, stirring a spoon through a mostly-empty bowl of thin, soup-like porridge. "We add a lot of water, so it helps us feel full. We eat this twice a day. In a good year, we eat three times a day: millet, spaghetti, oil – many things. This is not a good year. And it is getting worse."
Sitting on the floor of Aminou''s small mud hut in rural Niger, his wife, Assamaou Rabi, 23, says she is afraid if her husband goes back to Nigeria, but they don''t know what to do.

"Our children ask for more food, but we don''t have anything else to give them," she said, as seven-month-old Zainab starts to cry in her arms. Assamaou pulls her to her breast, and the baby suckles quietly.

A complex combination of a failed harvest, returning migrant workers from troubled neighbouring countries, and soaring food prices has left more than 5.4 million people in Niger are at risk of hunger; at least 1.3 million like Aminou and his family are in critical need of help now.

CARE, in partnership with the World Food Programme, has started a cash-for-work program to provide families with cash to buy food on the local market. Here in Serkin Yamma village, Maradi, Aminou and other participants receive 1,000CFA per day (approx. USD2) in exchange for work clearing pasture land of an inedible weed that has taken over the pasture area, and reseeding it with local grasses that will serve as food for local cattle once the rains come in late May.

Aminou said the project arrived at a time when he had almost given up hope. He has been trying to find additional work in Maradi, and is considering going back to Nigeria. He had worked 43 days of a two-month contract; if he goes back and finishes his contract, he''ll receive his pay.

"But with everything we hear on the radio, I think it''s safer to stay here with my family. There was another attack yesterday in Nigeria, just across the border, near where I was working. We need to eat, we need the money, but I don''t want to be killed. Who would look after my family then?"

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