by proldic » Sat Aug 06, 2005 1:35 pm
By: NAFI DIOUF - Associated Press <br><br>MARADI, Niger ---- Behind the high brown wall of a clinic run by a Muslim charity, nurses care for hundreds of hungry children. Down the road 150 yards, members of a Christian congregation discuss how to stretch funds collected at Sunday services to help more of the poorest in drought-stricken, overwhelmingly Muslim Niger.<br><br>"There is no rivalry between the two communities," said Abdou Laouali, permanent secretary of the 250-member Evangelical Church of the Republic of Niger. "We are working toward the same objective." <br><br>Niger, which is 95 percent Muslim, has seen little of the tensions and even Muslim-Christian violence of neighboring Nigeria...<br><br> "I can assure them that a hungry stomach has no ears," he said. "So, whatever they can imagine we are telling these people, is falling onto deaf ears."...<br><br>Drought and severe locust invasion last year has left some 3.6 million people in this country of 11.3 million faced with severe food shortages. Children are most at risk, with some 800,000 aged under 5 years who urgently need to be fed...<br><br>"We feed everyone without distinctions, religious or others," Azeroual said.<br><br>"Ask them," he said, pointing at a group of women sitting on the sand with their children resting on their thighs or trying to find nourishment from their mothers' empty breasts. "You will certainly find some animists, Catholics. The food here is for everybody."<br><br>Only the cook and a handful of women in the courtyard responded to the noon call to prayer.<br> <p></p><i></i>
