Nutrition Center

This one-room building feeds about 125 kids three times a week. Here are the children.
Festivities before the food is served.
The meal is beans and "porridge."
Most of the kids walk here. Some come from a long way off.

I'm told that some of them don't eat much beyond the three meals a week they get here. Based on how unbelievably skinny some of them were, I believe it.


I met some missionaries here who said that many Congolese they know eat only once a day, and some eat once every other day. They describe the following lessons learned by Congolese families that don't eat every day.

Lesson 1: Don’t eat in the morning. If you do, you’ll burn up all the energy during the day and won’t be able to sleep. Eat at night. Then you can sleep at least one night.

Lesson 2: Stagger the days on which adults eat. Ideally, half eat one night, and half eat the next. That way, at least some adult has enough energy to get housework done each day.