By Peter Apps
SONGUENE, Mozambique, Aug 10 (Reuters) - For villagers in drought-stricken
southern Mozambique, this year's food shortages are the worst many can remember,
but aid workers fear the world may not respond until it is too late.
Across southern Africa, the United Nations says some 10 million people -- many of them already battling HIV and chronic poverty -- could face serious hunger by the end of the year.
"If the situation continues like this, we could die," says 43-year-old mother of six Beti Samuel Gueba, pointing to her empty granary in the rural hamlet of Songuene. "If it is like this now, what will it be like in the coming months? I do not know."
Relief workers warn of a repeat of events in West Africa's Niger, where 3.6 million people are facing food shortages.
Donor countries have boosted aid to Niger in the past month following increased media coverage sparked by last year's drought and locust invasions, but experts say an earlier response could have averted the crisis.
Mozambique's drought is patchy, with some areas enjoying good rainfall or able to use old Portuguese colonial-era irrigation schemes to boost production.
But in Guija district, 200 km (125 miles) north of the capital Maputo, only two percent of April's harvest was usable.
The problem goes beyond Mozambique.
Much of neighbouring Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi are also facing shortages, with many families having little or no food stocks to fall back on. AIDS has made the situation much worse, particularly in Swaziland and Lesotho.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has described the combination of chronic poverty, food shortages and HIV infection rates of more than 20 percent in southern Africa as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
But attempts to raise donor cash have largely failed.
"There are other crises in the world," said WFP Mozambique deputy chief Karin Manente. "There is Niger, there is Darfur, there was the tsunami. It's very difficult to get enough funds."
Of the $256 million the WFP says it needs to scale up feeding programmes to deal with the crisis between now and next June, when it hopes next year's harvest will be in, it has only managed to raise $158 million. In Mozambique, it only has 20 percent of the money it wants, forcing difficult decisions.
HOSTILE HOUSEHOLDS
I go into a home and they tell me there are 10 children," said Sam Kaijuka, a Ugandan aid worker with U.S. religious agency Samaritans' Purse, WFP's partner organisation in Guija.
"There is only money from WFP to feed three. I tell them to give me the three that are most deserving. That makes people very hostile. Sometimes we are chased away, but we always find another community that will take the food."
Already, some 12 deaths have been reported from malnutrition in districts a few hours drive from Guija, where plants have either failed to come up in fields planted late in 2004 or are useless for harvest. Cattle graze amongst the stunted plants.
"In one village, they noticed that all the children were falling asleep in lessons," said Kaijuka.
"It turned out that not only were the children starving but they were being given the local homebrew when they went to bed to ease the pain of hunger."
No one is predicting large scale starvation deaths in southern Africa, where rural populations have proved themselves resilient in other recent shortages.
In 2002, some agencies prophesied disaster when harvests failed, but most families got through by eating wild berries and fruit or by trading and selling possessions to raise money.
But selling property to buy food worsens rural African poverty at a time when the G8 rich nations have pledged to make it a thing of the past, and some women are even said to be turning to prostitution -- adding to the AIDS crisis that itself takes labour from the land and worsens food shortages.
Donations may flow in as shortages become acute later in the year during the "hungry season", but by then it may be too late.
In Niger, the cost of the relief operation was trebled as agencies had to use last-minute airlifts instead of trucks and had to give therapeutic feeding to save malnourished children instead of simply distributing food to vulnerable families after drought and locusts hit crops.
"We really need donations now so we can get the food in place by the hungry season later in the year," said WFP spokesman Mike Huggins. "Last minute is no good if we want to avoid a Niger-type situation."